"'Is Pilot starts by night f'm Boottara ration-paddick, an' does 'is
thirty mile to hour 'oss-paddick; an' the hull menagerie tailin' harter.
'Shove 'em in 'e yaad, Toby,' ses Muster Magomery. Presinkly, up comes Half,
an 'is 'oss hall of a lather. 'Take yer dem mongreals,' ses Muster Magomery;
'an' don' hoversleep y'self agin.' Think Half war goin' ter flog 'is hanimals
thirty mile back? Not 'im"----
"It would hardly be right," I agreed. "Well, I must be jogging"--
"Not 'im," pursued Jack. "'E turns horf o' the main track t' other side
the ram-paddick; through the Patagoniar; leaves hall gates hopen;
fetches Nosey's place harter dark; houts file, an' hin with 'is mob,
an' gives 'm a g-tful. Course, 'e clears befo' mo'nin'; an' through hour
Sedan Paddick, an' back to Boottara that road. 'Ow do Hi know
hall this?--ses you?"
"Ah!" said I wisely. "Well, I must be"----
"No; you're in for it," chuckled Moriarty.
"Tole me 'is hown self, not three weeks agone. Camped hat hour ram-paddick,
shiftin' Stewart's things to Queensland. An' wot war the hupshot? 'Stiddy,
now,' ses Hi--'w'e 's y' proofs?' 'Some o' these young pups horter take
a lessing horf o' you, Jack,' ses you, jist now. You're right, Collings.
Did n' Hi say, las' lambin'--did n' Hi say we war a-gwain ter hev sich anuther
year as sixty-hate? Mostly kettle wot we hed then, afore the wool rose;
an' wild dogs bein' plentiful them times; an' we'd a sort o' 'ead stock-keeper,
name o' Bob Selkirk; an' this feller 'e started f'm 'ere with
hate 'underd an' fo'ty sebm 'ead"----
"And he would have his work cut out for him," I remarked, in cordial assent.
"You've seen some changes on this station, Jack. Well, I must be going."
Leaving the old fellow talking, I threw the reins over Cleopatra's head,
and drew the near one a little the tightest. He stood motionless as a statue,
and beautiful as a poet's dream.
"Would n't think that horse had a devil in him as big as a bulldog,"
observed the horse-driver. "Shake the soul-bolt out of a man, s'posen you
do stick to him."
"And yet Collins can't ride worth a cuss," contributed Moriarty confidentially.
"He's just dropped to this fellow's style. Boss wanted to see him on
our Satan, but Collins knew a thundering sight better."
A slight, loose-built lad, with a spur trailing at his right heel,
advanced from the group.
"Would you mind lettin' me take the feather-edge off o' this feller?"
he asked modestly. "If he slings me, you can git on-to him while he's warm,
an' no harm done. I'd like to try that saddle," he added, by way of excuse.
"Minds me o' one I got shook, five months ago, with a redheaded galoot
I'd bin treatin' like a brother, on account of him bein' fly-blowed,
an' the both of us travellin' the same road. Best shape saddle I ever had
a leg over, that was. Will I have a try?"
"Not worth while, Jack," I replied. "He might prop a little, certainly;
but it's only playfulness." So I swung into the deep seat of the stolen saddle,
and lightly touched the lotus-loving Memphian with both spurs.
First, a reeling, dancing, uncertain panorama of buildings, fences,
and spectators; then a mechanical response to the surging, jerking,
concussive saddle, and a guarded strain on the dragging reins. Also
a tranquil cognisance of favourable comment, exchanged by competent judges--
no excitement, no admiration, remember; not a trace of new-chum interest,
but a certain dignified and judicious approbation, honourable alike to critic
and artist. Fools admire, but men of wit approve.
"You see, it's--only playfulness--I remarked indifferently; the words being
punctuated by necessity, rather than by choice. Magnificent, but--not war.
There's not a-shadow of vice in his com-position. As the poet says:--
This is mere--madness,
And thus awhile the--fit will work--on him.
Anon as patient as the female--dove,
When that her--golden couplets have dis--closed,
His silence will--sit drooping.
There you are!" And Cleopatra stood still; slightly panting, it is true,
but with lamb-like guilelessness in his madonna face.
Then, as the toilers of the station slowly dispersed to see about
getting up an appetite for supper, Moriarty advanced, and laid both hands
on Cleopatra's mane.
"Collins!" he exclaimed; "I'm better pleased than if I had won ten bob.
What do you think?--that verse you quoted from Shakespear brought the question
to my mind like a shot of a gun; the very question I wanted to ask you
a couple of hours ago. I know it's been asked before; in fact, I met with it
in an English magazine, where the writer uses the very words you quoted
just now. I thought perhaps you had never met with the question,
and it might interest you--Was Hamlet mad?"
Of some few amiable qualities with which it has pleased heaven to endow me
beyond the majority of my fellows, a Marlborough-temper is by no means
the least in importance. I looked down in the ingenuous face of the searcher
after wisdom, quenching, like Malvolio, my familiar smile with an
austere regard of control.
"Semper felix," I observed hopelessly. "You're right in saying that
the question has been asked before. It has been asked. But daylight
in the morning is the right time to enter on that inquiry. For the present,
we must leave the world-wearied prince to rest in his ancestral vault,
where he was laid by the pious hands of Horatio and Fortinbras--where, each in
his narrow cell for ever laid, the rude forefathers of The Hamlet sleep."
"Quotation--ain't it?" suggested Moriarty critically.
"No." I sighed.
"Well then, I'm beggared if I can see anything in that sort of an answer,"
remarked the young fellow resentfully.
"Dear boy," I replied; "I never imagined that you could. I would you had
but the wit; 'twere better than your dukedom. By-the-way-what is Jack's
other name?"
"Which Jack? Old Jack, or Young Jack, or Jack the Shellback,
or Fog-a-bolla Jack?"
"Young Jack; the chap that offered to ride Cleopatra."
"Jack Frost."
"Right. Good-bye. And remember our arrangement."
"Good-bye, ole man. Depend your life on my straightness."
Then I whistled to Pup, noticed that Bunyip had n't got on the wrong side
of the fence, and turned Cleopatra's head toward the Bogan.
G. P. R. James rightly remarks that nothing is more promotive of thought
than the walking pace of a horse. We may add that nothing on earth can soothe
and purify like the canter; nothing strengthen and exhilarate like the gallop.
The trot is passed over with such contempt as it deserves. So, for the first
mile I was soothed and purified; for the next half-mile I busied myself
on a metaphysical problem; and so on for about five miles.
The metaphysical difficulty (if you care about knowing) arose in connection
with the singular issue of that preposterous wager. Whence came such
an elaborate dispensation? If from above, it was plainly addressed
to Moriarty, as a salutary check on his growing propensity; if from beneath,
it must have been a last desperate attempt to decoy into evil ways one who was,
perhaps, better worth enlisting than the average fat-head. To which of these
sources would you trace the movement? Mind you, our grandfathers--to come
no closer--would have piously taken the event on its face value of £50,
as a blessing to the Prodistan, and a chastisement to the Papish. But we move.
And, by my faith, we have need.
Presently I entered on the narrow pine-ridge; and now, carrying a line of fence
on my right shoulder, I followed the pleasant track, winding through pine,
wilga, needle-bush, quondong, and so forth. Two miles of this; then
on my right appeared the white gate, through which ran the Nalrooka track.
Up to this time, I had been following the route which a harsh usage
of the country had interdicted to Priestley.
Montgomery and Folkestone, returning from their drive, had just come through
this gate; the buggy, turned toward home, was on the track in front of me,
and Montgomery was resuming his seat, after shutting the gate.
The station mail-bag, loosely tied, was lying on the foot-board.
I had just done explaining where I was bound for, and on what business,
and where I intended staying that night, when I nearly tumbled off my horse
with a sort of white horror.
For straight behind the buggy, and less than eighty yards away, Priestley's
fourteen-bullock team came crawling along the fence, with the evident purpose
of catching the Nalrooka track at the gate. Priestley had chanced it.
Knowing every gate on the run, he had merely gone round the ration-paddock,
and had already made a seven-mile stage in ten miles' travelling--that is,
losing three miles in the detour. Once through this gate, the track would
be lovely, the wagon would chase the bullocks; evening would soon be on;
he would fetch feed and water at the Faugh-a-ballagh Tank, in the quiet
moonlight; moreover, if he met a boundary man, he could easily say he had
permission from the boss; in any case, it would soon be not worth while
to order him back; and he would be off the run some time to-morrow forenoon.
I could read his thoughts as I looked at him across Montgomery's shoulder.
Concealed from distant observation by the timber of the pine-ridge,
he had dismissed all apprehension, and allowed his mind to drift to a bend
of the Murrumbidgee, a couple of miles above Hay. There were his young
barbarians all at play; there was their dacent mother; he, their sire,
looking blissfully forward to superhuman work, and plenty of it.
Straight into the lion's mouth! Heaven help--but does heaven help
the Scotch-navigator? I question it. Half an hour's loafing, at any time
during the day, would have timed his arrival so as not only to obviate
the present danger, but to spare him the disquieting consciousness
of narrow escape. And heaven helps those who help themselves
He knew the gate was near; and, with the automatic restlessness of
an impatient dog tied under a travelling dray, he walked back and forward,
backward and forward beside his weary team; often looking back to see
the wagon clear the trees, but never, by any chance, looking forward
against the blaze of the declining sun intently enough to notice the back
of the buggy, partly concealed, as it was, by an umbrageous wilga.
As I watched him, I wished, with Balaam, that there were a sword in mine hand,
that I might slay the ass.
I dare n't ride past the buggy, for fear of Montgomery looking round
to say something. I half-heard him tell me that the Sydney crew had won
the regatta, and that Jupiter was starting a hot favourite for the Flemington.
And all this time, the unconscious son of perdition was crawling nearer;
not a jolt nor a click-clock came from his wagon as it pressed the yielding
soil; and the faint creaking of the tackle was drowned in the rustle
of a hot wind through the foliage.
"I'm sorry to see you starting so late in the day, and Saturday too,"
continued the squatter courteously. "The barracks will be lively to-night
over these sporting events."
I bowed. I would have licked the dust to see him stand not upon the order
of his going, but go at once. "Well, I must be moving," I mumbled hastily,
glancing behind me at the sun, and backing Cleopatra into the scrub,
to let the buggy pass--noting also that Priestley was n't forty yards away.
"Now, confess the truth, Collins--you've been having a tiff with
Mrs. Beaudesart?" continued Montgomery. "Lovers' quarrel? That's nothing.
I did n't think you were so pettish as to run away like this."
"Indeed, Mr. Montgomery," said I earnestly; "I assure you I'm only going
at the call of duty. I'll show"----here it struck me that the production
of my letter would delay things worse, and----
"By the way, there's a parcel for Alf Jones in the mail-bag," continued
the squatter, with hideous dilatoriness. "I see it's a roll of music.
Better take it. And his newspaper. Get him to give you a tune on his violin,
if you can. It will be something to remember."
"Thank you for the suggestion, sir," I continued slavishly, whilst backing
Cleopatra a little further into the scrub, and clearing my throat with a sharp,
pentrating sound, as if I had swallowed a fly.
Just then, the bullocks stopped of their own accord, within ten yards
of the buggy; and Priestley, pre-occupied in laying out fresh work for himself,
was roused by my loud r-r-rehm! and took in the situation.
Montgomery seemed amused at my tribulation. "Why, your manner betrays you,
Collins! Never mind. You'll grow out of that in good time. When is it
coming off?" He crossed his knees, and held the reins jammed between them,
whilst deliberately filling and lighting his pipe. Meanwhile, Priestley,
in silent communion with his Maker, stood by his team as if waiting
to be photographed. The buggy was in a cool, pleasant shade; and Montgomery
would maintain this flagitious procrastination of his managerial duties
while I remained a butt for his ill-timed chaff. Critical is no name
for the state of affairs.
But an angel seemed to whisper me soul to soul. I responded
to the inspiration.
"Well, I'll show you the letter, Mr. Montgomery," said I, with a petulance
tempered by sycophancy. I first felt, then slapped, my pockets--"By japers!
I've left my pocket-book on the seat in front of the barracks!" I continued
hurriedly, as I turned Cleopatra back toward the station, and bounded off
at a canter. I had n't gone five strides, when, flick! went the buggy-whip;
the vehicle started after me; and Priestley was saved. But there is no such
thing as permanent safety in this world. The first rattle of the wheels
was followed by a loud, pompous, bank-director cough from one of the bullocks.
"Hullo! what the (sheol) have we here?" It was Montgomery's voice,
no longer jocular. I turned and rode back, as he swung his buggy round
on the lock, skilfully threading the trees and scrub, till he resumed
his old position, but now facing the bullock team. "And what,
in the devil's name, brings you round this quarter?" he demanded sternly.
"This is a bad job!"
"You're right, Mr. Magomery," assented the bullock driver, with emphasis;
"it is a bad job; it's a (adj.) bad job. Way it comes: you see, I got a bit
o' loadin' for Nalrookar"----
"Two-ton-five. I know all about that, though I'm not interested in the
transaction," retorted Montgomery. "I asked you what the (sheol)
brings you here?"
"Well, that's just what I was goin' to explain when you took the word
out o' my mouth. You see, Mr. Magomery, the proper road for me would 'a' been
back along the main track to the Cane-grass Swamp, an' from there along
the reg'lar Nalrookar track; but I was frightened o' the Convincer,
so I thought I'd just cut across"----
"Great God! You thought you'd just cut across! Do you own this run?
"Well, no, Mr. Magomery, I don't; that's (adj.) certain. But if I'd 'a'
thought you'd any objection, I'd 'a' ast leaf."
"That's what you should have done. You've acted like a d----d fool."
"You'd 'a' give me leaf?" suggested the bullock driver, in a tone
full of unspoken entreaty.
"I'd have seen you in (sheol) first. I decline to make a thoroughfare
of the run. But by condescending to ask me, you'd have saved yourself
some travelling. The nearest way to the main road is past the station.
Here! rouse up your d----d mongrels, and make a start along this track.
I'll see that you're escorted. If you loose-out before you reach the main
road, I shall certainly prosecute you. Once there, I'll take care you don't
trespass again during this trip. Come! move yourself!"
Priestley had never been taught to order himself lowly and reverently
to all his betters; yet there was deeper pathos in the rude dignity
of his reply than could have attended servility.
"It s this way, Mr. Magomery--I don't deny I got here in a sneakin' way.
I feel it, Mr. Magomery; by (sheol) I do. Still, I'm here now. Well,
if I tackle this track out to the main road, there's three o' them bullocks'll
drop in yoke before I fetch the station. Would you like to see the bones
layin' aside this track, every time you drive past? I bet you what you like,
you'd be sorry when your temper is over. Then we'll say I'm out on the
main road--how 'm I goin' to fetch Nalrooka? Not possible, the way I'm fixed.
I would n't do it to you, Mr. Magomery."
I had ridden to the side of the buggy. "Mr. Montgomery," said I; "I wish
to heaven that you were under one-tenth of the obligation to me that I am
under to you, so that I might venture to speak in this case. But the
remembrance of so much consideration at your hands m the past, encourages me.
There's a great deal in what Priestley says; my own experience in bullock
driving brings it home to me; and I sympathise with him, rather than with you.
Of course the matter rests entirely in your hands; but to me it appears
in the light of a responsibility. It is noble to have a squatter's strength,
but tyrannous to use it like a squatter."
Something like a smile struggled to Montgomery's sunburnt face; and I could see
that the battle was over.
But another was impending. It was now half-an-hour since I had met the buggy.
Folkestone had calmly ignored me from the first. When the trouble supervened,
his haughty immobility had still sustained him at such an altitude
as to render Priestley, as well as myself, invisible even to bird's eye view.
But the small soul, rattling about loose in the large, well-fed body,
could n't let it pass at that. On my interposing, he placed a gold-mounted
glass in his eye, and, with a degress of rudeness which I have never seen
equalled in a navvies' camp, stared straight in my face till I had done
speaking. Then the lens dropped from his eye, and he turned to his companion.
"Who is this person, Montgomery?" he asked.
The squatter looked plainly displeased. He was as proud as his guest,
but in a different way. Folkestone, being a gentleman per se, was
distinguished from the ordinary image of God by caste and culture;
and to these he added a fatal self-consciousness. Don't take me as saying
that caste and culture could possibly have made him a boor; take me as saying
that these had been powerless to avert the misfortune. He was a gentleman
by the grace of God and the flunkeyism of man. Montgomery was also
a gentleman, but only by virtue of his position. So that, for instance,
Priestley's personal fac-simile, appearing as a well-to-do squatter,
would have been received on equal terms by Montgomery; whereas, Folkestone's
disdain would have been scarcely lessened. The relative manliness of the two
types of 'gentleman' is a question which each student will judge according
to his own fallen nature.
"Pardon me for saying that you Australians have queer ways of maintaining
authority," continued the European, lazily raising his eyebrows,
and speaking with the accent--or rather, absence of accent--which,
in an Englishman, denotes first-class education. "A vagrant, by appearance,
and probably not overburdened with honesty, is found trespassing
on your property; then this individual--by Gad, I feel curious to know
who our learned brother for the defence is--bandies words with you
on the other fellow's behalf. I confess I rather like his style. I expected
to hear him address you as 'old boy,' or 'my dear fellow,' or by some such
affectionate title. Pardon my warmth, I say, Montgomery! but this phase
of colonial life is new to me. Placed in your position (if my opinion,
as a landlord, be worth anything), I should make an example of the
trespassing scoundrel; partly as a tonic to himself, and partly as a lesson
to this cad. If I rightly understand, you have the power to punish,
by fine or imprisonment, any trespass on your sheep-walks. You don't exercise
your prerogative, you say? By Gad, you'll have to exercise it, or,
let me assure you, you will be sowing thorns for your children to reap.
Here, I should imagine, is an excellent opportunity for vindication
of your rights as a land owner."
This reasoning would n't have affected Montgomery's foregone decision
to suspend his own rights in the current case, had not Priestley been
too industrious to notice the opening avenue of escape. But to the
bullock driver's troubled mind it appeared that he had managed to wander
inside the wings of the stockyard of Fate, and that Folkestone was lending
a willing hand to hurroo him into the crush. Moreover, the rough magnanimity
of the man's nature was outraged by some supposed insult sustained
by me on his behalf.
Just three words of comment here. Built into the moral structure
of each earthly probationer is a thermometer, graduated independently;
and it is never safe to heat the individual to the boiling-point
of his register. You never know how far up the scale this point is, unless
you are very familiar with the particular thermometer under experiment.
Romeo, for instance, pacific by nature, and self-schooled to forbearance
by the second-strongest of inspirations, meets deadly public insult
by the softest of answers--'calm, dishonourable, vile submission,'
his friend calls it. But the slaying of that friend touches Romeo's
212°Fahrenheit--then! 'Away to heaven, respective lenity, and fire-eyed fury
be my conduct now!' Whereupon, Tybalt, the tamperer, is scalded to death.
In Ida, as we have seen, the insinuated aspersion of unchastity touched
100°Centigrade; and the experimentalist was glad to retreat, with damaged
dignity, from the escaping steam. So, in Priestley, the wanton hostility
of Folkestone touched 80°Reaumur; and the billy boiled over, wasting the water,
and smothering the owner with ashes.
One moment more, please. Nations, kindreds, and peoples are individuals
in mass; and here the existence of an overlooked boiling-point is the one thing
that makes history interesting. Cowper puts on paper a fine breezy
English contempt for the submissiveness and ultra-royalism of the
pre-Revolutionary French--and lives to wonder at the course of events.
Macaulay's diction rolls like the swelling of Jordan, as he expatiates
on the absolute subserviency, the settled incapacity for resistance,
of the Bengalee--till presently the Mutiny (a near thing, in two widely
different senses, and confined to the Bengalee troops) shakes his credit.
So it has ever been, and ever shall be. But for that ingrained endowment
of resilience, Man would long ago have ceased to inhabit this planet.
When Priestley came to the boil, all considerations of expediency,
all natural love of peace and fear of the wrath to come, all solicitude
for wife and children, vanished from his mind, leaving him fit for treasons,
stratagems, and spoils. I must suppress about half the language in which
he clothed his one remaining thought.
"An' who are you?" he thundered, advancing toward the buggy. "A loafer!--
no better!--an' you must shove in your lip! I don't blame Magomery
for bein' nasty; he's got a right to blaggard me, the way things is;
an' I give him credit. But you! Cr-r-ripes! if I had you a couple o' hundred
mile furder back, I'd learn you manners! I'd make you spring off o' your tail!"
Folkestone, his head canted to a listening angle, noted with a half-amused,
half-tired smile the outlaw's tirade. Then he rose, drew off his light coat,
and laid it across the back of the buggy seat.
"I will thump this fellow, Montgomery," said he, and he certainly meant it.
Priestley was a man of nine stone.
By your favour, once more, and only once. The Englishman proper is the
pugilist of the world. The Australian or American maxima may be as brutal,
or even more so, but the average efficiency in smiting with the fist
of wickedness is, beyond all question, on the English side.
'English fair play' is a fine expression. It justifies the bashing
of the puny drapers' assistant by the big, hairy blacksmith; and this
to the perfect satisfaction of both parties, if they are worthy the name
of Englishmen. Also, the English gentleman may take off his coat to the
potsherd of the earth; and so excellent is his discrimination that the combat
will surely end even as your novelist describes; simply because no worshipper
can make headway against his god, when the divinity hits back.
At the same time, no insubordinate Englishman, named Crooked-nosed Yorkey,
and made in proportion, ever did, or ever will, suffer manual mauling
at the hands of an English gentleman--or any other gentleman, for that matter.
What a fool the gentleman would be! No; Crooked-nosed Yorkey is always given
in charge; and it takes three policemen to run him in.
English fair-play! Varnhagen von Ense tells us how Continental gentlemen
envied the social usage which permitted Lord Castlereagh, in 1815,
to show off his bruising ability at the expense of a Viennese cabman--probably
some consumptive feather-weight, and certainly a man who had never seen
a scrapping-match in his life. But English fair-play doesn't stand
transplantation to Australia, except in patches of suitable soil.
For instance, when bar-loafer meets pimp, at £1 a side, then comes the raw-meat
business. The back-country man, though saturnine, is very rarely quarrelsome,
and almost never a pugilist; nevertheless, his foot on his native salt-bush,
it is not advisable to assault him with any feebler weapon than
rifle-and-bayonet. There is a radical difference, without a verbal
distinction, between his and the Englishman's notions of fair-play.
Each is willing to content himself with the weapons provided by nature;
but the Southern barbarian prefers a natural product about three feet long,
and the thickness of your wrist at the butt--his conception of fair-play
being qualified by a fixed resolution to prove himself the better counterfeit.
So Priestley, with a sinister glitter in his patient eyes, had reversed
his whipstick, pliant end downward, and bent along the ground. He knew
the nature of seasoned pine. A sharp jerk, and the whipstick would snap,
supplying a nilla-nilla which would make him an over-match for a dozen
Folkestones in rotation. My hand was on Cleopatra's mane, and my off-foot
clear of the stirrup; it would be a Christian act to save Foikestone
from the father of a batin', and Priestley from that sterner father,
namely, old father antic, the law. But imminent as the collision seemed,
it did n't come-off.
"Sit down, Folkestone," said Montgomery, holding his companion's sleeve
with a firm grip, whilst gazing steadily northward through the narrow fringe
of timber. Following his eye, I saw a horseman, a mile and a half distant,
heading for the homestead at a walk.
"Is that Arblaster, Collins?" demanded the squatter.
I brought my binocular to bear on the horseman. "Nelson," I replied.
"Better still. Signal him."
I galloped out into the plain, wheeled broadside on, and waved my hat.
The equestrian profile changed to a narrow line, and I returned to the buggy,
followed, at a decent interval, by Nelson. I was glad to see Priestley
in the act of driving through the gate.
"Come, here, Priestley," said Montgomery quietly. "You have my permission
to follow this track to the Nalrooka boundary"----
"I hope I'll git some slant to do as much"----
"Silence!--But if you trespass on my feed or water, by God I'll prosecute you.
Another thing. Never in future load anything for me, or come to this station
expecting wool. And I may as well warn you that every boundary man
in my employ will be on the look-out for you from this time forward.
Nelson; you ride behind his wagon to the boundary, and see that he keeps
the track."--A frown gathered on the young fellow's face, reinforced by
a burning blush as Montgomery went on--"Perhaps you scarcely expected me
to concur in your opinion, that one ought to spring a bit in a season
like this; yet I have no intention of crushing a poor, decent, hard-working
devil--that is, if he can add nine miles more to to-day's stage,
without unyoking. I have already given him a thorough good blackguarding
for calculating upon crossing the run. If he trespasses on feed or water--
if he does n't go straight on with his team, wagon or no wagon--you and I
may quarrel." Who was the spy? Ah! who is the ubiquitous station spy?
"Good-bye, Mr. Montgomery," said I abjectly.
"Are n't you coming back to the station for your pocket-book?" he asked,
with a glance out of the corner of his eye.
"I find I've got it here all the time--wonder how I came to overlook it."
"Thinking too much about Mrs. Beaudesart," suggested the squatter. "She won't
be at all displeased to hear of it. Good-bye, Collins. Safe Joumey."
I raised my wideawake to Folkestone, who again placed his glass in his eye,
and stared at me wonderingly till we tore ourselves apart.
Another mile, and I cleared the pine-ridge. Looking back to the right,
I could see Priestley and his guard of honour crawling toward the
Faugh-a-ballagh Sand-hills, which lay two miles from the gate where we
had parted. They would reach the tank as twilight merged into moonlight.
Then Nelson would say, 'I'm going to have a drink of tea at Jack's hut.
I'll be back in three or four hours. Pity you're not allowed to loose-out,
for there's a grand bit of crow's-foot round that pine tree in the hollow.
Don't kindle a fire, unless you want to get lagged.' And Priestley would get
to the boundary by ten o'clock on the morrow, without the loss of a beast;
thanking heaven that he had n't been escorted by Arblaster or Butler,
and racking his invention to provide for the coming night. Also,
Montgomery would, within a week, know all the details of the trip
(station-spy again), but, being a white man, he would silently condone
Nelson's disobedience.
One more little incident enlivened the monotony of my journey to Alf's hut.
Whilst giving my horses a half-mile walk, I took out the newspaper
Toby had brought. I did n't look for any marginal marks, having recognised
Jeff Rigby's handwriting in the address. Rigby is a man who never writes
except on his own account. His way of acknowledging a letter is to pick up
a newspaper, of perhaps a month old, tie a string round it, stamp
and address it, and drop it in the nearest letter-box. This paper, however,
happened to be the latest available issue of a Melbourne daily, and contained
a copious account of the regatta, followed by the coarsely-executed portrait
of a young man, with the neck and shoulders--and, by one of Nature's sad,
yet just, compensations, also the face and head--of the average athlete.
Rude as the engraving was, the subject of it at once suggested what
the Life-Assurance canvassers call an 'excellent risk'; and underneath ran
the title: Mr. RUDOLPH WINTERBOTTOM--STROKE OF THE WINNING CREW.
An ensuing paragraph briefly sketched the hero's history, habits, and physical
excellencies. He was twenty-two years of age; had a good position
in the N.S.W. Civil Service; and was now on leave of absence. He was
a non-smoker, a life-abstainer, and in a word, was distinguished in almost
every branch of those gambol faculties which show a weak mind and an able body.
It gave me quite a turn. Sic transit, thought I, with a sigh. Such is life.
The cranky boundary rider's little weatherboard hut, standing just inside
his horse-paddock fence, was neater than the average. The moonlight showed
that a radius of five or six yards from the door had been swept with a broom;
while some kerosene-tins, containing garden-flowers, occupied the angle
formed by the chimney and the wall. The galvanised bucket and basin
on the bench by the door were conspicuously clean; and the lamp-light showed
through a green blind on the window.
A black-and-tan collie gave a few perfunctory barks as I drew near,
whereupon Alf, with sleeves rolled up, and hands freshly blooded to the wrists,
appeared at the door, and drew back on seeing me. I brought my horses through
the gate, and he met me outside the hut; his hands washed, and his
shirt-sleeves buttoned. He stood by, scarcely speaking, whilst I introduced
myself, gave him his parcel and newspaper, and unsaddled my horses.
Then I followed him into the hut, and he cleared away from the table
the anatomy of a fine turkey, shot during the day. Sullenly he replenished the
kettle, and put the fire together; then washed the table, and laid it for one.
But the newspaper revelation, in giving me a turn, had turned me
philosophic-side-upward; and I cared little for Alf's sullenness, provided
he listened with attention to my discourse on the mutability of things.
By the time he had poured out my tea, he was a vanquished man. He filled
a cup for himself, to keep me company, and guardedly commented on the news
I brought from the station and the Pine-ridge Gate. Still I was touched
to observe that he kept his disfigured face averted as much as possible.
Did you ever reflect upon how much you have to be thankful for in the matter
of noses? Your nose, in all probability, is your dram of eale--your
club foot--your Mordecai sitting at the king's gate--but you would look
very queer without it. In your morbid hypercriticalness, you may wish
this indocile, undisguisable, and most unsheltered feature had been made
a little longer, or a little shorter, or a little wider, or not quite so wide.
Or perhaps you wish the isthmus between your eyes a little higher or the ridge
of the peninsula a little straighter, or the south cape a little more,
or less, obtuse. Or possibly you wish that the front elevation
(elevation is good) did not admit, through the natural grottoes above your
moustache, so clear a perspective of the interior of Ambition's airy hall--
forcing upon you the conviction that your own early disregard of your mother's
repeated admonitions against wiping upward, had come home to you at last,
and had come to stay. Check that rebellious spirit, I charge you. Your nose
is good enough; better, probably, than you deserve; be thankful that you have
one of any design at all.
This poor boundary man had none to speak of. And it seemed such a pity.
More beautiful, otherwise, than a man's face is justified in being, it was
(apart from sex) as if Pygmalion's masterpiece had fallen heavily,
face downward, and then sprung into life, minus the feature which will
least bear tampering with. The upper half of his nose was represented
by an irregular scar, running off toward the left eye, which was dull
and opaque; the other was splendid, soft, and luminous. And as he sat
in the full light of the lamp, with his elbow on the table, in order to shade
with his hand the middle part of his face, the combination of fine frontal
development with exquisite and vigorous contour of mouth and chin was so
striking that I involuntarily glanced round the hut for the book-shelf.
His lithe, graceful movements had at first led me to mark him down as
a mere lad; but now the lamp-light showed a maze of incipient wrinkles
on the sunburnt neck, and a few silver threads in the thick, strong,
coalblack hair. Moreover, owing to inadvertence or ignorance on the part
of people who should have known better, he had been christened in immediate
succession to a girl. It is well and widely known that this oversight,
small as it looks, will free a man for life from any rude inquiry as to when
he is going to burn off the scrub. Alf had no scrub to burn off, except
a faint moustache, unnoticeable but for its dark colour. For the rest,
he was slightly above medium height and by no means a good stamp of a man--
tapering the wrong way, if I might so put it without shocking the
double-refined reader. And, from stiff serge jumper to German-silver spur,
he (Alf, of course) was unbecomingly clean for Saturday. The somewhat
wearisome minuteness of this description is owing to his being, at least
in my estimation, the most interesting character within the scope
of these scranny memoirs.
I looked round for the book-shelf. It was a bookcase this time;
a flat packing-case, nailed to the wall, fitted with shelves, and curtained
on the front. I rose and inspected the collection: fifty or sixty volumes
altogether--poetry, drama, popular theology, reference, and a few
miscellaneous works; history meagrely represented, science and
yellow-back fiction not at all.
"You don't find many people of my name in the country?" remarked the boundary
man trivially, after a pause.
"Not many," I replied, wondering whether he referred to his nickname
or to the inexpensive, but lasting, gift of his godfathers and godmothers,
at the time of their annoying mistake.
"I suppose you hardly know one," he persisted.
"Not that I can think of," I replied. "Have you any swapping-books?"
"Yes, you'll find 'Elsie Venne ' lying on top of the upper shelf."
"I've read it years ago, but we'll change," I replied. "When I first got
my swapping-book, it was by Hannah More; now it's by Zola, and smutty enough
at that; it has undergone about twenty intermediate metamorphoses,
and it's still going remarkably strong--in both senses of the word.
Therefore I can recommend it."
"I don't think it does a person any good to read Zola," remarked
the boundary man gravely.
"Not the slightest, Alf--that is, in the works by which he is represented
amongst us. But do you think it does a person any good to read Holmes?
Zola has several phases; one of them, I admit, blue as heaven's own tinct;
but Holmes has only one phase, namely, pharisaism. Zola, even as we know him
here in Riverina, has this advantage, that he gives you no rest for the sole
of your foot--or rather, for the foot of your soul; whilst Holmes serenely
seduces you to his own pinchbeck standard. Zola is honest; he never
calls evil, good; whilst Holmes is spurious all through. Mind you, each has
a genuine literary merit of his own.
"But don't you like Holmes's poetry?" asked Alf.
"Well, his poems fill a little volume that the world would be sorry to lose;
but why did n't he write one verse--just one--for the Abolitionists to quote?"
"Because it's not in his nature to denounce things," objected Alf.
"Neither was it in Longfellow's nature; yet Longfellow's poems on Slavery
are judged worthy to form a separate section of his works. But Holmes
can denounce most valiantly. He denounces witch-burning and
Inquisition-persecution, like the chivalrous soul that he is. He has achieved
the distinction of being the only American poet of note who blandly ignores
Slavery, and takes part with the aristocrat, as against the lowly.
The same spirit runs through all his writings. He has a range of about
three notes: a flunkeyish koo-tooing to soap-bubble eminence; a tawdry
sympathy with aristocratic woe; and a drivelling contempt for angular
Poor Relations, in bombazine gowns. Bombazine, by-the-way, is a cheap,
carpetty-looking fabric, built of shoddy, and generally used for
home-made quilts"----
"No, it's not! " broke in Alf, with a rippling laugh; "it's a very good
dress-material; silk one way, and wool the other; and it's mostly black,
or maroon, or"----he stopped with a gasp. "Why don't you sit down?"
he continued, in an altered tone. "And that reminds me, my day's work's
not done yet."
He cleared the table, and placed upon it his half-dissected turkey,
in a milk-dish. I had the conversation to myself till he finished his work
and took the turkey outside to hang it on the meat-pole. This was a sapling
of fifteen or twenty feet high, with a fork at the top, through which ran
a piece of clothes-line. I followed him to the door, discoursing on
literature, whilst he attached one end of the clothes-line to the turkey's
legs, hauled it up to the fork, and hitched the fall of the rope to the pole.
But just as the turkey reached its place, he had dropped his head with
a movement of pain; and, after securing the rope, he groped his way into
the hut, holding his hand over his right eye.
"Bit of bark, or something, dropped nght into my eye," he muttered.
"It does n't suit me to have anything wrong with the one I have left."
By the bright lamp-light, I soon relieved him of what proved to be a small ant;
then he went out to the washing-bench, and I heard the dabbling of water.
"I got a grass-seed in my eye the New Year's Day before last," he remarked,
in a sort of sullen self-commiseration, after we had sat in silence
for a minute. "I could n't see to catch a horse; and it took me about
six hours to grope my way along the fences to Dick Templeton's hut. I thought
I'd have gone mad."
"Ah!" said I sympathetically, "that reminds me of an incident that came under
my own notice on the very day you speak of. I'll tell you how it happened."
By this time, Alf had lit a meek and lowly meerschaum, whilst a large grey cat
had jumped on his knees, and settled itself for repose. "You asked me awhile
ago whether I knew anyone of your name in this part of the country. I forgot
at the moment that one of my most profitable studies is a namesake of yours--
Warrigal Alf, a carrier on these roads."
"What's his other name?" asked the boundary man, in a suppressed voice.
"Morris."
"Why don't you call him so, then? I hate nicknames."
Poor fellow, thought I, and I continued, "I was coming down from Cobar,
with a single horse; and on the New Year's Day before last, I reached
the Yellow Tank--about forty miles from here, isn't it? I left my saddle
and things at the tank, and was taking my horse out to a place where
there's always a bit of grass, when I noticed a wagon in the scrub,
and identified it as Alf's"----
"Did you know him before?" murmured the boundary man.
"Certainly."
"Is he a married man?"
"Widower."
"Widower?" repeated Alf, almost in a whisper. "Did you know his wife""
"Personally, no; inductively, yes. She was one of those indefinably dangerous
women who sing men to destruction--one of those tawny-haired tigresses,
with slumbrous dark eyes--name, Iolanthe."
"What?"
"Iolanthe de Vavasour," I replied good-humouredly. "More appropriate
than Molly--isn't it?"
The boundary man, after picking up his pipe, which had fallen on the
slumbering cat, fixed his Zitska eye on my face with a puzzled, shrinking,
defiant look, whilst drawing his seat a little further away. Ah! years
of solitary life, with the haunting consciousness of frightful disfigurement,
had told on his mind. Moriarty was right. And I remembered that the moon
was approaching the full.
"Alf was sitting under a hop-bush," I continued, "with his hand
across his eyes.
"'What's the matter, Alf?' says I.
"'Is that you, Collins?' says he, trying to look up. 'You're just in time
to do more for me than I would care about doing for you. I've met with
an accident. I was lying on my back under the wagon this morning,
tightening some nuts, when a bit of rust, or something, fell straight
into my eye. Frightful pain; and it's affecting the other eye already;
giving me a foretaste of hell. No doubt it's a good thing; but I don't want
a monopoly of it; I wish I could pass it round.' This was Alf's style
of philosophy. Our friend, Iolanthe, is largely, though perhaps indirectly,
responsible for it."
"Yes--go on," said the boundary man nervously.
"Well, as I was telling you, it was after sunset, and there was no time
to lose, so I whittled a bit of wood to a point, and essayed the task
in which I claim a certain eminence, namely, the extraction of a mote
from my brother's eye.
"'You're right, Alf,' says I; 'it's a flake of rust, about the size of
a fish's scale, lodged on the coloured part, which we term the iris--or,
strictly speaking, on that part of the cornea which covers the iris.
But I can't shift it with this appliance. Must get something sharper.'
"So I took a pin out of my coat, and grubbed the mote as well as I could
by the deficient light. I don't know what Alf thought of it at the time,
but I considered it a lovely operation. When it was over, Alf signified
to me that I wasn't wanted any longer, so I went about my business.
"Next morning, as I was going toward my horse-bell, I gave my patient
a purely professional call, and found his eye worse than ever. I subjected him
to another examination; and, this time having the advantage of full daylight,
I discovered that the cause of his trouble wasn't a flake of rust, after all;
but a small, barbed speck of clean iron, embedded in the white of the eye.
I discovered something else. Alf's eyes are as blue as those of Zola's Nana;
and in the iris of the affected one there is, or rather was, a brown spot.
I had often noticed this before; but, in the defective light, and the hurry
of the operation, I had never thought of the thing and had wasted time
and skill on it, as I tell you. I have often laughed to remember
"You were badly off for something to laugh at!" Again I recalled
Monarty's remark; for the boundary man's voice trembled as he spoke,
and his splendid eye blazed with sudden resentment. But the fit passed away
instantly, and he asked, in his usual subdued tone, "When did you see
this--this Alf Morris last?"
"About two months ago," I replied. "He was camped at that time in the
Dead Man's Bend, at the junction of Avondale and Mondunbarra."
"When are you likely to see him again?" asked the boundary man. "But,
of course, you can't tell. It's a foolish question. I don't know what's come
over me to-night."
Ignorance is bliss, in that instance, poor fellow! thought I, glancing out
at the weirdly beautiful moonlight; and I replied, "Most likely I'll never
see him again. These wool-tracks, that knew him so well, will know him no more
again for ever. He's gone to a warmer climate."
"That decides it!" muttered the lunatic, swaying on his seat, whilst
he clutched the edge of the table.
"Alf! Alf!" I remonstrated; laying my hand on his shoulder. He shrank
from the touch, and immediately recovered himself. "Let me explain,
I continued soothingly. "He has gone four or five months' journey due north,
in charge of three teams loaded with lares and penates and tools, and cooking
utensils, and rations, and other things too numerous to particularise,
belonging once to Kooltopa, but now to a new station in South-western
Queensland. Hence I say he's gone to a warmer climate. Not much of a joke,
I admit."
"And what's--what's become of Kooltopa?" asked the boundary man, panting
under his effort at self-control.
"Old times are changed, old manners gone; a stranger fills the Stewart's
throne," I replied, with real sadness. "Kooltopa's sold to a Melbourne
company, and is going to be worked for all it's worth. And I'm thinking
of the carrier, coming down with the survivors of a severe trip,
and the penniless pedestrian, striking the station at the eleventh hour.
These people will miss Stewart badly.
For the guest flies the hall, and the vassal from labour,
Since his turban was cleft by the infidel's sabre."
"Whose turban?" asked Alf, with a puzzled look.
"Stewart's. I spake but by a metaphor. As with Antony, 'tis one of those
odd tricks that sorrow shoots out of the mind."
There was a few minutes' silence. I was thinking of the Christian squatter,
and so, no doubt, was many another wanderer at the same moment.
"But he'll come back to Riverina when he delivers the loading?"
suggested the boundary man.
"Who?"
"This--Alf Morris."
"I don't think so. I know he does n't intend it."
Another pause. Glancing at my companion, as he sat with his elbows
on the table, and one hand, as usual, across the middle of his face,
I noticed his chest heaving unnaturally, and his shapely lips losing
their deep colour.
"Are you sick, Alf?"
"Yes--a little," he whispered.
I filled a cup at the water-bag, and set it before him. He drank part of it.
"Quakers' meeting!" he remarked at length, with a slight laugh. "Why don't you
say something? I'm not much of a talker myself, but I'm a good listener.
Tell us some yarn to pass the time. Anything you like. Tell us all about
that camp on the Lachlan, and what passed between you and your friend, Morris."
Upon this hint I spake. I recounted consecutively the incidents which form
the subject of an earlier chapter, whilst an occasional inquiry, or
an appreciative nod, proved my eccentric auditor in touch with me
from first to last.
"Three or four weeks afterward," I continued, "I met this Bob Stirling
in Mossgeil. He had a bit of a head on him at the time, having just
got through five notes--three from Stewart, and two from Alf. I got
a bob's worth of brandy to straighten him up; and we had a drink of tea
together, while my horses went through a small feed of bad chaff at
sixpence a pound.
"His account was, that Stewart, after parting from me, drove straight
to Alf's camp, and deposited him there to look after things. Stewart himself
only stayed a few minutes, and then drove to Avondale, to see
Mr. Wentworth St. John Ffrench, Terrible Tommy's boss. Next morning,
a wagonette came from Avondale, with a few parcels of eatables, and a few
bottles of drinkables, and other sinful lusts of the flesh. Four days
after that, again, Stewart drove round on his way back to Kooltopa.
By this time, Alf was able to crawl about, trying his best to be civil to Bob,
and succeeding fairly well for a non-smoker.
"However, when Stewart called, he got into a yarn with Alf, and had a drink
of tea while Bob held the horses. Presently, according to Bob's account,
the conversation grew closer; and, after an hour or so, Stewart told Bob
to unharness the horses, and hobble them out where they could get a bite
of grass. Altogether, Stewart stayed about half a day. In a few days more,
Alf was able to yoke and unyoke a few quiet bullocks; then he and Bob started
for Kooltopa together. Arrived at their destination, Stewart and Alf each
paid Bob, as already hinted; and Bob, having urgent business in Mossgeil,
hurried away to transact it. He had just completed the deal when I met him."
Here I paused to light my pipe.
"And what makes you think he has left Riverina for good?" asked the
boundary man absently.
"Catch him leaving Riverina. He knows he has a good character as a quiet,
decent, innoffensive sundowner--nobody's enemy but his own--and experience
has taught him that any kind of tolerable reputation is better than
no reputation at all."
"I don't mean him," said the boundary man constrainedly.
"Of course not. I beg your pardon. Well, I heard it from himself. I met him
about three weeks ago--that would be about three weeks after my interview
with Bob Stirling. He's fairly in love with what he saw of Queensland,
before last shearing; and, between bad seasons and selectors--not to mention
his own presentiment of a rabbit-plague--he's full-up of Riverina.
But that reminds me that I have n't brought Alf Morris's story to a proper
conclusion. I heard the rest of it from Stewart, on the occasion I speak of.
Stewart has bought his plant, and engaged him permanently. His first business
is to take Stewart's teams to their destination--no easy matter at this time
of the year, and such a year as this; but if any man can do it, that man
is Alf. He started some weeks ago, a little shaky after his sickness,
but recovering fast. Entirely changed in disposition, Stewart tells me;
and those who know him will agree that a change would n't be out of place.
But Stewart speaks of him as one of the noblest-minded men he ever knew.
He says he just wants a man like Alf, and he does n't intend to part with him.
I fancy our love of paradox makes us prone to associate noble-mindedness
with cantankerousness--at all events, nobody ever called me noble-minded.
But such is life."
"Then this new situation is a permanent thing for him?" suggested
the boundary man.
"For Alf? No; I'm sorry to say, it's not."
"Why?"
"Because Stewart's about sixty, and Alf's somewhere in the neighbourhood
of thirty-seven. The Carlisle-tables would give Stewart an actuarial
expectation of ten or fifteen years, and Alf one of twenty-five or thirty.
And there will be old-man changes in the personnel of the station staff
when the grand old Christian sleeps with his fathers, and his dirty-flash son
reigns in his stead. Such, again, is life. But this won't affect Alf's
interests to any ruinous extent. He has a stockingful of his own.
It's a well-known fact that few carriers of Riverina cleared as much money
as he did, and probably not one spent less. Stewart gave him £200
for his plant, and he never broke the cheque; posted it whole; Stewart himself
took charge of it, as he told me in his gossiping way. Let Alf alone.
He knows how to come in out of the wet; in fact, the rainy day is his
strong point. Such, for the third and last time, is life."
Whilst I spoke, my unfortunate companion was persistently trying to light
his empty pipe, his hands trembling, and his breath quickening.
The Maroo fly was at him again. I tried to divert his attention.
"By the way," said I; "did n't you blame Thompson and Cunningham for duffing
in your horse-paddock, ten or twelve months ago?"
"I didn't make any song about it," replied the boundary rider half-resentfully.
"Of course not. Still you owe them an apology--which I shall be happy
to convey, if you wish it. Alf Morris was the depredator. He was hovering
about your hut that night like a guardian angel, while his twenty bullocks
had their knife-bars going double-speed on your grass, and you slept the sleep
of the unsuspecting. Ask old Jack; he'll give you chapter and verse,
without much pressing. He told me about it this afternoon."
But the fit came on, after all. The boundary man stared at me with a wild,
shrinking look, and the same paling of the lips I had noticed before;
then he drank the remaining water out of the cup, and, rising from his seat,
walked slowly to his bed, and lay down with his face toward the wall.
Far gone, i' faith, thought I. Presently I went to the door, and, shoring up
one of the posts with my shoulder, looked out upon the cool, white moonlight,
flooding the level landscape.
Strange phenomena follow the footsteps of Night. It has long been observed
that avalanches and landslips occur most frequently about midnight,
and especially on moonless midnights, when the sun and moon are in conjunction
at the nadir. This is the time when mines cave in; when loose bark falls
from trees; when limbs crash down from old, dead timber; when
snow-laden branches break; when all ponderable bodies, of relatively slight
restraint, are most apt to lose their hold. This may be definitely
and satisfactorily accounted for by the mere operation of Newton's Law.
At the time, and under the conditions, specified, the conjoined attraction
of sun and moon--an attraction sufficient to sway millions of tons of water,
in the spring tides--is superadded to the centric gravity of the earth,
the triple force, at the moment of midnight, tending toward the nadir,
or downward. So that, when these midnight phenomena are most observable
at one point of the globe, they will be least likely to make mid-day
manifestation at the antipodes to that point.
And, though changes of the moon--as copiously proved by meteorological
statistics--have no relation whatever to rainfall, the illuminated moon,
on rising, will rarely fail to clear a clouded sky. This singular influence
is exercised solely by the cold light of that dead satellite producing
an effect which the sunlight, though two hundred times as intense*,
is altogether powerless to rival in kind. When we can explain the nature
of this force adherent to moonlight, and to no other light, we may inquire why,
in all ages and in all lands, the verdict of experience points to moonlight
as a factor in the production and aggravation of lunacy. An empirical
hypothesis, of course; but in the better sense, as well as in the worse.
For the perturbing influence of moonlight, if it be a myth, is about the most
tenacious one on earth. This anomalous form of Force may or may not be
observable in asylums, where the patients are not directly subjected to it;
but anyone who has lived in the back country, camping out with all sorts
and conditions of oddities, need not be accounted credulous if he holds
the word 'lunatic' to rest on a sounder derivation than 'ill-starred,'
or 'disastrous.'
(*NOTE -- appended to the end of the final chapter:--
The proportional intensity of sunlight to moonlight
is subject to fluctuations, from many causes, and is
therefore variously stated. The highest accepted
ratio is 600,000 to 1.; the lowest 200,000 to 1.
A constutional repugnance to anything savouring of
effect prompted me to indicate the lower proportion.
The error in the text unfortunately escaped
observation. -- T.C.)
But the sub-tropical moonlight--strong, chaste, and beautiful as its
ideal queen--soothes and elevates the well-balanced mind. I took from
my pack-saddle the double-tongued jews-harp I always carry; and, sitting
on the floor with my back against the door-post, unbound the instrument
from its square stick, and began to play. It is not the highest class
of music, I am well aware; and this paragraph is dictated by no shallow impulse
of self-glorification. But I never had opportunity to master any more
complicated instrument; and even if I had, it would n't be much use,
for I know only about three tunes, and these by no means perfectly.
So I played softly and voluptuously, till my scanty repertory was exhausted,
and then drifted into a tender capriccio. I noticed Alf move uneasily
on his bed; but, knowing the effect of music on my own mind, and remembering
Moriarty's and Montgomery's independent panegyrics on the boundary man's skill,
I felt put on my mettle, and performed with a power and feeling which
surprised myself.
"Do you like music?" asked Alf, at length.
"Like it!" I repeated. "I would give one-fourth of the residue of my life
to be a good singer and musician. As it is, I'm not much of a player,
and still less of a vocalist; but I'll give you a song if you like.
How sweetly everything sounds to-night?" Bee-o-buoy-bee-o-buoy-bee-o-buoy----
"Do you like jews-harp music?" interrupted Alf, sitting up on the bed.
"Not if I could play any better instrument--such as the violin, or the
concertina; though I should in any case avoid the piano, for fear of flattening
the ends of my fingers. Still, the jews-harp is a jews-harp; and this is the
very best I could find in the market. Humble as it looks, and humble as it
undeniably is, it has sounded in every nook and corner of Riverina. Last time
I took it out, it was to give a poor, consumptive old blackfellow a treat, and
now, you see, I tune, to please a peasant's ear, the harp a king had loved
to bear." Bee-o-buoy-bee-o-buoy-bee-o-bee-o-bee-o-buoy----
"I'll give you a tune on the violin, if you like," exclaimed my companion,
rising to his feet.
"Thank-you, Alf."
I carefully re-packed my simple instrument, while the boundary man took
from its case a dusky, dark-brown violin. Then he turned down the lamp
till a mere bead of flame showed above the burner, resumed his seat
by the table, and, after some preliminary screwing and testing, began to play.
Query: If the relation of moonlight to insanity is a thing to be derided,
what shall we say of the influence of music on the normal mind? Is it not
equally unaccountable in operation, however indisputable in effect?
Contemplate music from a scientific standpoint--that is, merely as a succession
of sound-waves, conveyed from the instrument to the ear by pulsations
of the atmosphere, or of some other intervening medium. Music is thus reduced
to a series of definite vibrations, a certain number of which constitute
a note. Each separate note has three distinct properties, or attributes.
First, its intensity, or loudness, which is governed by the height, depth,
amplitude--for these amount to the same thing--of the waves produced
in the medium. Second, the timbre, or quality, which is regulated by
the shape, or outline, of these waves. Third the pitch, high or low, which is
controlled by the distance from crest to crest of the sound-waves--or,
as we say, from node to node of the vibrations.
To the most sensitive human ear, the highest limit of audibleness is reached
by sound-waves estimated at twenty-eight-hundredths of an inch from node
to node--equal to 48,000 vibrations per second. The extreme of lowness
to which our sense of hearing is susceptible, has been placed at 75 feet
from node to node--or 15 vibrations per second. This total range
of audibleness covers 12 octaves; running, of course, far above and far below
the domain of music. The extreme highness and lowness of sounds which convey
musical impression are represented, respectively, by 2,000 and by 30
vibrations per second--or by sound--waves, in the former case, of 6 1/2 inches,
and in the latter, of 37 1/2 feet.
Therefore, there are not only sounds which by reason of highness or lowness
are unmusical, but, beyond these, others to which the tympanum of the human ear
is insensible. Nature is alive with such sounds, each carrying its three
distinct properties of intensity, timbre and pitch; but whilst this
muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close us in, we can no more hear them
than we can hear the 'music of the spheres'--apt term for that celestial
harmony of motion which guides the myriad orbs of the Universe in their career
through Space. But, to take an illustration from the visual faculty:
any sound beyond the highest limit of audibleness would resemble a surface
lined so minutely and closely as to appear perfectly plain; whilst a sound
too low in pitch to be heard would be represented by superficial undulations
of land or water so vast in extent that the idea of unevenness would not occur.
We have fairly trustworthy evidence that whales communicate with each other
by notes so low in pitch--by sound-vibrations so long in range, so few
per second--that no human ear can detect them. Bats, on the other hand,
utter calls so high-producing such rapid pulsations--as to be equally
inaudible to us
Unison of musical notes is attained when the respective numbers of pulsations
per second admit a low common-divisor. For instance, the note produced
by 60 vibrations per second will chord with one produced by 120--each node
of the former coinciding with each alternate node of the latter.
60 and 90 will also chord; 60 and 70 will produce discord; 60 and 65,
worse discord. And so on. The science of musical composition lies
in the management of sound-pulsation, and is governed by certain rigid
mathematical laws--which laws the composer need not understand.
Air-movement may, of course, take place without sound-vibration,
for air is only incidentally a sound-conductor. Earth, metal, water,
and especially wood (along the grain), are better media than the atmosphere,
for the transmission of sound. But sound may be transmitted without vibration
of intervening sound-media. The electric current, passing along the
telephone wire, picks up the sound waves at one end, and instantaneously
deposits them, in good order and condition, at the other end--say, a couple
of hundred miles away.
So that the brilliant pianist of the concert hall; the cornet-player
of the "Army" ring; the blind fiddler at the corner; the mother, singing
her angel-donation to sleep; Clancy, thundering forth something concerning
his broken heart, whilst tailing up the stringing cattle; the canary
in its cage; the magpie on the fence--are each setting in motion the complex
machinery of music, and with about equal scientific knowledge of what
they are doing. To the philosophic mind, however, they are not playing
or singing; they are producing and controlling sound-vibrations, arbitrarily
varied in duration and quality; a series of such pulsations constituting
a note; a series of notes constituting an air. These vibrations are diffused
from the instrument or the lips, at a speed varying with temperature, media,
and other conditions; they ripple, spread, percolate, everywhere;
they penetrate and saturate all solids and gases, yet are palpable corporeally
only to the tympanum of the ear, and mechanically (as yet) only to the
diaphragm of the phonograph.
Such, however, is the scientific analysis of music. Spoken language appeals
by the same process, but with very different effect. No one can understand
a language which he has not previously learned, word by word; and the verbal
appeal, however imaginative or spiritual, comes in concrete form--that is,
in the nature of information. Spoken words inform the emotional side
of our nature, through the intellectual; whereas music, operating outwardly
in the same manner, speaks over the head of intellect to an inborn sense
which ceases not to receive as a little child. And herein lies its mystery.
For the music thus impassively anatomised by Science is a voice from
the Unseen, pregnant with meaning beyond translation. A mere ripple
of sound-vibration, called into existence by human touch; a creation,
vanishing from its birth, elusive, irreclaimable as a departing soul,
yet strong to sway heart and hand as the tornado sways the pliant pine.
It is a language peculiar to no period, race, or caste. Ageless and universal,
it raises to highest daring, or suffuses with tenderness, to-day and here,
as once on Argo's deck, or in the halls of Persepolis. Purely material
in origin and analysis, easily explicable in mere physical operation,
its influence is one of the things that are not dreamt of in the philosophy
of Science. Why should a certain psychological effect ensue upon certain
untranslatable sounds being placed in a given relation to each other,
and not when the same sounds are placed in another relation?--and why should
that effect be always upward? Why should the composer be perforce a prophet
of the sphere above earth's murky horizon--the musician his interpreter--
charged with embassy of peace, and fortitude, and new-born ardour,
to the troubled, and weary, and heavy-laden? Has ingenuity never distilled
from music any spirit of evil?
None. Euterpe alone of the Muses defies seduction. Harmony is intrinsically
chaste. There is no secular music; all music is sacred. Whatever the song
the Sirens sang, its music was pure; and no less pure were the notes
which breathed from Nero's lute, whilst the blaze of ten thousand homes
glutted his Imperial lust for spectacle. Divorce the unworthy song,
stay the voluptuous dance, and the music suffers no clinging defilement;
the redeemed melodies, stainless as fresh-fallen snow, may be wedded to songs
of gallant aspiration or angelic sympathy, which shall raise the soul awhile
above earth's sordid infection, disclosing the inextinguishable affinity
of the divine part of man's dual nature with the dream-like possibility
of Eden--purity, and fearless faith, and love unspeakable.
The story of the Thracian lyre soothing the horrors of the underworld,
and melting to relentment its gloomy king--the story of the shepherd-minstrel's
harp chasing the shapeless penumbra of looming insanity from the first
Hebrew brow crowned in Jehovah's despite--the story of the mighty prophet
Elisha, fettered to earth by wrath and scorn till, at his own command,
the music swelled, and his enfranchised spirit rose on its viewless wings
to behold the veiled Future already woven from the tangled skein of
the troubled Present--the thousand-fold story of music's magic and mystery,
stretches back into the forgotten Past, and onward into the imagined Future.
Onward into the fathomless eternity; for though 'the heaven of each is
but what each desires'--though the Aryan heaven be a place of gradation
and precedence, a realm to reign in--though the heaven of the Jewish
apostle-seer burn with the gold and sparkle with the gems dear to his race--
though the paradise of the sun-scorched Arab be dark with shade of evergreen
trees, and cool with ripple of never-failing streams--yet is the universal art
so intertwined with ideal bliss that no heaven of conscious enjoyment
has been pictured by belated humanity but music rings for ever there.
For alas! what else of mundane achievement can fancy conceive as reproduced
in regions of eternal perfection, or transplanted thither? Science is of
the earth; ever bearing sad penalty, in toil of mind and body--and what art,
save music, has man dedicated to Deity-worship, without disappointment
and loss? Doubtfully, Architecture; and for such consecration we have found
no more expressive name than 'frozen music.'
This unknown anchorite's playing was both a mystery and a revelation.
I had never before heard anything to compare with it, nor do I expect ever
to hear the like again. Talent, taste, feeling, were there, all in
superlative degree, and disclosed with the unassuming confidence of power;
whilst long and loving practice in solitude had averted a certain
artificiality which, in the judgment of the uninitiated, generally accompanies
musical skill. His was no triumphant mastery of a complicated and perplexing
score; he was a sympathetic interpreter, a life-breathing, magic-lending
exponent of his composer's revelations, now his own. Solitary practice,
with no one but himself to please, would unavoidably give a distinct character
to his performance, and this character was evident from the first;
it was melancholy--a weary, wistful melancholy, beyond repining or tears,
beyond impatience or passion; it was the involuntary record of a gentle heart
breaking slowly under discipline untempered by one ray of earthly hope.
My own incompetence to identify by name a tune which I spiritually recognise
is, perhaps, the most disgraceful manifestation of my neglected musical
education--at all events, it is the one which causes me most uneasiness.
Experience has warned me never to ask a player for the 'Marseillaise,'
or 'Croppies Lie Down,' or what not; for he is pretty sure to say,
'Why, that's just what I've been giving you,' or words to similar effect.
Alf at last grew tired of my non-committal remarks and replies, and,
with a tact which impressed me more afterward than at the time, named each tune
before and after playing it. For instance, the yearning tenderness
of an exquisitely rendered air would seem to bring back some lost consciousness
of an earlier and happier existence, suffusing my whole being with a pensive
sadness not to be exchanged for any joy. I would feel the notes familiar,
but whether of five years or five million years before, or whether in the body
or out of the body, I could n't tell. Alf, on concluding, would simply murmur,
"Home, Sweet Home," and all would be explained. Then, perhaps, he would say,
"The Last Rose of Summer"; and I would be able to follow him
intelligently right through.
But he did n't confine himself to the comfortable vulgarity of popular airs.
He played selections from Handel, Mozart, Wagner, and I don't know whom;
while the time passed unnoticed by both of us. At length he laid the violin
across his knees, and, after a pause, his voice rose in one of the sweetest
songs ever woven from words. And such a voice!--rich, soft, transcendent,
yet suggesting ungauged resources of enchantment unconsciously held in reserve.
I sat entranced as verse after verse flowed slowly on, every syllable clear
and distinct as in speech; the subtle tyranny of vocal harmony admitting
no intruding thought beyond a regretful sense that the song must end.
But sorrow's sel' wears past, Jean,
And joy's a-comin' fast, Jean,
The joy that's aye to last,
I' the land o' the leal.
A' our freens are gane, Jean,
We've lang been left alane, Jean.
We'll a' meet again
I' the land o' the leal.
"How happy Jean Armour must have been to be with poor Burns, while this
cold world seemed to slip away from his feet, and leave him to rest with his
forgiving Saviour," murmured the boundary man, laying his violin on the table,
whilst he gazed absently into the expiring fire. "That song was composed
by Burns, on his death-bed. Is n't it beautiful?"
"It is one of the most beautiful songs in the language," I replied;
"but Burns is not the author. The song was composed by a woman--
Baroness Nairne. It is not for men to write in that strain. As for
Jean Armour--well, she had a good deal to forgive, too."
"Ah! do you think a woman loves less because she has much to forgive?"
returned Alf sadly, and then added, with sudden interest, "But what difference
do you notice between the poetry of men and women? What is the mark
of women's work?"
"Sincerity," I replied. "Notwithstanding Mrs. Hemans, and others,
you will find that, as a rule, men's poetry is superior to women's,
not only in vigour, but in grace. This is not strange, for grace is,
after all, a display of force, an aspect of strength. But in the quality
of sincerity, woman is a good first. Take an illustration, while I think
of it: Compare the verses of my ancestor, Collins, 'On the Grave of Thompson,'
with Eliza Cook's verses, 'On the Grave of Good'"----
"But Collins was never married," interposed Alf.
"True," I replied pleasantly. "But our family is aristocratic,
and a baton-sinister only sets us off. However, in the two poems I was
speaking of, the subject matter is similar; the pieces are about the same
length and the writers have adopted the same iambic octo-syllable,
with alternate rhymes. Now, my ancestor's poem is not excelled in grace
by anything within the range of our literature; but there's nothing else
in it whatever. Eliza Cook's versification is, in a measure, forced
and imperfect, her language occasionally homely and rugged, but the strong
beating of a sincere, sympathetic heart is audible in every line."
"But your ancestor is the most artificial writer of an artificial school,
and Eliza Cook is the most spontaneous writer of a spontaneous school,"
replied Alf, with the contradictive impulse which amusingly accompanied
his teachableness. "Of course," he added deprecatingly, "I would n't presume
to criticise such a poet as Collins; but you said, yourself"----
"Oh, that's all right," said I generously. "However, though your argument
blunts the force of my illustration, it does n't weaken my contention.
You'll find the distinction I've pointed-out hold good in a greater or less
degree throughout literature; you'll find examples by the thousand,
and of course, exceptions by the dozen. But sing again, Alf, please.
Every minute you're silent, is a minute wasted. Sing anything you like--
only sing."
"I wanted to have a talk," remonstrated Alf. "You were speaking of
the difference between men and women in their literary work. I believe
you're right, though it never struck me before. Now there's another question
that might be worth comparing notes upon. Your remark just brought it
into my mind. Here it is"--he hesitated a moment, then went on, with a certain
constraint in his voice; the constraint we are apt to feel when forced
to plump out the word 'love,' in its narrower sense--"When women love,
they don't know why they love; they just love because they do--so they say,
and we're bound to believe them. But when we love women, why do we love them?
Being more logical, we ought to know. Do we love a woman for her beauty?--
or for her virtues?--or for her accomplishments?--or for what? I fancy,
if we understood ourselves, we should be able to say we loved her for some
particular quality; and the others are--as you might say--Oh, you know! What
quality is it, then, that we love a woman for? There's a problem for you!"
"I can solve it with mathematical certainty, Alf--that is to say, in such
a manner as to convey the impossibility of the solution being otherwise
than according to my finding. When I'm allowed to work-out these things in
my own circuitous way--which is seldom the case--there are few questions
in moral or psychological philosophy which the commission of my years
and art can to no issue of true honour bring. But you have to sing six songs
first. I'll leave the choice of them to yourself."
"Very well," replied Alf readily. "I'll sing the songs as they come
to my mind. Remember your promise, now."
Then, rich, soft, and sweet, rose that exquisite voice in easy volume,
flooding with new and vivid meaning old familiar verses. Here was my
opportunity. I was interested in this boundary man, and resolved to know
his history. Rejecting Alf Jones as an assumed name, Nomenology would be
at fault here; yet knowing already, by a kind of incommunicable intuition,
that he was a Sydney-sider, and had been in some way connected with the
drapery-business, I expected to have my knowledge so supplemented by the
character of his songs, that--counting reasonably on a little further
information, to be gathered before my departure--I should be able to work-out
his biography at least as correctly as biographies are generally worked-out.
For the esoteric side of his history, I counted much on his spontaneous choice
of songs. Man is but a lyre (in both senses of the phonetically-taken word,
unfortunately); and some salient experience, some fire-graven thought,
some clinging hope, is the plectrum which strikes the passive chords.
An old truism will bear expansion here, till it embraces the rule that,
whatever else a man may sing, he always sings himself. But you must know
how to interpret.
I have said that melancholy was the key-note of Alf's playing. Fused
with this, and deeply coloured by it, the tendency of his songs was toward
love, and love alone--chaste, supersensuous, but purely human and exclusive
love. No suggestion of national inspiration; no broad human sympathies;
no echo of the oppressed ones' cry; no stern challenge of wrong; only
a hopeless, undying love, and an unspeakable self-pity. He wasn't even a lyre;
he was a pipe for Fortune's finger to sound what stop she pleased; and,
judging from the tone of his playing, and the selection of his songs,
it had pleased that irresponsible goddess to attune the chords of his being
to a love, pure as heaven, sad as earth, and hopeless as the other place.
Who is she? thought I.
Silence again sank on the faint yellow lamplight of the hut, as the last
syllables of the sixth song died mournfully away--'She is far from the Land
where Her Young Hero Sleeps.' Then the boundary rider lit his pipe,
and slightly moved his seat, placing himself in an easy listening attitude,
with his elbow on the table, and his hand across his face.
"Alf," said I impressively; "you'll certainly find yourself shot into outer
darkness, if you don't alter your hand. You're recklessly transgressing
the lesson set forth in the parable of the Talents. Don't you know it's wrong
to bury yourself here, eating your own life away with melancholia,
seeing that you're gifted as you are? Maestros, and highclass critics,
and other unwholesomely cultured people, might possibly sit on you,
or damn you with faint praise; but you could afford to take chance of that,
for beyond all doubt, the million would idolise you. I'm not looking
at the business aspect of the thing; I'm thinking of the humanising influence
you would exercise, and the happiness you would confer, and, altogether,
of the unmixed good that would lie to your credit, if you made the intended
use of your Lord's money. And here you are, burying it in the earth."
"O, I would n't be here, I suppose, only for the disfigurement of my face,"
he replied, swallowing a sob.
"That's nothing," I interjected, deeply pained by his allusion, and inwardly
soliciting forgiveness without repentance whilst I spoke. "Did the British
think less of Nelson--Did Lady Hamilton think less of him, if it comes
to that--for the loss of his arm and his eye? Why, even the conceited German
students value scars on the face more than academic honours. Believe me,
Alf, while a man merely conducts himself as a man, his scars need n't cost him
a thought; but if he's an artist, as you are, what might otherwise be
a disfigurement becomes the highest claim to respect and sympathy.
It's pure effeminancy to brood over such things, for that's just where we have
the advantage of women. 'A woman's first duty,' says the proverb,
'is to be beautiful.' If Lady Hamilton had been minus an eye and an arm,
she would scarcely have attained her unfortunate celebrity."
The boundary man laid down his pipe, rested his forehead on his arm
upon the table, and for a minute or two sobbed like a child. It was dreadful
to see him. He was worse than Ida, in an argument with Mrs. Beaudesart;
he was as bad as an Australian judge, passing mitigated sentence on some
well-connected criminal.
Presently he rose, and walked unsteadily to the other end of the hut;
his dog, with a low, pathetic whine, following him. Perceiving that he was
off again, I turned up the flame of the lamp, with a view to neutralising
the effect of the moonlight.
"Are you not well, Alf? "
No answer. He was lying on his back on the bed, one arm across his face,
and the other hanging down; whilst his dog, crouched at the bedside,
was silently licking the brown fingers. Then my eye happened to fall
on the American clock over the fire-place. Not that time, surely!
But my watch had beaten the clock by ten minutes.
"I say, Alf; I don't know how to apologise for keeping you up till this time.
It's half-past eleven."
Still no answer. I brought in my possum-rug, and began to spread it
on the floor. Alf had risen, and rolled his blankets back off the bed.
He now took out the mattress of dried grass, and laid it on the floor,
then re-arranged his blankets.
"But I certainly won't rob you of your tick," said I. "One characteristic
of childhood I still retain is the ability to sleep anywhere, like a dog."
"You must take it, if you sleep in this hut," he replied curtly.
"Take that too." He handed me his feather pillow.
"Do you shut your door at nights?" I asked. "Because, if you do,
I'll chain Pup to the fence. He likes to go in and out at his own pleasure;
and, if he found himself shut-out, he might get lost."
"It can stay open to-night," replied Alf.
"Right," said I; and I began to disrobe, as I always do when circumstances
permit. Sleeping with your clothes on is slovenly; sleeping with your spurs on
is, in addition, ruinously destructive to even the strongest bed-clothes.
"By-the-way, Alf," I remarked, as I pulled off my socks; "I was forgetting
your problem. The solution is clear enough to me, but the inquiry opens out
no end of side-issues, each of which must be followed out to its
re-intersection with the main line of argument, if we wish to leave
our conclusion unassailable at any point. The question, then, is:
Do we love a woman for her beauty, for her virtues, or for her accomplishments?
Now let us make sure of our terminology." I paused, but Alf maintained silence.
"In the first place," I continued, kicking off the garment which it is unlawful
even to name, "we must inquire what the personal beauty of woman is,
and wherein it consists. It consists in approximation to a given ideal;
and this ideal is not absolute; it is elastic in respect of races and
civilisations, though each type may be regarded as more or less rigid
within its own domain. Passing over such racial ideals as the Hottentot Venus,
and waiving comparison between the Riverine ideal of fifty years ago
and that of to-day, we have the typical Eve of Flanders as one ideal,
and the typical Eve of Italy as another." Again I paused, but Alf
remained silent.
"Moreover," I continued, settling myself down into the comfortable mattress--
"if no specimen of classic art had survived the dark ages, I question whether
we would implicitly accept as our present ideal the chiselled profile,
in which physiognomists fail to find any special indications of moral
or intellectual excellence. But when we based our modern civilisation
on the relics of classic Greece--directly, or through Rome--we naturally
accepted the ideal of beauty then and there current. Attila or Abderrahman
might have deflected the European standard of beauty into a widely different
ideal, but it was not to be. And we're too prone to accept our classic ideal
as being identified with civilisation and refinement. We should remember
that the flat features of the Coptic ideal looked out on high attainments
in art and science when our Hellenic archetypes, in spite of their chiselled
profiles, were drifting across from the Hindo-Koosh, in the
blanket-and-tomahawk stage of civilisation. Also, the slant-eyed ideal
of China has a decent record. Further still, the German is facially coarser,
and mentally higher, than the Circassian." Again I paused.
"Are n't you sleepy?" asked Alf, gently but significantly.
"I ought to be," I replied, humouring his present caprice, though grieved
to withhold the solution which he had so earnestly desired an hour before.
"Just as the secondary use of the bee is to make honey, and his primary one
to teach us habits of industry, so the secondary use of the hen is to lay eggs,
and her primary one to teach us proper hours. But, unfortunately,
we don't avail ourselves of the lessons written for us in the Book of Nature;
we simply eat the honey and the eggs, allowing our capability and god-like
reason to fust in us, unused. Such is life, Alf." And in thirty seconds
I was asleep.
On awaking, as usual, to listen for bells, I became conscious of something
between a sigh and a groan, outside the hut. This was repeated again
and again, until, actuated by compassion rather than curiosity, I crept
to the door, and looked out. Six or eight yards away, Alf was kneeling
at the fence, his arms on one of the wires, and the poor, disfigured face,
wet with tears, turned westward to the pitiless moon, now just setting.
Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd, thought I; and it then occurred to me
that my own acute, philosophic temperament was one of the things I ought to be
thankful for. But I couldn't feel thankful; I could only feel powerless
and half-resentful in the presence of a distress which seemed proof against
palliative, let alone antidote. At length the moon disappeared;
then the boundary man's forehead sank on his arms, a calm came over him,
and I knew that his shapeless vagaries had taken form in prayer.
So I withdrew to my possum-rug, speculating on the mysterious effect
of a ray of lunar light on grey matter protected by various plies of
apparently well-arranged natural armour.
When I woke again, the early sunlight was streaming through the open door,
and Alf, with a short veil of crape concealing the middle of his face,
was frying chops at the fire. The fit had passed away, and he was
perfectly sane and cheerful.
My first solicitude was for Pup, but I soon saw that he was more than
merely safe. He was lying at the foot of the meat-pole, gorged like
a boa-constrictor, while a pair of half-chewed feet, still attached
to the loosened rope, were all that remained of the turkey. Probably he had
stood on his hind-feet, scratching at the rope, till the hitch,
hurriedly secured in the first place, had come undone. I was too well
accustomed to such things to feel any embarrassment; and as for Alf,
I couldn't help thinking that the loss of his turkey enhanced
the cordiality of his manner.
"Grandest dog I've seen for years," he remarked, as he set the table.
"Do you get many kangaroos with him?"
"Oh, no," I replied; "I never get one, and don't intend to. I never let him
go after anything. It's quite enough, and sometimes more than enough,
for him to do his regular travelling. The hot weather comes very severe
on him; in fact, some days I have to give him a drink every hour, or oftener.
Then he has the hard ground to contend with; and when the rain comes,
the dirt sticks between his toes, and annoys him. Windy weather is bad
for him, too; and frost puts a set on him altogether. Then he's always
swarming with fleas, and in addition to that, the flies have a particular fancy
for him. And, seeing that one half of the population is always plotting
to steal him, and the other half trying to poison him, while, for his own part,
he has a confirmed habit of getting lost, you may be sure we have plenty
to occupy our minds, without thinking about kangaroos. He's considerably
more trouble to me than all my money, but he's worth it. As you say,
he's a fine dog. I don't know what I should do without him."
"I don't know what I should do without my dog, either," replied Alf.
And he related some marvellous stories of the animal's sagacity; to which,
of course, I could n't respond on Pup's behalf.
Then, whilst we saddled-up and rode off together at a walk, the conversation
naturally drifted to horses, until about ten o'clock, when we stopped
at a little wicket-gate in the north-east corner of Alf's ten-by-five paddock.
"You're in the Patagonia Paddock now," said he, as I passed through the gate.
"You'll strike the track in six miles. Can I do anything for you
at the station?" he added, after a pause. "Any message, or anything?"
"By-the-way, yes, Alf, if you'll be so good. When will you be going across?"
"To-day," he replied. "I'm not going round the paddock."
I drew my writing-case from Bunyip's pack; and this was the note I pencilled:--
Wallaby Track, l0/ 2/'84
Dear Jack
When you remarked, yesterday, that the saddle on my horse
was very like one that a red-headed galoot had stolen
from you, you displayed a creditable acuteness, combined
with a still more creditable unsuspiciousness. It was your
saddle once, but it is yours no longer. It is mine.
Demand not how the prize I hold;
It was not given, nor lent, nor sold
Rokeby.
You will find three one-pound notes in this letter.
Please accept the same as compensation for loss of the
article in question. This is all you are likely to get;
for though the saddle is honestly worth about twice that
amount, my conscience now acquits me in the matter;
moreover, my official salary is so judiciously
proportioned to my frugal requirements that I can afford
no more. If you duly receive this money, and at the same
time feel hopelessly mystified concerning the saddle,
a double purpose will be fulfilled.
Yours, in a manner of speaking,
THOMAS COLLINS.
"I'll put this into Jack's hand, if I live," said the boundary man,
with amusing solemnity, as he buttoned his jumper-pocket over the letter.
"Thank you, Alf. And now," I continued, retaining for a moment the hand
he extended in farewell--"take my advice, and, while you're at the station,
give Montgomery notice. Let some more capable boundary man take your place.
You're not worth your damper at this work; for no man's ability is
comprehensive enough to cover musical proficiency such as yours,
and leave the narrowest flap available for anything else. I can see through
you like glass. I could write your biography. And, believe me,
you're no more fitted for this life than you are to preside over a school
of Stoic Philosophy. You're a reed, shaken by the wind. Be a man, Alf.
Turn your face eastward or southward, and challenge Fortune with your violin
and your voice."
He made no reply, but below the edge of the crape mask I saw his lips move,
as he bent his head in unconscious acquiescence.
A quarter of an hour afterward, I looked back to see him and his history
a shapeless speck, far away along the diminishing perspective of the line
of fence. There was something impressive in the recollection that,
during the whole of our companionship, he had never uttered one objectionable
or uncharitable word, nor attempted any witticism respecting Mrs. Beaudesart.