SAT. FEB. 9. Runnymede. To Alf Jones's.
Not much in that bill of fare, you think? Perhaps not. Nor was
Count Federigo degli Alberighi's falcon much of a banquet for
the Lady Giovanna, though that meagre catering cost a considerable jar
to the sensibilities of the impoverished aristocrat--accurately represented,
in this instance, by the writer of these memoirs. Of course, I am committed to
any narration imposed by my random election of dates; but just notice
that perversity, that untowardness, that cussedness in the affairs of men,
which brings me back to Runnymede, above all places in the spacious
south-western quarter of the Mother Province. The unforeseen sequences
of that original option are masters of the situation, till they run
their course--and most tyrannical masters they are. They have tied me
to a stake; I cannot fly, but, bear-like, I must fight the course.
Ay! your first-person-singular novelist delights in relating his love-story,
simply because he can invent something to pamper his own romantic notions;
whereas, a similar undertaking makes the faithful chronicler squirm
inasmuch as Oh!----you'll find out soon enough.
Five days before the date of this entry, I had received orders to proceed
at once to Runnymede, and there to complete an M-form, which would
in the meantime be forwarded from our Central Office to Mr. Montgomery.
Twelve hours' riding had brought me to the station, but the document
had not arrived, so there was nothing for it but to wait till the next mail
came in. That would be on the 9th.
Being a little too exalted for the men's hut, and a great deal too vile
for the boss's house, I was quartered in the narangies' barracks.
Social status, apart from all consideration of mind, manners, or even money,
is more accurately weighed on a right-thinking Australian station than anywhere
else in the world.
The folk-lore of Riverina is rich in variations of a mythus, pointing to
the David-and-Goliath combat between a quiet wage-slave and a domineering
squatter, in the brave days of old. With one solitary exception, each station
from the Murray to the Darling claims and holds this legend as its own.
On Kooltopa alone, the tables are turned, and the amiable Stewart makes
a holy show of the truculent rouse-about. But on no station, not even
on Kooltopa, has imagination bodied forth, or tradition handed down,
any such vagary as might imply that a wage-slave saw the inside of the house
or the barracks. And a narangy will always avoid your eye as he relates how,
on some momentous occasion, the boss invited him to step in and take a seat.
In the accurately-graded society of a proper station, you have a reproduction
of the Temple economy under the old Jewish ritual. The manager's house
is a Sanctum Sanctorum, wherein no one but the high priest enters;
the barracks is an Inner Court, accessible to the priests only; the men's hut
is an Outer Court, for the accommodation of lay worshippers; and the nearest
pine-ridge, or perhaps one of the empty huts at the wool-shed, is
the Court of the Gentiles. And the restrictions of the Temple were never
more rigid than those of a self-respecting station. This usage, of course,
bears fruit after its kind.
It was more than a mere custom with the mediaeval baron--it was a large part
of the religion which guided his rascally life--to wolf his half-raw pork
in fellowship with his rouse-abouts; hence he could bash the latter about
at pleasure; and they, in return, were prepared to die in his service.
A good solid social system, in its own brutal and non-progressive way.
The squatter, of course, cannot get back to the long table with the dogs
underneath; but he ought to think-out some practicable equivalent
to the baron's crude and lop-sided camaraderie--this having been a necessary
condition of vassal loyalty in olden time. Without vassal loyalty,
or abject vassal fear, the monopolist's sleep can never be secure.
Domination, to be unassailable, must have overwhelming force in reserve--
moral force, as in the feudal system, or physical force, as in
our police system. The labour-leader, of accredited integrity and capability,
though (so to speak) ducally weedy, has moral force in reserve; and we all know
how he controls the many-headed. Also, the man glaringly destitute
of integrity or capacity, but noticed as having a bullet-head, a square jaw,
countersunk eyes, and the rest in proportion, is suspected of having
the other kind of force in reserve; and we know how he escapes anything
like wanton personal indignity in his intercourse with gentle or simple.
Now, the only reserve-force adherent to station aristocracy resides
in the manager's power to "sack."
The squatter of half-a-century ago dominated his immigrant servants by
moral force--no difficult matter, with a 'gentleman' on one side and a squad
of hereditary grovellers on the other. He dominated his convict servants
by physical force--an equally easy task. But now the old squatter has gone
to the mansions above; the immigrant and old hand to the kitchen below;
and between the self-valuation of the latter-day squatter and that
of his contemporary wage-slave, there is very little to choose. Hence the toe
of the blucher treads on the heel of the tan boot, and galls its stitches.
The average share of that knowledge which is power is undoubtedly in favour
of the tan boot; but the preponderant moiety is just as surely held
by the blucher. In our democracy, the sum of cultivated intelligence,
and corresponding sensitiveness to affront, is dangerously high,
and becoming higher. On the other hand, the squatter, even if pliant
by disposition, cannot spring to the strain; social usage being territorial
rather than personal; so here, you see, we have the two factors which should
blend together in harmony--namely, the stubborn tradition of the soil,
and the elastic genius of the 'masses'--divorced by an ever-widening breach.
There are two remedies, and only two, available; failing one of these,
something must, soon or later, give way with a crash. Either the anachronistic
tradition must make suicidal concessions, or the better-class people
must drown all plebeian Australian males in infancy, and fill the vacancy
with Asiatics.
My acquaintance with Runnymede dated from about seven years before.
Tracking three stray steers, I had reached the station at sunset. I had come
more than sixty miles--nearly all unstocked country--in two days, and with
only one chance meal. My horse was provokingly fagged . I was ragged
by reason of the scrub, and dirty for lack of water: whilst an ill-spelled
and ungrammatical order on Naylor of Koolybooka, for £28, was the nearest
approach to money in my possession. I had left my cattle-tracks,
and was approaching the home-station, when I met Mr. Montgomery himself.
I told him my story. 'Oh, well; go to the store and get your rations,'
said he disgustedly. 'And, see--if those steers of yours are on the run,
get them off as quick as possible. Fence-breakers, no doubt. Come! hurry-up,
or the store will be closed!' The storekeeper measured me out a pannikin
of dust into a newspaper, and directed me to the left-hand corner
of the ram-paddock, as the best place for my horse. There, in the spacious
Court of the Gentiles, I made a fire, worked up my johnny-cake on the flat top
of the corner post, ate it hot off the coals, then lay down
in swino-philosophic contentment, and read the newspaper till I could smell
my hair scorching, and so to sleep.
My next visit to Runnymede took place about three years later. I had timed
myself to draw-up to the station on a Saturday afternoon, with
five-ton-seventeen of wire. Montgomery met me, as before. 'You're Collins,
aren't you? I've got the duplicate. We won't disturb your load till Monday.
Shove your trespassers in the ration-paddock, and go and stop in the hut.'
I was rising in the world.
Next time I called at Runnymede, it was to inspect and verify the register
which Montgomery was supposed to keep for my Department. Being now worthy
of the Inner Court, I was told-off to sleep in the spare bed in Moriarty's
room, and to sit at meat with the narangies, where we were waited on by
a menial. If my social evolution had continued--if I had expanded,
for instance, into a literary tourist, of sound Conservative principles--
I would have seen the inside of the boss's house before I had done. But,
as it happened, I withered and contracted from that point--simultaneously,
mind you, with a perceptible diminution of my inherent ignorance
and correlative uselessness. Such, however, is life.
But on the present occasion I had been quartered in the barracks for four
whole days, as idle as a freshly-painted ship upon an ocean made iridescent
by the unavoidable dripping and sprinkling of the pigment used.
(A clumsy metaphor, but happily not my own). This lethargy was inexcusable.
I had three note-books filled with valuable memoranda for a
Series of Shakespearean Studies; and O, how I longed for a few days'
untroubled leisure, just to break ground on the work. Those notes had been
written in noisy huts, or by flickering firelight, or on horseback--written
in eager activity of mind, and in hope of such an opportunity for amplification
as I was now letting slip. But I have one besetting sin; and this Delilah,
scissors in hand, had dogged me to Runnymede, and polled me by the skull.
Nor could I plead inadvertence when I gravitated into the old familiar vice;
but I left the consequences for an after-consideration. The opportunity
was there, like an uncorked bottle under a dipsomaniac's nose, and that
was enough. 'One more,' I kept saying to myself; 'one more, and that's
the last; so sweet was ne'er so fatal.'
According to the unhappy custom of besetting sins, this evil thing came upon me
the moment I woke on the morning of the 9th. I slipped into my clothes,
and started off along the horse-paddock fence toward a natural hollow,
a mile from the station. Here twelve or fifteen years' continuous trampling
by the worst-smelling of ruminants (bar the billygoat) on ground theretofore
untrodden except by blackfellows, birds, and marsupials, had developed a pond,
sometimes a couple of acres in area, and eight feet deep in the middle,
and sometimes dry. Full or dry, fresh or rotten, the pond was known as
the 'swimming-hole.' At the time I speak of, the water was about half-gone,
in both senses, and evaporating at the rate of an inch a day.
With a good supple stem of old-man saltbush I dispersed three snakes
that lay around the margin, waiting for frogs; then I noticed my empty clothes
lying on the bank, and found myself sliding through the lukewarm water,
recklessly and wickedly discounting the prospective virility of another day;
and there I remained till I thought it was time to go to breakfast.
Nothing but that integrity which springs from the certainty of being
ultimately found-out, prompts me to the foregoing confession--a confession
which I cannot but regard as damaging, from the literary, as well as from
the moral, point of view. And for this reason.
During the last twenty or thirty years, the foremost humorist of our language
has, from time to time, casually touched on the removal of natural
and acquired dirt by means of bathing; but however lightly and racily
this subject might leave his pen, it has been degraded into repulsiveness
by the clumsy handling of imitators. Some things look best when merely implied
in the dim background, and recent literature certainly proves this to be
one of them. There is nothing dainty or picturesque in the presentment
of a naked character washing himself; yet how few of our later novels
or notes of travel are without that bit of description; generally set-off
by an ungainly reflection on the dirt of some other person, class,
or community. The noxious affectation is everywhere. Even the Salvation
officer cannot now write his contribution to the War Cry without a detailed
account of the bath he took on this or that occasion--a thing which has
no interest whatever for anyone but himself. It would be much more becoming
to wash our dirty skins, as well as our dirty calico, in private.
We might advantageously copy women-writers here. Woman, in the nature
of things, must accumulate dirt, as we do; and she must now and then wash
that dirt off, or it would be there still. (Like St. Paul, I speak as a man.)
But the scribess never parades her ablutions on the printed page. If,
for instance, you could prevail upon the whole galaxy of Australian authoresses
and pen-women to attend a Northern Victoria Agricultural Show,
in their literary capacity, you would see proof of this. Each would write
her catalogue of aristocratic visitors, her unfavourable impressions re quality
of refreshments, her sarcastic notice of other women's attire, and her
fragmentary observations on the floral exhibits; but not one would wind-up
her memoir with an account of the 'tubbing' she gave herself in the seclusion
of her lodgings when the turmoil was over. Woman must be more than
figuratively a poem if she can promenade a dusty show-yard for a long,
hot afternoon without increasing in weight by exogenous accretion;
but her soulfulness, however powerless to disallow dirt, silently asserts
itself when that dirt comes to be shifted.
However, mere fidelity to fact brings me into the swim--in the figurative
sense, as well as in the literal--and the sad consciousness of fellowship
with men who 'tub' themselves on paper is added to the humiliation
of the disclosure itself. In a word, just as I lost my vigour
in the swimming-hole, I lose my individuality in the confession. But I don't
lose my discrimination, nor my veracity. I don't call my evil good.
In Physical Science, or in Pure Ethics--whoop! I am Antony yet!
Nature, by a kind of Monroe Doctrine, has allotted the dry land to man,
and various other animals; the water to fish, leeches, etc.; the air to birds,
bats, flies, etc.; the fire to salamanders, imps, unbaptised babies, etc.;
and she strictly penalises the trespass of each class on the domain
of any other. Naturally then, about sixteen raids, within four days,
on an alien element, had stewed every atom of vigour out of my system,
and quenched every spark of heroism.
Consider the child. He is the creature of instinct; and instinct--according to
my late relative, Wilkie Collins--never errs, though reason often does so,
as we know to our cost. Now, the picaninny knows what is good for him.
Place him in promixity to a dust-hole or an ash-heap, and observe
what takes place. He approaches it with that droll, yet pathetic, method
of locomotion peculiar to his period of life--travelling on both hands
and one knee, whilst with the big toe of the other hind-foot he propels
himself along. In the very centre of the dirt, he deftly whirls into
a sitting position, and proceeds to redeem the time, maintaining, meanwhile,
that silence which is the perfectest herald of joy. Ormuzd the Good
has inspired him with this inclination. But the Minister of Ahriman the Evil
is not far off. The able-bodied mother seizes the mite of a bambino
by the wrist, and carries him at arm's-length to the kitchen. It is
to no purpose that he becomes alternately rigid and flaccid, lifting up
his voice in clamorous protest, and making himself as heavy as a bag of shot.
That misguided woman denudes him, washes him, rubs soap into his eyes,
spanks him, re-arrays him, and sets him in a clean place, giving him a teaspoon
to play with. Then she resumes her household work; whereupon Ormuzd whispers
in the pledge's projecting ear, and that heaven-directed bimbo straightway
turns his head toward the dust-hole, and, again illustrating the first clause
of the Sphynx's not very complicated riddle, keeps the strictly noiseless tenor
of his way, till Ahriman's priestess looks round to see the metaphors
fulfilled, of the pup turning again to his ashheap, and the papoose
that was washed wallowing in the dust-hole. And so the pull-devil-pull-baker
strife goes on to the last syllable of recorded time--not between
mother and child, as you are prone to imagine, but between the two great
principles of Good and Evil, so widely allegorised and personified,
yet so uncertainly grasped, and so loosely defined. The result is sad enough:
physically, not one in ten of us is what the doctor ordered, and, of course,
brought; mentally, we are mostly fools; morally, we are, in a sense,
little better than we ought to be. And such is life.
At breakfast, I remember, there occurred a slight misunderstanding
between Mrs. Beaudesart, the housekeeper, and Ida, the white trash
whose vocation was to wait on the narangies.
Mrs. Beaudesart was well-born. Don't study that expression too closely,
or you'll get puzzled. Her father, Hungry Buckley, of Baroona--a gentleman
addicted to high living and extremely plain thinking--had been snuffed-out
by apoplexy, and abundantly filled a premature grave, some time
in the early 'sixties, after seeing Baroona pass, by foreclosure,
into the hands of a brainy and nosey financier. People who had known
the poor gentleman when he was very emphatically in the flesh, and had listened
to his palaver, and noticed his feckless way of going about things,
were not surprised at the misfortune that had struck Buckley. Mrs. B. had
then taken a small villa, near Sydney, where, in course of time, her son
and daughter took positions of vantage, such as their circumstances allowed;
each being prepared to stake his or her gentility (an objectionable word,
but it has no synonym; and nasty things have nasty names) against any amount
of filth that could be planked down by an aspiring representative
of the opposite sex.
But young Mr. Buckley, who was something indefinite in a bank,
presently ventured on a bit of blacksmith work, and being, by reason
of hopeless impecuniosity, not worth lenient treatment, got a tenner hard.
About the same time, Miss Buckley--then a singularly handsome young lady--
became a veritable heroine of romance. A German prince, whose name I forget
at the present moment, visited these provinces; and our Beatrix Esmond----
Well, perhaps a reflected greatness is better than no greatness at all.
So, at all events, thought Mr. Lionel Fysshe-Jhonson, who married Miss Buckley
on the strength of her celebrity. This young man in less than two years
went to his reward; and his widow, after a seemly interval, reinforced
her financial position by accepting the hand and heart of old Mr. Tidy,
an aitchless property-owner, whose hobby was to collect his own rents.
Bottoming on gold this time, she buried the old man within eighteen months,
and paid probate duty on £25,000. After three years of something like life,
she accepted the addresses of the Hon. Henry Beaudesart, a social refugee
from Belgravia (wherever that may be). This was a gentleman of such
refined tastes that it took over £10,000 a year to satisfy his soul-yearnings;
so, when she buried him, after two years' trial it was in the sure
and certain hope that he would stay where he was put. This brought her
to about the year '78. And the tide had turned.
For the next two years, the poor gentlewoman hung round the scene
of her former glories, wearing garments that were out of fashion, and otherwise
drinking to its very dregs the cup of bitterness which a heartless society
holds to the lips of its deposed queen. The elegancies of life
were necessities to her; but those elegancies would cost--to put it tangibly--
the balance of profit accruing from the continuous labour of at least
fifty average industrious women. And when the industrious women were not
to the fore, where were the elegancies to come from? Where, indeed! It is
a question which has broken many a gentler heart than Maud Beaudesart's,
and will break many more. It is a cruel question; but not to put it
would be more cruel still. For while this or that gentlewoman is in danger,
no gentlewoman is safe. And the basest type of mind is that which gloats
on the adversity of the world's spoiled child; the next basest is that which
concentrates its sympathy on the same adversity; the least base, I think,
is that which, goaded by a human compassion for all human distress,
longs to get a lever under the order of things which necessitates the spoiling
of any particular child.
Two or three years before the date of this record, Mrs. Montgomery,
a distant relation and boarding-school friend of Mrs. Beaudesart, had met
the latter in Sydney, and had brought her out to Runnymede. Montgomery,
viewing the tenacious widow as a fixture, had insisted upon her having
some definite status on the place, and she was therefore installed
as housekeeper. Little wonder that the poor gentlewoman, remembering her own
departed greatness, and chafing under the mild yoke of Mrs. Montgomery,
used to make the handmaidens of the household wish themselves in Gehenna.
Dionysius the Younger, shifted from his throne, opened a school,
so that he might take it out of the boys. Such is life.
Levites, tribesmen, and Gentiles alike, used to poke fun at me
over Mrs. Beaudesart; but the fact that they thought they knew my real
standing, whereas they did n't, seemed to weigh so much in my favour
as to make their banter anything but provoking. Yet my relations
with the gentlewoman were painful enough. I'll tell you exactly how we stood.
On my first official visit to Runnymede, whilst Montgomery and I stood
talking in front of the store, Mrs. Beaudesart passed by. He detained her
a moment to speak of my sleeping-accommodation, but first, with grave
courtliness, introduced me to her as the last lineal descendant
of Commander David Collins, R.N. Situated as I was, what could I say?--
what would you have said? I had to fall in with the thing at the time;
and having done so, of course, I had to live up to it; moreover this meant
a good deal when I had to beat time with a woman like Maud. In spite of
my chivalrous disinclination to flaunt superior descent in the face of a lady,
our shuddersome intimacy deepened; and the necessity for keeping up
my accompaniment seemed to grow more imperative as it became more difficult.
But even at this distance of time, it soothes me to remember that I went
through the ordeal without any sacrifice of veracity--partly by modest
reticence touching my forbears, and the rest by a little diplomacy.
For instance, in remarking that my grandfather, Sir Timothy Collins,
had been well known in connection with the turf, I omitted to explain
that he was allowed to obtain it only from a specified bog, and that his custom
was to sell it at the stump for so much per donkey-load, to be taken out
in spuds or oatmeal. Altogether, I got on better than you might expect.
Meanwhile, some unhappy hitch in the Order of Things, as well as that
strange fascination which accompanies danger of detection, kept dragging me
to Runnymede on every pretext.
Another thing. Mrs. Beaudesart possessed a vast store of Debrett--information
touching those early gentlemen-colonists whose enterprise is hymned by
loftier harps than mine, but whose sordid greed and unspeakable arrogance
has yet to be said or sung. Socially, she knew something fie-fie about
most of our old nobility; and her class-sympathy, supported by
the quasi-sacredness which invests aristocratic giddiness, lent tenderness
of colour and accuracy of detail to some queer revelations. She could make me
fancy myself in ancient Corinth.
And such was her hypnotic power, or my adaptability, that in the atmosphere
of Runnymede I became a Conservative of the good old type, and actually
enjoyed the communion of soul necessarily subsisting between a pedigreed lady
and a pedigreed gentleman. We habitually spoke of the Montgomerys
as of the wealthy lower orders, people of yesterday, and so forth; and because
we took especial care to let nobody hear us, the jealousy of our inferiors
manifested itself in that badinage so dear to the middle-class mind.
'Inferiors,' I say advisedly, for there was an indescribable something
about us two when we got together, a something too subtle for expression
in the vulgar tongue, which made us feel the station aristocracy to be
a mere bourgeoisie, and ourselves the real Mackay. Of course, Montgomery
had forgotten my high descent as soon as the words of introduction were out
of his mouth; and I had begged the lady to conceal my gentilesse
for the present; family pride causing me to be extremely sensitive
on the subject of my low position. This was the only witchcraft I had used.
Ida, the handmaid of the barracks, was a common person. She certainly belonged
to the same mammiferous division of vertebrata as Mrs. Beaudesart,
but there the affinity ended with a jerk. In a word, she was the low-born
daughter of a late poverty-stricken Victorian selector. Her father,
after twelve years' manful struggle with a bad selection, had hanged himself
in the stable; whereupon the storekeeper had sold the movables,
and the mortgagee the farm. Runnymede was Ida's first situation. Her wages,
month by month, went to the support of her broken-down mother, then living
frugally in a country township, taking care of Ida's remaining brother,
who had been knocked out of shape through getting run-over, in a painfully
protracted way, by a heavy set of harrows. Her other brother had unfortunately
sat down to eat his lunch on the wrong side of a partly grubbed tree.
Altogether, poor Ida had very little to be thankful for. Personally, she was,
without any exception, the ugliest white girl I ever saw. She measured
about twice as long from the chin to Self-Esteem as from Benevolence
to Amativeness; not one feature of her face was even middling; her skin
was of a neutral creamy tint; and she had a straggly goatee of dirty white,
with woolly side-boards of the same colour, in lieu of the short,
silky moustache which is the piquant trade-mark of our country-women.
Besides this, she was lame, on account of the back-sinew of one of her ankles
having been cut through by a reaping-machine; and in addition to all this,
the fingers of her left hand had been snipped to a uniform length,
through getting into the feed of a chaff-cutter. Montgomery had picked her
purposely for the barracks--so, at least, he told Mrs. Montgomery;
so she told Mrs. Beaudesart, and so the latter told me. For myself,
I often felt an impulse to marry the poor mortal; partly from compassion;
partly from the idea that such an action would redound largely to my honour;
and partly from the impression that such an unattractive woman
would idolise a fellow like me.
The daughter of an unlucky selector is not taught to spare herself;
and Ida was an untiring and conscientious worker. For the rest, she was
a generous, patient, self-denying girl, transparently honest in word and deed;
the gentle soul shining through its homely mask, like a candle in a bottle.
Upon the whole, ugly, illiterate--and, above all, ill-starred, lowly,
and defenceless--as she was, she would have made an admirable butt
for the flea-power of your illustrated comic journal.
Mrs. Beaudesart abhorred Ida for her ugliness, for her vulgarity,
for her simplicity, but chiefly for her name. (I can sympathise with
the gentlewoman here--remembering how rancorously I once hated another boy
because he came from the Isle of Wight.) Yet the two mammals' chronic state
of friction was partly chargeable on Ida, who would answer back,
in her own milk-and-water way. And, to add to the aggravation,
she could n't answer back without crying.
Something had gone wrong, as usual, this morning; and Mrs. Beaudesart remained
in the narangies' breakfast-room, mildly glowering into Ida's tear-stained
face, and noting with polite deprecation the convulsive sobs which
the sensitive girl vainly tried to repress before the young fellows.
Beauty in distress is a favorite theme of your shallow romancists; but,
to the philosophic mind, its pathos is nothing to that of ugliness in distress.
At the best of times, poor Ida was heart-breaking; her sunniest smile
wrung my soul with commiseration; and when the sympathy naturally accorded
to helpless anguish was superimposed upon that which she claimed
as her birthright, the pressure became intolerable. It had always been
my consolation to think that she would yet be a bright and beautiful angel;
and now I fell back for solace upon that thought--though how the thing was
to be accomplished seemed a problem too vast for the grasp of a water-worn
and partially dissolved understanding like mine.
"Remember, Mary, I reprimand you for your own good," murmured the lady.
"Of course, brought up as you have been, you can't be expected to have
the manners we look for in the servants of a well-conducted household;
so when I consider it my duty to instruct you in the decencies of life,
you mustn't take it ill. People have to suffer for their ignorance, Mary,
as well as for their faults. I know how you must feel it; but parents
in the position that yours were in should send their children to service
before they are too old for the necessary training."
"My parents done the best they could to keep their home together,"
protested the girl, in a choking voice.
"Speak grammatically, my dear. No doubt your parents did as you say,
but my point is, that they forgot their position. Instead of accepting
the fair wages and abundant food which society offers to their class,
they joined the hungry horde that has cut up those fine Victorian stations.
Part of the retribution justly falls on their children; part, of course,
on themselves. Your father, I venture to say, often envied the life
of the domestic animals on the station where he had selected. But he aimed
at independence--independence! A fine word, Mary, but a poor reality.
This idea of independence is much too common amongst people who, however poorly
they may fare, are nevertheless better fed than taught. I'm afraid
you wilfully overlook the religious side of the question, Mary;
the divine command to do our duty in that state of life in which it has
pleased God to call us. Service is honourable"----
Here Ida sobbed out something that sounded like a rejoinder; and there was
a harder ring in the lady's voice as she continued, without pausing:
"Yes, my dear; if your parents had known themselves, and had cheerfully
remained in the position for which their birth and education fitted them,
you would have been spared many humiliations, and it would have been better
for your father, both in time and in eternity."
"O, can't you let him rest in his grave?" sobbed the girl.
"I have no wish to condemn him, Mary," replied the lady soothingly.
"I assure you it is dreadful to me to realise the fate of that poor man,
where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. I was only wishing
to show you what a tempting of Providence it is for people of the lower classes
to have notions above what their Maker intends for them. And you know
how prone you are to forget your place--as you did this morning. Susan has
the same fault, I'm sorry to say; but I condone it to some extent in her.
She has the advantage of good looks, and naturally expects to better
her condition by marriage; but surely, Mary, one glance at yourself
in the glass ought to show you the impropriety of counting upon
any endowment of nature."
"Indeed, I know I'm no beauty," blubbered Ida; and her tears rained hot
and fast on the back of my neck, as she replaced my coffee-cup.
"Of course, you didn't make yourself," pursued the lady blandly; "but in view
of your lack of personal attractions, you should endeavour to cultivate
the modest and respectful demeanour which befits a sphere of life that you
are likely to occupy permanently. No doubt it was good policy to transport
yourself to a locality where the males of your own class are in such
large majority; but the movement is still attended by certain disadvantages.
A female whose looks approach repulsiveness should, at least, have a character
beyond suspicion; and for any woman to run away from the neighbourhood
where her doings are known, is not the way to inspire confidence. And though
it has pleased God, for your own good, to remove the snare of beauty
far from you, yet----Well, we must believe what we hear on good authority.
Your master, before engaging you, should have made some inquiry regarding
your antecedents, and not have left these things to leak-out. I wish I could
hold you guiltless, Mary. Ask your own conscience whether you were justified
in obtaining entry to an establishment like this. It places me in
a very difficult"----
Here Ida turned, and, with blazing, tearless eyes, fearlessly fronted her
fellow-mammal. The latter faltered, and paused. She had gone a step too far,
and had trod on the lion's tail.
"What's that you say, you wicked woman?" demanded Ida, in a calm voice,
yet breathing heavily. "Ain't I miserable enough without you lyin' away my
character? I'll make you prove your words, as sure as you're standin' there."
"You're forgetting yourself!" replied the housekeeper haughtily, though still
quailing before the girl's terrible plainness of speech and person.
"Am I, indeed? Well, we'll both go straight to Mrs. Montgomery--she's your
missus as well as mine, she is--an' we'll git her to write to a dozen people
that knows me since I wasn't as high as that windy-sill. I'll make it hot
for you, Mrs. Bodyzart, so I will."
"What impertinence!" ejaculated the lady, moistening her lips. "Leave
the apartment, this instant, Mary; and send"----
"How dare you call me out o' my name?--for two pins, I'd slap your face!"
replied Ida, her voice rising to a hysterical scream. "You know what
my proper name is, so you do! An' I won't leave the apartment to please you,
so I won't! Think God made me for the likes o' you to wipe your feet on?
Think I bin behavin' myself decent all my life, for you to put a slur on me?
If I wanted to bemean myself, could n't I cast up somethin' you would n't like
to be minded of? Ain't you ashamed o' yourself, you ole she-devil?"
"Gentlemen, I must apologise for my servant," said the housekeeper,
with quiet dignity. "She seems to have taken leave of her senses. I trust
you will overlook her rudeness. She knows no better."
"They can't help doin' me justice; an' that's all I ask from anybody,"
rejoined Ida, looking appealingly round the table. "An' look here,
Mrs. Bodyzart: I bin full up o' your nag-nag ever since I come to this house:
an' I put up with it for the sake o' other people; but now you've put a slur
on my character; an' it's me an' you for it. I ain't goin' to let this drop."
"I must withdraw, gentlemen," said the lady forbearingly. "Pray forget
the unhappy scene you have been forced to witness; and let me beg of you,
for this poor woman's sake, to leave all further pursuit of the matter
entirely in my hands. Whilst she remains in this establishment,
I must continue to shield her from the penalties to which she insists
upon exposing herself. Come, Mary; dry your eyes, and attend to your duties.
The time is coming when you will thank me for the discipline to which you are
now subjected." And Mrs. Beaudesart retired, greater in defeat than in victory.
"I never expected anybody to put a slur on me," faltered Ida apologetically,
after a minute's silence.
"Haud yir toang, lassie, fir Gode-sak," snarled the sheep-overseer,
who was the senior of our company. "Be ma saul, an A hid ony say intil't,
A'd whang the de'il oot o' ye baith wi' a stokewhup."
"By George! you better not include Mrs. Beaudesart in your goodwill,"
remarked young Mooney gravely. "You'll have Collins in your wool."
"Keep your temper, Collins," murmured Nelson. "I can imagine your feelings;
but M'Murdo didn't think of you being here when he spoke."
"The de'il haet A care fir Collins, ony mair nir A dae fir yir ain sel',
Nelson!" replied Mac defiantly. "Od! air ye no din greetin' the yet,
lassie?" he continued, turning to Ida. "No anither pegh oot o' yir heed,
ir bagode A'll tak' ye in han'."
Ida dried her eyes, and with the more alacrity forasmuch as an approaching
step crunched the gravel outside. It was Priestley, a bullock driver
who had drawn up to the store on the previous-evening; a decent sort
of vulgarian, but altogether too industrious to get any further forward
than the extreme tail-end of his profession.
Some carriers never learn the great lesson, that to everything there is a time
and a season--a time for work, and a time for repose--hence you find
the industrious man's inveterately leg-weary set of frames in hopeless
competition with the judiciously lazy man's string of daisies. The contrast
is sickening. Moreover, the same rule holds fairly well throughout
the whole region of industry. But the Scotch-navigator can't see it.
He is too furiously busy for eighteen hours out of the twenty-four to notice
that, even in the most literal sense, loafing has a more intimate connection
with bread-winning than working can possibly have. Such a man finds himself
born unto trouble, as the sparks fly in all directions; but he is merely aware
of undergoing a chastening process, just as the tethered calf is aware
that he always turns a flying somersault when he impetuously charges
in any direction away from his peg; and this simply because the man knows
as much about the Order of Things as the calf knows about Euclid's definition
of a radial line. The fact is, that the Order of Things--rightly understood--
is not susceptible of any coercion whatever, and must be humoured in every
possible way. In the race of life, my son, you must run cunning, reserving
your sprint for the tactical moment. Priestley ran bull-headed.
In consequence of being always at work, he could get very little work done;
and, being pursuantly in a chronic state of debt and destitution, he got only
the work that intermittently slothful men would n't take at the price.
It is scarcely necessary to add that he had a wife and about thirteen
small children, mostly girls.
"Mornin', chaps," said this plebeian, standing between the wind and
our nobility, with a hand on each door-post. "Hope you're enjoyin' yourselves.
Say, Moriarty; I'm waitin' to git that bit o' loadin' off."
"I'll be with you in two minutes," replied the young storekeeper. "I know
you always want to get away."
"Say, chaps," continued the bullock driver, advancing into the room,
and glancing confidentially round the table, "think there's any use o' me
stickin' up the boss for leaf to take the buggy-track to Nalrookar? See,
I could make the Fog-a-bolla Tank to-night; an' there's boun' to be a bit
o' blue-bush, if not crows-foot, on them sand-hills. Then I'd fetch Nalrookar
to-morrow, easy. I got two-ton-five for there; an' I'm thinkin' I'll have a
job to deliver it, if I can't git through your run. What do you think, chaps?"
"Why didn't you take this into consideration when you loaded?"
demanded young Arblaster.
"Well, beggars ain't choosers," replied the apostle of brute force
and ignorance. "Fact was, Arblaster, I bethought me what a lot o' work
I'd done for Magomery, one time or another, an' what good friends me an' him
always was; an' I says to myself, 'Well, I'll chance her--make a spoon,
or spoil a horn.' That's the way I reasoned it out. See, if I got to
turn roun', an' foller the main track back agen to the Cane-grass Swamp,
an' take the Nalrookar track from there, I won't fetch the station much short
o' fifty mile; an' there ain't a middlin' camp the whole road. Everythin'
et right into the ground. Starve a locust. 'Sides, I'm jubious about
the Convincer Sand-hill, even with half a load. Bullocks too weak."
"Well, it's hardly likely the boss would let you cross the run," replied
Arblaster. "He'd be a d----d fool if he did."
"I'm afraid there's no use asking him, Priestley," added Nelson. "He won't
make a thoroughfare of the run, at any price. For instance, when Baxter
and Donovan delivered that well-timber in the Quondong Paddock, the other day,
they were n't five mile from the main road--and a gate to go through--but he
made them come right back by the station; thirty mile of a roundabout;
and their cheques were n't forthcoming till they did it. No, Priestley;
to ask Montgomery is simply to get a refusal; and to argue with him is simply
to get insulted."
"Well, I s'pose I must worry through, some road," said the bullock driver
resignedly, as he turned and went out.
"Fifty miles instead of twenty-two," remarked Mooney. "Hard enough case."
"And yet it's necessary, in a sense," replied Nelson. "Same time,
anybody except the like of Montgomery would spring a bit in a season like this.
I couldn't crush a poor, decent, hard-working devil like that. I'd give him
a thorough good blackguarding for calculating upon crossing the run; and then,
as a matter of form, I'd send a man with him, to see him across. Well,
I suppose we must go and get our mot d' ordre, boys."
So we left the breakfast-room to Ida. The four narangies, with the practical
M'Murdo, went to the veranda of the boss's house for their day's orders;
Moriarty, with a ring of keys in his hand, sauntered across to the store;
and I managed to drag myself out to a seat built against the south side
of the barracks, whence I torpidly surveyed the scene around, whilst listening
to my vitality whistling out through four million yawning pores.
In an open shed, near the store--where two tribesmen were now assisting
Priestley to unload--a travelling saddler and Salvationist, named
(without a word of a lie) Joey Possum, was at work on the horse-furniture
of the station; his tilted wagonette, blazoned with his name and title,
JOSEPH PAWSOME, SADDLER, standing close by. Watching these lewd fellows
of the baser sort at their sordid toil, my mind reverted to certain incidents
of the preceding night, and so drifted into a speculation on the peculiar kind
of difficulties which at certain times beset certain sojourners on the rind
of this third primary orb. The incidents, of course, have nothing to do
with my story.
But as the mere mention of them may have whetted the reader's curiosity,
I suppose it is only fair to satisfy him.
The night in question seemed, from an astrological point of view, to be
peculiarly favourable to the ascendancy of baleful influences. The moon hung
above the western horizon, in her most formidable phase--just past
the semicircle, with her gibbous edge malignantly feathered. Being now
in the House of Taurus, she had overborne the benignant sway of Aldebaran,
and was pressing hard on Castor and Pollux (in the House of Gemini). Also,
her horizontal attitude was so full of menace that Rigel and Betelgeux
(in Orion) seemed to wilt under her sinister supremacy. Sirius
(in Canis Major), strongest and most malevolent of the astral powers,
hung southwest of the zenith, reinforcing the evil bias of the time, and thus,
from his commanding position, overruling the guardianship of Canopus (in Argo),
south-west of the same point. Lower still, toward the south, Achernar seemed
to reserve his gracious prestige, whilst, across the invisible Pole,
the beneficent constellations of Crux and Centaurus exhibited the very
paralysis of hopelessness. Worst of all, Jupiter and Mars both held aloof,
whilst ascendant Saturn mourned in the House of Cancer.
Such was the wretched aspect of the heavens to my debilitated intelligence,
as I slunk home from the swimming-hole, toward midnight. I was somewhat
comforted to observe in Procyon a firmness which I attributed to the evident
support of Regulus (in the House of Leo); but the most reassuring element
in an extremely baleful horoscope was Spica (in the House of Virgo),
scarcely affected by the moon's interference, and now ascending confidently
from the eastern horizon.
Still, to my washed-out mind, there was something so hopeless in the lunar
and stellar outlook that, for comfort, I turned my eyes toward the
station cemetery, which was dimly in view.
There several shapeless forms, some white, and others of neutral hue,
seemed to be moving slowly and silently amongst the dwellings of the dead,
as if holding what you could scarcely call a carnival, in their own sombre way.
The time, the place, the supermundane conditions, acting together on
a half-drowned mind, gave to the whole scene a weird reality which writing
cannot convey; so, after pinching myself to make sure I was awake,
and doing a small sum in mental arithmetic to verify my sanity, I advanced
toward the perturbed spirits, got them against the sky, and identified them
as cattle, greedily stevedoring the long, dry grass.
It seemed a pity to turn the poor hungry animals out; yet I knew that
somebody would have to suffer for it if Montgomery knew of anything
trespassing here. But how had they got in, through seven wires--the upper one
barbed--with rabbit-netting along the bottom?----
"Evenin', Collins."
"Evening, Priestley. Working the oracle?"
"Inclinin' that road. Dangerous--ain't it? Good job it's on'y you.
Nobody else stirrin'?"
"Not a soul. They 're as regular as clockwork on this station.
How did you get in?"
"Took the hinges off o' the gate with my monkey-wrench. I'll leave that
all straight. Course, they'll see the tracks by-'n'-by, an' know who
to blame; but I'll be clear by that time; an' I must guard agen comin'
in contract with Runnymede till the st-nk blows off o' this transaction.
Natural enough, Magomery'll buck; but the ration-paddick's as bare
as a stockyard; an' I can't ast the bullocks to die o' starvation.
"Certainly not, Priestley. Mind, it's only four hours till daylight.
Good night."
"Good night, ole man."
My way led me past a small, isolated stable, used exclusively for
the boss's buggy-horses. Nearing this building, I heard a suppressed
commotion inside, followed by soothing gibberish, in a very low voice.
This was bad. Priestley's bullocks were within easy view; and Jerry,
the groom, was a notorious master's man. I must have a friendly yarn with him.
"What's up with you this hour of the night, Jerry?" I asked, looking through
the latticed upper-wall. "Uneasy conscience, I bet." Whilst speaking the last
words, I distinguished Montgomery's pair of greys, tied, one in each
back corner of the stable, whilst Pawsome's horses--a white and a piebald--
were occupying the two stalls, and voraciously tearing down mouthfuls
of good Victorian hay from the rack above the manger. Pawsome, silently
caressing one of the greys, moved to the lattice on hearing my voice.
"Sleight-of-hand work?" I suggested, in a whisper.
"Sort of attempt," replied the wizard, in the same key. "You gev me a start.
All the lights was out two hours ago, an' I med sure everybody was safe."
"So they are. I've only been down for a swim. Good-night, Possum."
"I say, Collins--don't split!"
"Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?"
"Second Kings," whispered the poor necromancer, in eager fellowship,
and displaying a knowledge of the Bible rare amongst his sect. "God bless you,
Collins! may we meet in a better world!"
"It won't be difficult to do that," I replied dejectedly, as I withdrew
to enjoy my unearned slumber.
Now the night, replete with such sphere-music, was past, and the cares
that infest the day had returned to everyone on the station, except myself
and two or three equally clean, useless, and aristocratic loafers in
the boss's house. Toby, the half-caste, was cantering away toward Clarke's,
for the weekly mail. Priestley, at his wagon, was bullocking even more
desperately than usual, with a view to getting out of sight of the station
as soon as possible. Pawsome, repairing a side-saddle, on his extemporised
bench, was softly crooning a familiar hymn, the sentiment of which seemed
appropriate to himself, whilst the language breathed the very aroma
of his social atmosphere:--
Must I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to gain the prize,
And sail'd through (adj.) seas?
In the veranda of the house, Mr. Folkestone, a young English gentleman
of not less than two hundred-weight, lolled on a hammock, smoking a chibouque,
and reading a magazine; while straight between us two aristocratic loafers,
Vandemonian Jack, aged about a century, was mechanically sawing firewood
in the hot, sickly sunshine. This is one of the jobs that it takes a man
of four or five score years to perform ungrudgingly; and, to any illuminated
mind, the secret of these old fellows' greatness is very plain. Bathing,
though an ancient heresy, has been of strictly local prevalence, and,
for the best of reasons, of transient continuance. Our relapse belongs to
the present generation. Though our better-class grandsires understood
no science unconnected with the gloves, a marvellous instinct taught them
the unwholesomeness of sluicing away that panoply of dirt which is
Nature's own defence against the microbe of imbecility, and which, indeed,
was the only armour worn by the formidable Berserkers, from whom some of them
claimed descent. We have done it however (at least, we say so),
whilst our social inferiors have held on to the old-time religion (at least,
we say so, here again); wherefore----
"I say, Mr. Collins," faltered Ida, breaking in on my reflections,
"I picked up this little buckle aside o' your b-d; it's come off o' the back
o' your tr----rs. I'll sew it on for you any time, for I notice you're
bothered with them slippin' down. O, Mr. Collins!"--and the poor unlovely face
was suddenly distorted with anguish and wet with tears--"ain't Mrs. Bodyzart
wicked to put a slur on me like that? There ain't one word o' truth in it;
I'd say the same if I was to die to-night; an' you may believe me or believe
me not, but I'm tellin' the truth. Far be it, indeed!"
"Hush! Stop crying, Ida! Don't look round--Mrs. Beaudesart's watching you
from the window, over there. You poor thing! you should n't trouble yourself
over what anybody says. Did you feed Pup this morning?"
"I give him a whole milk-dish full o' scraps; but if people tells the truth,
there's nobody in the world can say black is the white o' my eye; an' you may
believe me or believe me not"----
"You'll need to give Pup a drink, Ida."
"He 's got a dish o' good rain-water aside him; but if people would
on'y consider"----
"True--very true. Now go away, dear, and don't come fooling about me,
or you'll give her liberty to talk."
The girl limped back to the scene of her unromantic martyrdom, and I made
a feeble effort to shake the dew-drops from my mane, and, so to speak,
look myself in the face. I must give this life over, I thought; and I will
give it over; an I do not, I am a villain. After all, there are not
two sides to this question; there is only one; and you may trust an overclean
man to be an authority on the evil effects of bathing, upon mind, body,
and estate; just as the grogbibber is our highest authority on headaches,
fantods, and bankruptcy.
The Spartans (so ran my reflections) were as much addicted to dirt
as the Sybarites to cleanliness; and just compare the two communities.
The conquering races of later ages--Goths, Huns, Vandals, Longobards,
&c.--were no less celebrated for one kind of grit than for the other.
It is the Turkish bath that has made the once-formidable Ottoman Empire
the sick man of Europe. Latifundia perdidere Italian (Large estates
ruined Italy). Yes. Blame it on the large estates. Would a large estate
ruin you? Bathing did the business for Italy, as it does the business
for all its victims. If Rome had left to the soft Capuan his baths
and his perfumes, she would have pulled-through. But think of the polished
Roman debating the question of survival with the superlatively dirty barbarian
of the North! Polished is good, for, in the ruins of the fatal Roman baths,
the innumerable strigulae, used by the bathers to polish their skins,
bear sad testimony to the suicidal cleanliness of that doomed race.
And just compare your strigula-polished Roman, morally and physically,
with his contemporary, the filth-encrusted anchorite of the Thebaid--the former
flickering briefly in a puerile, semi-vital way, and going out with
a sulphurous smell; the latter, on a ration of six dates per week,
attaining an interminable longevity, and possessing the power of striking
scoffers dead, or blind, or paralytic, at pleasure.
And, talking of hermits--do you think Peter of Picardy could have launched
the muscular Christianity of Western Europe against the less muscular,
because cleaner, Islamism of Western Asia, but for his well-advertised vow,
never to change his clothes, nor wash himself, till his contract should be
completed? Prouder in his rags than the Emperor in his purple! and justly too,
for he achieved the very apotheosis of dirt--animate, no doubt, as well as
inanimate. Or take the first Teutonic Emperor of Rome--conqueror, arbitrator,
legislator, and what not. In those middle ages, you know, it was the custom
to name monarchs from some peculiarity of person or habitude--and I put it
to any reasonable soul; Was this mere Yarman Brince likely to have become
the central figure of the 10th century, but for such rigid abstinence
from external application of water as is implied in the significant name
of Otto the Great?
Indeed, the most sweepingly appropriate bestowal of the title, 'Great,'
is made when we refer to the adherents of the dirt-cult, collectively,
as the Great Unwashed. Again, Dr. Johnson's biographies lovingly preserve
the personal habits of most of the loftiest and sweetest poets that ever trod
English soil; and think what a large percentage of those Muse-invokers,
according to their historian, carried a fair quantity of that soil perennially
on their hides. And speaking of the Diogenes of Fleet Street himself,
we know, on good authority, that his antipathy to the Order of the Bath
caused him to appeal to more senses than one. He was another Otto the Great.
The original Diogenes, by the way, revelled in dirt, as well as in wisdom.
And the mighty scholar, Porson, as you may remember, never needed to wash,
because he never perspired.
Yet in spite of this cloud of witness, and in the face of our own experience,
we will entice external leakage of such incipient greatness as we have--
soaking ourselves in water, as if we were possums, and our virility
a eucalyptus flavour that we sought to dissipate. Look at myself--now a king;
now thus! Thunder-and-turf! have I fallen so low? And yet I was once
like our Otto and Co.!
Before touching the forbidden thing, I felt as if I wanted to pursue
an inspiring, if purposeless, journey up uncomfortable Alpine heights,
with my Excelsior-banner in my hand, and a tear in my solitary bright blue eye;
now, the maiden's invitation seems to be the only part of the enterprise
that has any pith in it. Then, I gloried in the fiendish adage of,
'Two hours' sleep for a man, three for a woman, and four for a fool';
now, my livelist ambition is to gaze my fill on yon calm deep, then,
like an infant, sink asleep on this form, and so remain till dinner-time--
lunch-time, I should say; belonging, as I do, to the better classes.
Then, I was like Hotspur on his crop-eared roan; now, I merely wish the desert
were my dwelling-place, with one fair Spirit for my minister. To confess
the truth, I note a certain weak glimmer of self-righteousness investing
the thought that I would be content with one fair Spirit. Got to, go to!
By virtue, thou enforcest laughter.
"I wish I was as happy as you," murmured Ida, who had again silently
approached. "Here's two newspapers; they done with them in the house.
O, Mr. Collins!"--and the girl's tears broke forth afresh, whilst ungovernable
sobs shook her from head to foot--"I can't git it off o' my mind
what Mrs. Bodyzart said."
"Ida! Ida!" I remonstrated; "you're making your nose red." The information
acted like a charm; her crying was over, though she still persisted
in chewing her grievance.
"I can prove there ain't one word o' truth in it," she continued
pertinaciously.
"What's your idea of proof, Ida?"
"I can prove it on the Bible," she replied eagerly.
"That settles the matter beyond controversy--considering that you rightly
belong to the Middle Ages."
"Indeed I don't!" she replied, with a flash of resentment. "I was twenty-seven
last birthday; an' I don't care who knows it--on the third of July,
it was--an' I would n't care tuppence if her ladyship snoke roun' tellin'
people I was forty. But to put a slur on me like that! I leave it to
your own self, Mr. Collins--was it right?"
"Right? I repeated wearily. "In heaven's name, girl, what does it signify
to you whether it was right or otherwise? That's Mrs. Beaudesart's
own business, not yours. Why, if she charged me with stooping to folly,
I would merely say, 'Sorry to undeceive you, ma'am; but I've been
too much given to letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would,"
like the poor bandicoot i' the adage.' But I certainly shouldn't concern myself
with a question lying entirely between herself and Saint Peter."
"Ah! but you're different," replied the girl sadly.
"Simply because I'm a philosopher, Ida. I've held communion with
the Unfathomable, and watched the exfoliation of the Inscrutable; and,
you know, these things are altogether beyond the orbit of the girl-mind.
Now clear off, like a good fellow, and let me read the papers."
But I was too far gone to take any interest in either of the loathsome
contemporanes; too much afflicted even to drift down to the swimming-hole
again, much as I desired to do so. I also longed for the opinion of my mighty
pipe on the dirt-question; but that faithful ally was packed among my things,
forty feet away, and it might as well have been forty miles. So I just lay
on the seat, clean, frail, and inert, as a recumbent statue, moulded
in blanc-mange; whilst the ancient t'other-sider oscillated his frame--saw,
and the pious Pawsome lightened his toil with selections from Sankey,
and the perspiring Priestley hurried up his bullocks from the ration-paddock,
and Sling Muck, the gardener, used his hoe among the callots and cabbagee,
with the automatic stroke of a man brought up to one holiday per annum,
and no Sunday. Meanwhile, the unreturning sands of Life dribbled through
the unheeded isthmus of the Present Moment; and the fixed cone of the Past
expanded; and the dimple deepened in the diminished and hurrying Future.
Nevertheless, I collected the wreckage of what had been very fair faculties,
and attempted to grapple with an idea which Ida's conversation had suggested.
Finding this impossible, I made a mental memo. of the inspiration--and by
the same token, I neatly utilised it within the next few hours. Your attention
will be drawn to the circumstance in due season.
At mid-day, the bell sounded from the hut. Pawsome and the tribesmen
quitted their work, and went to dinner. Priestley had started an hour before,
bound for Nalrooka, with the remaining half of his load.
All the Levites, except Moriarty, were out on the run, but Martin,
the head boundary rider, had timed himself for lunch. This man's status
was a vexed question. He certainly rated--but did he rate high enough
for the barracks? As head boundary man, decidedly not; but as recent
proprietor of a small station absorbed by Runnymede, he was not destitute
of pretensions. Out in the open air, he was, of course, as good as any Levite,
but----Well, though we rather resented his presence in the Inner Court,
we yielded him the benefit of the doubt; and he took that benefit,
just as if he had been born in the purple, like ourselves.
Martin was an Orangeman of rank. He had attained the Black Degree.
It was whispered that he held all the loyal brethren of Riverina under
the whip, by reason of his being the only man in the region beyond
the Murrumbidgee who could confer the Purple Degree. For, owing to
an inherent haziness in the theses and aims of Orangeism, there are Orders
in the Society as hard to attain as those German university degrees
which no man ever took and had his eyesight perfect afterward; though,
to be sure, there is a certain difference in the relative value of the two
species of attainment.
Moriarty--whose front name was Felix--was, if anything, a Catholic; and,
partly on this account, partly on account of his being a young fellow,
and partly on account of Miss King, the governess, Martin set him. Now,
there was just one man within a hundred miles who knew less of Irish History
than Martin, and that man was Moriarty; consequently, the two jostled
each other as they rushed into that branch of learning where scholars fear
to tread--each repeatedly appealing to me for confirmation of his outlandish
myths and clumsy fabrications. I listlessly confirmed anything and everything.
Having lost all mental, as well as physical, energy where King John
lost his regalia, namely, in the Wash, the line of least resistance
was the line for me.
After a hearty lunch, I made my way back to the seat against the wall,
while Moriarty lounged across to the store, and Martin went to speak
to the High Priest at the door of the Sanctum Sanctorum. Then Martin mounted
his horse, and rode away; and presently the tribesman, Jerry, brought a buggy
and pair to the front door. Montgomery and Folkestone--the latter
in knickerbockers--took their seats in the buggy, and whirled away
down the horse-paddock fence. Then all was still, save for the faint
pling-plong of a piano in the Holy of Holies.
Whom have we here? Moriarty to disturb me. Let him come. It is meat
and drink to me to see a clown; by my faith, we that have good wits have much
to answer for; we shall be flouting; we cannot hold.----
The young Levite, closing the door of the store behind him, advanced
with the indescribably weary step of a station man when the day is warm
and the boss absent, and seated himself by my side.
"Why ain't you in the barracks having one of your quiet palavers
with Mrs Beaudesart?" he asked.
"Prithee be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk," I murmured.
"Something I wanted to ask you, Collins," he resumed; "but I'm beggared
if I can think what it is. Slipped away like a snake, while you're looking
round for a stick. Singular how a person can't remember a thing for the life
of them, when once they forget it; and suddenly it crops up of its own accord
when you're not thinking of it."
"Parse that," said I, listlessly.
"Parse your granny!" he retorted. "I don't believe you could parse it
yourself, as clever as you think you are. Beggar conceitedness;
beggar everything. I wish I was about forty."
"And know as much as you do now?" I barely articulated.
"Yes--and know as much as I do now," he repeated doggedly. "In fact,
I never met anyone that knows as much as I do; but people won't pay
any attention to a young fellow, no matter if he was Solomon. That Martin
wants a lift under the ear."
"Does he?" I asked faintly. "I did n't hear him express the desire."
"Gosh! you've been on the turkey; you'll be cutting yourself some of
these times. I wish Toby was back with the mail. I hope he'll forget
to ask for your letters."
"Now the Lord lighten thee; thou art a great fool," I sighed. "What time
does Toby generally get back?"
"Any time between two in the afternoon and sunrise next morning,
according to the state of the mailman's horses. Beggar such a life as this.
At it, early and late; working through accounts, and serving-out rations,
and one thing or another; and no more chance of distinguishing myself
than if I was in jail. I can't stand it much longer, and what's more, I won't.
I wish the mail was in. I've got a presentiment of something good this time.
If you don't speculate, you won't accumulate, as the saying is; and if a man
can't make a rise by some sort of gambling, he may as well lie down and die,
straight-off. But the first rise is the difficulty; and, of course,
you've got to take the risk."
"What do you do with the rise when you get it?" I asked, drowsily.
"Why, distinguish yourself, of course--what else? There's a great future
sticking out for a fellow, if he's got his head screwed on right."
"So there is. Well, what shall it be? Mechanics? Fine opening for
an inventive genius there--but you must be up and doing, as the poet says."
"You had all the chances when you were my age," replied Moriarty bitterly.
"I'm too late arriving. Everything's invented now."
"True," I observed. "I hadn't thought of that objection. Then why not take up
some interesting study, and work it out from post to finish?
Political Economy, for instance?"
"Anybody could do that," replied the young fellow contemptuously.
"I want to distinguish myself."
"Then I'll tell you what you'll do, Moriarty. Take a narrow branch of some
scientific study, and restrict yourself to that. Say you devote your life
to some special division of the Formicae?"
"The what?"
"Formicae. The name is plural. It embraces all the different species
of ants."
"Why, there's only about three species of ants altogether; and there's nothing
to learn about them except that they make different kinds of hills,
and give different kinds of bites. That sort of study would about suit you.
Fat lot of distinction a person could get out of ants."
"Still, every avenue to distinction is not closed," I urged. "We're knocking
at the gates of Futurity for the Australian pioneer of
poetry--fiction--philosophy--what not? You've got all the working plant
ready in your office. There you are!"
"No use, Collins," he replied hopelessly. "I've got the talent, right enough,
but I haven't got the patience. In fact, I'm too dash lazy."
"Charge it on the swimming-hole, brother," I sighed.
"No; I can't very well do that. I haven't been there for the last month.
I'd go to-night if I had a horse."
"Heavens above!" I murmured; "what would he be like if he was clean?
He would distinguish himself in one direction. The material is there."
"Jealousy, jealousy," replied Moriarty disgustedly. "Never mind. I'll make
things hum yet. Do you know--I stand to win twenty-four notes on the regatta,
besides my chance of the station sweep on the big Flemington, let alone
private bets. We'll get news of both events to-day; and I have a presentiment
of something good. Gosh! I wish Toby was here!"
"And how much do you stand to lose, if your mozzle is out?" I asked.
"By-the-way, didn't I incidentally hear that you were playing cards
all last Sunday?"
"I don't believe that has anything to do with it," replied Moriarty,
in an altered tone. "But, to tell you the truth, I dare n't count up how much
I'll lose if things go crooked. I've plunged too heavy--there's no doubt
about that--but I did it with the best intention. I made sure of scooping;
and, for that matter, I make sure of it still. But whatever you do,
don't begin to preach about the evils of gambling--not now, Collins;
not till after we get news of these events. Doesn't everybody gamble,
from the Governor downward--bar you, and a couple or three more sanctimonious
old hypocrites, with one foot in the grave, and the other in the devil's mouth?
Why, Nosey Alf is the only fellow on this station that has no interest
in the sweep, besides no end of private bets."
"Is n't that Toby?" I asked, indicating a horseman, half-a-mile away.
"Gosh, yes!" replied Moriarty nervously. "I wonder what brings him
from that direction? Come, Collins--will you give me five to one he has
letters for you? I'll take it at that."
"Indeed you won't, sonny."
"Well, let's have some wager before he gets any nearer," persisted Moriarty,
with an unpleasant laugh. The suspense was beginning to tell upon a mind
not originally cast in the Stoic mould. So much so, that I felt inclined
to lose a trifle to him, even as a teetotaller would administer a nip
to a man who was beginning to see things. "Come!" he continued recklessly;
"I'll give you two to one he has letters for you; twenty to one he has letters
for the station"----And so he gabbled on, whilst, drifting into my Hamlet-mood,
I charted the poor fellow's mind for my own edification.
"Hold on, Moriarty," I interrupted, recalling myself. "Let's hear that
fifty-to-one offer again. Am I to understand that if Toby has letters
for the station and none for me, you win; if he has letters for me and none
for the station, I win; and, failing the fulfilment of either double,
the wager is off?"
"That's it. Are you on?"
"Make it a hundred to one."
"Done! at a hundred to one--in what?"
"Half-sovereigns," I replied, feeling for the purse which, vulgar as it is,
bushmen even of aristocratic lineage are compelled to carry. I placed
the little coin--about one-tenth of my total wealth--in Moriarty's hand.
He shrank from the touch.
"What do you mean?" he asked petulantly. "I might n't win it, after all.
Don't be more disagreeable than you can help."
"You intend to get it without giving an equivalent--don't you?
You know it's yours. Are n't you betting on a certainty? Lay it on
the window-sill, if you like, and pick it up when you can read your title
clear. If you don't speculate, you won't accumulate; and I suppose
you've no objection to looking into the morality of your speculation"----
I had cleared my throat for a disquisition which would have been intolerable
to the unprincipled reader, when a very curious thing arrested the attention
both of Moriarty and myself--the strangest coincidence, perhaps, within the
personal experience of either of us--a conjuncture, in fact, which for a moment
threw us both staggering back on the theology of childhood. At the present
time, I feel too meek to attempt any unravelment, and too haughty to offer
any apology other than that such is life.
The half-caste had cantered up to the horse-paddock gate, had dismounted,
had divested his horse of the saddle and bridle, and had given the animal
a slap with the latter. Now he was depositing those equipments in the shed.
Now he approached us, taking two letters and a newspaper from the tail-pocket
of what had once been an expensive dress-coat of Montgomery's.
"Yours, Collins," said he. "Don't say I never gave you nothing. Nix for you,
Mr. (adj.) Moriarty."
"You're very laconic," observed the storekeeper in a hollow voice,
yet eyeing the prince sternly; "very laconic, indeed, I must say.
If I was you, I would n't be quite so laconic. How the (sheol) comes it
that you did n't fetch the mail?"
"Need n't look in that paper for the Flemington, Collins," said the
heir-apparent; "she's a day too soon. I took a squint at her, comin' along."
"I was asking how the (adj. sheol) you managed to come without the mail?"
repeated Moriarty, with dignity.
"I heard you, right enough. I ain't deaf. Well, I come on a moke.
Think I padded it? Fact was, Moriarty, I met Magomery at Bailey's Tank,
an' he told me to go like blazes to Scandalous Sandy's hut, on Nalrooka,
an' tell him a lot o' his sheep was boxed with ours in the Boree Paddick.
'I'll fetch the mail home myself,' says he. There now."
"And why didn't you go to Scandalous Sandy's?" nagged Moriarty.
"Well, considerin' you're boss o' this station, an' my bit o' filthy lucre
comes out o' your pocket, I got great pleasure informin' you I met ole
Gladstone, comin' to tell us the same yarn. Anything else you want to know?"
"Did you hear which crew won the regatta?" asked Moriarty, almost civilly.
"Sydney," replied the prince. "Think you Port Phillipers could lick us?"
"That's a lie!" exclaimed Moriarty, catching his breath.
"Right. It's a lie, if you like. I got no stuff on it. See what Collins'
paper says. An' now I feel like as if I could do a bit o' dinner--unless
you got any objections?"
He stalked away toward the hut, whilst I opened what turned out to be
a love-letter--evidently intended for some other member of our diffusive clan,
for I could make neither head nor tail of it; nothing, indeed, but heart,
and such heart as it has never been my luck to capture. Meanwhile, Moriarty
had cut the string of the newspaper, and was running his eye over its columns.
"My mozzle is out, Collins." said he, with an effort. "I'll never
clear myself--never in the creation of cats. It's all up!"
"Yes; you suffer by comparison with the sanctimonious old hypocrites now,"
I replied, in a fatherly tone, as I took the half-sovereign
from the window-sill. "Feel something like an overproof idiot--don't you?
We'll talk about that presently. But see what I've got here."
My second letter ran:--
K3769
No. 256473
Central Office of Unconsidered Trifles,
Sydney, February 1, 1884.
Mr. T. Collins.
Sir,--I am directed to inform you that the Deputy-Commissioner
purposes visiting Nyngan on the I7th prox. You are required
to attend the Office of the Department in that township
at 11 a.m. on the day above mentioned, to furnish any
information which he may require.
I am, Sir
Ynnnnnnnnnnly
MMMnnynnlnny
pro Assistant-Under-Secretary.
"Not a whisper about the M-form," I remarked. "Perhaps it's in your mail.
No odds. Montgomery can complete it, and send it on, just as well as if
I had n't been near the place at all. But here's something like two hundred
and thirty miles to be done in seven days--and the country in such a state.
This is the balsam that the usuring senate pours into captains' wounds.
Never mind The time is only too near, when I'll sit in my sumptuous office,
retaliating all this on some future Deputy-Assistant-Sub-Inspector. And,
in the meantime, this long dusty ride will make a man of me once more.
I must start at once; and I could do with some money. Moriarty,
you're owing me fifty notes."
"I know I am," replied the storekeeper, in a quivering voice.
He was as punctiliously honourable in some ways as he was perfidious
in others--being amiably asinine in each extreme.
"Now, including your little liability to me, how much are you out,
even if the Flemington gamble goes in your favour?" I asked.
"Only sixty-eight notes," he faltered. "I'll clear it, right enough,
if I'm not rushed, and if I don't get the sack off the station."
"But, by every rule of analogy, you're also badly left on the Flemington,"
I continued serenely. "How much does that leave you out?"
"Ninety-seven notes, and my rifle," he replied, steadying his voice
by an effort. "Mad-mad-mad! I wish I were dead!"
"Will you swear of gambling altogether till my claim is discharged?
On that condition, I can extend the time--say to the Greek Kalends."
"If you think I could raise the money by that time," replied the poor fellow
dubiously. "Anyway, I give you my solemn promise. But, I say," he continued,
with seeming irrelevance--"when do you expect promotion?"
"At any moment. My presentiments, being based on the deepest inductions
of science, and the subtlest intuitions of the higher philosophy,
are a trifle more trustworthy than yours; and I have a presentiment that
the thing is impending. But you need n't congratulate me yet.
Think about yourself."
"That's just what I'm doing. If you tell her about this wager,
I'll suicide, or clear."
"Well, upon my word! Do you think I'd condescend to undermine you,
you storekeeper? Look out for Martin; never mind me."
"I don't mean her," mumbled the young fool; "I mean Mrs. Beaudesart.
You're going to marry her when you get your promotion--ain't you?"
There was such evident sincerity in his tone that I maintained a stern
and stony silence, whilst his eyes met mine with a doubtful, deprecating look;
then he remarked doggedly,
"Well, that's what she told Mrs. Montgomery, last Sunday; and she said it
seriously. Miss King was present at the time; and she told Butler,
and Mooney, and me, across the gate of the flower-garden, the same evening.
Mrs. Beaudesart takes it for granted, and so does everybody else. She says
she accepted you some time ago."
"You lying dog!" I remarked wearily.
"I hope I may never stir alive off this seat if I'm not telling you
the exact truth. Ask Mooney or Butler."
"If I do sleep, would all my wealth would wake me," I murmured,
half-unconsciously.
"You don't want to marry her, then, after all?"
"How long do you suppose I would last?"
"Well, don't marry her."
"Does it occur to you," I asked, with some bitterness, "that there are
some things a person can do, and some things he can't do? If the head
of my Department orders me to Nyngan, I can reply by letter, telling him
to mind his own business, and not concern himself about me; but if
Mrs. Beaudesart assumes--if she merely takes for granted--that I'm going
to marry her, I must do it, to keep her in countenance. How, in the fiend's
name, can I slink out of it, now that I'm accepted? Can I tell her
I've examined my heart, and I find I can only love her as a sister?
Now, would n't that sound well? No, no; I'm a done man. Of course,
she had no business to accept me unawares; but as she has done so,
I must help her to keep up the grisly fraud of feminine reluctance; for,
as the abbot sings, so must the sacristan respond. It is kismet. This is how
all these unaccountable marriages are brought about; though, to be sure,
I have the dubious satisfaction of knowing that the enterprise brings me
a good many days' march nearer home."
The expression of heavenly beatitude on Moriarty's face goaded my mind
to activity. Sweeping, with one glance, the whole horizon of expediency
and possibility, I caught sight of the idea glanced at in a former page,
and suggested, you will remember, by my dialogue with Ida.
"By the way, Moriarty," said I; "respecting that trifling debt of honour--
there's another condition that I didn't think of. As a sort of payment
on account, you must privately and insidiously circulate a very grave
scandal for me."
"Well, I won't!" exclaimed the young fellow, after a moment's pause.
"I don't mind telling a lie when I'm driven to it; but a woman's a woman.
Do your own dirty work!"
"Then, by Jove, I'll post you!"
If anyone had used this threat to me, I would have asked how the posting
was usually done, and what results might be expected to follow; but Moriarty's
lip quivered under the threat.
"Do your worst," said he, swallowing the lump in his throat.
"You may depend on that," I replied quietly. "However, the scandal
was only about myself."
"I don't understand."
"I'll enlighten you. I was going to ask you to take Nelson, or Mooney,
or both of them, into your confidence. Then you would arrange that
Mrs. Beaudesart should overhear you discussing some horrible scandal
in connection with me. And mind, she would have to believe it, or you would
be a ruined man for the rest of your life--you would be a defaulting gambler,
a byword, a hissing, an astonishment, with the curse of Cain upon your brow.
Then she would spurn me with contumely, and I would be my own man again.
I would be in sanctuary, so to speak; inviolable by reason of my disgrace.
Metaphorically, you could lay the blast, and fire it at your leisure,
in my absence. I would leave all details to your own judgment,
only holding you responsible for quality of fuse, and quantity of powder.
I'd stand the explosion."
"I'm on!" exclaimed Moriarty, brightening up. "Gosh! I'll give you
a character to rights! Mind, it'll make you look small."
"The smaller the better. I have a small aperture to crawl through,
and no other means of escape. Of course, being innocent all the time,
the scandal won't even fizz on my inner consciousness. In fact, I'll feel
myself taking a rise out of everyone that believes the yarn; and I'll
live it down in good time. Now lay your plans carefully, Moriarty, and make
a clean job of it, for your own sake."
This being definitely settled, I soon demonstrated to the young fellow
that his case, as regarded other liabilities, was by no means desperate;
and his elastic temperament asserted itself at once. I may add, in passing,
that he has never broken his anti-gambling pledge; also, that my £50
remains unpaid to this day.
"Now I must go and catch my horses," said I. "Can you come?"
"Hold on," replied Moriarty; "here comes Toby; we'll send him."
As the half-caste lounged out of the front door of the hut, the cook went out
by the back door, and gathered an armful of firewood. Toby turned, and glided
back into the hut, and, a moment later, the cook also re-entered, at the
opposite side. Then the prince bounded out through the front door,
with a triumphant grin on his brown face, and an enormous cockroach
of black sugar in his hand. The next moment, a piece of firewood whizzed
through the open door, smote H.R.H. full on Love of Approbation, ricochetted
from his gun-metal skull, and banged against the weatherboard wall
of an out-house.
"Will yo ever go home, I dunno?" laughed the prince, picking up his hat,
while the baffled cook recovered his stick, and returned to the hut.
"Now what's the use of arguing that a blackfellow belongs to the human race?"
queried Moriarty--the last ripple of trouble having vanished from the serene
shallowness of his mind. "That welt would have laid one of us out.
And did you ever notice that a blackfellow or a half-caste can always
clear himself when his horse comes down? The first thing a whitefellow thinks
about, when he feels his horse gone, is to get out of the way of what's coming;
but it's an even wager that he's pinned. Never so with the inferior race.
Now, last Boxing Day, when we had races here, we could see that the main event
rested between Admiral Rodney--a big chestnut, belonging to a cove on a visit
to the boss--with Toby in the saddle; and that grey of M'Murdo's,
Admiral Crichton, with"----
"Repeat that last name, please?"
"Admiral Cry-ton. That slews you! Did n't I tell you you'd be cutting
yourself? It's M'Murdo's own pronunciation; and if he doesn't know
the proper twang, I'm dash well sure you don't; for he owns the horse.
But wasn't it a curious coincidence of name--considering that neither
the owners nor the horses had ever met before? Well, Young Jack was to ride
Admiral Crichton; and I had such faith in the horse, with Jack up,
that I plunged thundering heavy on him. So did Nelson. But, by jingo,
the more we saw of Admiral Rodney, the more frightened we got--in fact,
we could see there was nothing for it but to stiffen Toby. Toby was to get
a note if he won the big event, and nothing if he lost; but it paid us
to give him two notes to run cronk"----
"One moment," I interrupted--"just oblige me with the name and address
of that horse's owner?"
"Shut-up. It's blown over now. But as I was telling you, the chestnut
had been a few times round the course, under the owner's eye, and he knew
the road; and to make matters better, you might break the reins, but
you could n't get a give out of his mouth; and he could travel like
a rifle-bullet; so when Toby tried to get him inside the posts, he pulled
and reefed like fury, and bolted altogether; and came flying into the straight,
a dozen lengths to the good. Of course, losing the race made a difference
of a note to Toby; so he caught the horse's shoulder with his spur,
and turned him upside down, going at that bat. Then, to keep himself out
of a row, he gammoned dead till we poured a pint of beer down his throat;
and he lay groaning for two solid hours, winking now and then at Nelson and me.
But that'll just tell you the difference. Neither you nor I would be game
to do a thing like that; we could n't be trained to it; simply because
we belong to a superior race. I say, Toby!"--for the half-caste had seated
himself near Pawsome's bench, and was there enjoying his cockroach--
"off you go, like a good chap, and fetch Collins's horses.
"Impidence ain't worth a d--n, if it ain't properly carried out," replied
the inferior creation. "Think you git a note a week jist for eatin'
your (adj.) tucker an' orderin' people about? I done my day's work. Fork over
that plug o' tobacker you're owin' me about the lenth o' that snake.
Otherways, shut up. We ain't on equal terms while that stick o' tobacker's
between us."
"I'll straighten you some of these times," replied Moriarty darkly.
"It's coming, Toby!"
"No catchee, no havee, ole son!" laughed the prince. "The divil resave ye,
Paddy! Macushla, mavourneen, tare-an'-ouns! whirroo! Bloody ind to the Pope!"
"Toby," said Moriarty, with a calmness intended to seem ominous; "if I had
a gun in my hand, I'd shoot you like a wild-dog. But I suppose I'd get
into trouble for it," he continued scornfully.
"Jist the same's for layin' out a whitefeller," assented the prince,
still rasping at his cockroach, like Ugolini at the living skull of Ruggieri,
in Dante's airy conception of the place where wrongs are rectified.
(That unhappy mannerism again, you see).
"Permit me to suggest," said Moriarty, after a pause, "that if you contemplated
your own origin and antecedents, it would assist you to approximate
your relative position on this station. Don't you think a trifle
of subordination would be appropriate to"----
"A servile and halting imitation of Mrs. B.; and imitation is the sincerest
flattery," I commented. "I'll tell Miss K."
"Manners, please!--Appropriate, I was saying, to a blasted varmin like you?
Permit me to remind you that Mrs. Montgomery, senior, gave a blanket
for you when you were little."
"I know she did," replied the prince, with just a suspicion of vain-glory.
"Nobody would be fool enough to give a blanket for you when you was little.
Soolim!"
"Come on, Moriarty," said I, rising; "I must take a bit off the near end
of my journey to-night."
"Howld your howlt, chaps," interposed the good-natured half-caste
"I'll run up your horses for you. I was on'y takin' a rise out o'
Mr. Mori--(adj.)--arty, Esquire; jist to learn him not to be quite so suddent."
And in another minute, he was striding down the paddock, with his bridle
and stockwhip.
Half an hour later, my horses were equipped; and, all the Levites being absent,
four or five tribesmen slowly collected under Pawsome's shed, waiting to see
what would happen. Cleopatra was not without reputation.
"Tell you what you better do," said Moriarty to me--"better hang your socks
on Nosey Alf's crook to-night. His place is fifteen mile from here,
and very little out of your way. Ill-natured, cranky beggar, Alf is--been on
the pea--but there's no end of grass in his paddock. And I say--get him
to give you a tune or two on his fiddle. Something splendid I believe.
He's always getting music by post from Sydney. Montgomery had heard him sing
and play, some time or other; and when old Mooney was here, just before
last shearing, he sent Toby to tell Alf to come to the house in the evening,
and bring his fiddle; and Alf came, very much against his grain. Young Mooney
was asked into the house, on account of his dad being there; and he swears
he never heard anything like Alf's style; though the stubborn devil
would n't sing a word; nothing but play. And he was just as good on the piano
as on the fiddle, though his hand must have been badly out.
Mooney thinks he jibbed on singing because the women were there.
Alf's a mis-mis-mis-dash it"----
"Mischief-maker?" I suggested.
"No.--mis--mis"----
"Mysterious character?"
"No, no.--mis--mis"----
"Try a synonym."
"Is that it? I think it is. Well Alf's a misasynonym--womanhater--among
other things. When he comes to the station, he dodges the women like
a criminal. And the unsociable dog begged of Montgomery not to ask him
to perform again. One night, Nelson was going past his place, and heard
a concert going on, so he left his horse, and sneaked up to the wall;
but the music suddenly stopped, and before Nelson knew, Nosey's dog had
the seat out of his pants. Nosey came out and apologised for the dog,
and brought Nelson in to have some supper; and Nelson stayed till about
twelve; but devil a squeak of the fiddle, or a line of a song, could he get
out of Alf. But, as the boss says, Alf's only mad enough to know
the difference between an eagle-hawk and a saw--foolish expression,
it seems to me. Best boundary man on the station, Alf is. Been in the
Round Swamp Paddock five years now; and he's likely a fixture for life.
Boundary riding for some years in the Bland country before he came here.
Now I'll show you how you'll fetch his place"--Moriarty began drawing
a diagram on the ground with a stick--"You go through the Red Gate--we'll call
this the gate. The track branches there; and you follow this branch.
It's the Nalrooka track; and it takes you along here--mind, you're going
due east now"----
"Wait, Moriarty," I interrupted--"don't you see that you're reversing
everything? A man would have to stand on his head to understand that map.
There is the north, and here is the south."
"Don't matter a beggar which is the real north and south. I'm showing you
the way you've got to go. We'll start afresh to please you. Through here--
along here--and follow the same line from end to end of the pine-ridge,
with the fence on your right all the way"----
"Hold on, hold on," I again interrupted--"you're at right angles now.
Don't you see that your line's north and south?--and did you ever see
a pine-ridge running north and south? Begin again. Say the Red Gate is here;
and I turn along here. Now go ahead."
"No, I'm dashed if I do! I'm no hand at directing; but, by gosh, you're all
there at understanding."
"Jack," said I, turning to the primeval t'other-sider--"can you direct me
to Nosey Alf's?"
"I'll try," replied the veteran; and he slowly drew a diagram, true to
the points of the compass. "'Ere's the Red Gate--mind you shet it--then along
'ere, arf a mile. Through this gate--an' mind 'ow you leave 'er,
f'r the wire hinclines to slip hover. Then straight along 'ere, through
the pine-ridge, f'm hend to hend. You're hon the Nalrookar track, mind,
t' wot time you see a gate hin the fence as you're a-kerryin' hon yer
right shoulder. Gate's sebm mile f'm 'ere. Nalrookar track goes through
that gate; b't neb' you mind; you keep straight ahead pas' the gate,
hon a pad you'll 'ar'ly see; han jist hat the fur hend o' the pine-ridge
you'll strike hanuther gate; an' you mus' be very p'tic'lar shettin' 'er.
Then take a hangle o' fo'ty-five, with the pine-ridge hon yer back;
an' hin fo' mile you'll strike yer las' gate--'ere, hin the co'ner.
Take this fence hon yer right shoulder, an' run 'er down. B't you'll spot
Half's place, fur ahead, w'en you git to the gate, ef it ain't night."
"Thank you, Jack, I replied, and then imprudently continued--"It would suit
some of these young pups to take a lesson from you."
"You hain't fur wrong," replied the good old chronicle, that had so long
walked hand in hand with Time. "Las' year, hit war hall the cry, 'Ole hon
t' we gits a holt o' Cunnigarn's mongreals!'--'Ole hon t' we gits a holt o'
Thompson's mongreals!'--'We'll make hit 'ot f'r 'em!' Han wot war the hupshot?
'Stiddy!' ses Hi--'w'e 's y' proofs?' 'Proof be dam!' ses they--'don't we
know?' They know a 'ell of a lot! Has the sayin' his:--'Onct boys was boys,
an' men was men; but now boys his men, an' men's"--(I did n't catch the rest
of the sentence). "Han what were the hupshot? W'y, fact was Cunnigam
an' Thompson 'ad bin workin' hon hour ram-paddick wun night; an' six Wogger
steers got away, an' a stag amongst 'em; makin' f'r home; an' they left
a whaler mindin' the wagons; an' the two o' them hover'auled the steers
way down hin hour Sedan Paddick. Well, heverybody--Muster Magomery his self,
no less--heverybody ses, 'Ole hon t' we gits a holt of 'em fellers'
mongreals!--bin leavin' three o' hour gates hopen; an' the yowes an' weaners
is boxed; an' puttin' a file through Nosey Half's 'oss-paddick, an' workin'
hon it with 'er steers!' 'Stiddy!' ses Hi--'w'e's y'r proofs?' Way it war,
Collings; 'ere come a dose o' rain jis' harter, an' yer could n't track.
Well, wot war the hupshot? W'y, Warrigal Half war hunloadin' hat Boottara;
an' a yaller bullick 'e 'd got, Pilot by name"----