“Seems to me that honest, hard-working men seem to accumulate
the heaviest swags of trouble in this world.”--Steelman.
Told by Mitchell's Mate.
We were coming back from West Australia, steerage--Mitchell, the Oracle,
and I. I had gone over saloon, with a few pounds in my pocket. Mitchell
said this was a great mistake--I should have gone over steerage with
nothing but the clothes I stood upright in, and come back saloon with a
pile. He said it was a very common mistake that men made, but, as far
as his experience went, there always seemed to be a deep-rooted popular
prejudice in favour of going away from home with a few pounds in one's
pocket and coming back stumped; at least amongst rovers and vagabonds
like ourselves--it wasn't so generally popular or admired at home, or in
the places we came back to, as it was in the places we went to. Anyway
it went, there wasn't the slightest doubt that our nearest and dearest
friends were, as a rule, in favour of our taking away as little as we
could possibly manage with, and coming back with a pile, whether we came
back saloon or not; and that ought to settle the matter as far as any
chap that had the slightest consideration for his friends or family was
concerned.
There was a good deal of misery, underneath, coming home in that
steerage. One man had had his hand crushed and amputated out Coolgardie
way, and the stump had mortified, and he was being sent to Melbourne by
his mates. Some had lost their money, some a couple of years of their
life, some their souls; but none seemed to have lost the heart to
call up the quiet grin that southern rovers, vagabonds, travellers for
“graft” or fortune, and professional wanderers wear in front of it
all. Except one man--an elderly eastern digger--he had lost his wife in
Sydney while he was away.
They sent him a wire to the Boulder Soak, or somewhere out back of
White Feather, to say that his wife was seriously ill; but the wire went
wrong, somehow, after the manner of telegrams not connected with mining,
on the lines of “the Western”. They sent him a wire to say that his wife
was dead, and that reached him all right--only a week late.
I can imagine it. He got the message at dinner-time, or when they came
back to the camp. His mate wanted him to sit in the shade, or lie in
the tent, while he got the billy boiled. “You must brace up and pull
yourself together, Tom, for the sake of the youngsters.” And Tom for
long intervals goes walking up and down, up and down, by the camp--under
the brassy sky or the gloaming--under the brilliant star-clusters that
hang over the desert plain, but never raising his eyes to them; kicking
a tuft of grass or a hole in the sand now and then, and seeming to watch
the progress of the track he is tramping out. The wife of twenty years
was with him--though two thousand miles away--till that message came.
I can imagine Tome sitting with his mates round the billy, they talking
in quiet, subdued tones about the track, the departure of coaches,
trains and boats--arranging for Tom's journey East, and the working of
the claim in his absence. Or Tom lying on his back in his bunk, with his
hands under his head and his eyes fixed on the calico above--thinking,
thinking, thinking. Thinking, with a touch of his boyhood's faith
perhaps; or wondering what he had done in his long, hard-working married
life, that God should do this thing to him now, of all times.
“You'd best take what money we have in the camp, Tom; you'll want it
all ag'in' the time you get back from Sydney, and we can fix it up
arterwards.... There's a couple o' clean shirts o' mine--you'd best take
'em--you'll want 'em on the voyage.... You might as well take them there
new pants o' mine, they'll only dry-rot out here--and the coat, too,
if you like--it's too small for me, anyway. You won't have any time in
Perth, and you'll want some decent togs to land with in Sydney.”
. . . . .
“I wouldn't 'a' cared so much if I'd 'a' seen the last of her,” he said,
in a quiet, patient voice, to us one night by the rail. “I would 'a'
liked to have seen the last of her.”
“Have you been long in the West?”
“Over two years. I made up to take a run across last Christmas, and have
a look at 'em. But I couldn't very well get away when 'exemption-time'
came. I didn't like to leave the claim.”
“Do any good over there?”
“Well, things brightened up a bit the last month or two. I had a hard
pull at first; landed without a penny, and had to send back every
shilling I could rake up to get things straightened up a bit at home.
Then the eldest boy fell ill, and then the baby. I'd reckoned on
bringing 'em over to Perth or Coolgardie when the cool weather came, and
having them somewheres near me, where I could go and have a look at 'em
now and then, and look after them.”
“Going back to the West again?”
“Oh, yes. I must go for the sake of the youngsters. But I don't seem
to have much heart in it.” He smoked awhile. “Over twenty years we
struggled along together--the missus and me--and it seems hard that I
couldn't see the last of her. It's rough on a man.”
“The world is damned rough on a man sometimes,” said Mitchell, “most
especially when he least deserves it.”
The digger crossed his arms on the rail like an old “cocky” at the fence
in the cool of the evening, yarning with an old crony.
“Mor'n twenty years she stuck to me and struggled along by my side. She
never give in. I'll swear she was on her feet till the last, with
her sleeves tucked up--bustlin' round.... And just when things was
brightening and I saw a chance of giving her a bit of a rest and comfort
for the end of her life.... I thought of it all only t'other week when
things was clearing up ahead; and the last 'order' I sent over I set
to work and wrote her a long letter, putting all the good news and
encouragement I could think of into it. I thought how that letter would
brighten up things at home, and how she'd read it round. I thought of
lots of things that a man never gets time to think of while his nose is
kept to the grindstone. And she was dead and in her grave, and I never
knowed it.”
Mitchell dug his elbow into my ribs and made signs for the matches to
light his pipe.
“An' yer never knowed,” reflected the Oracle.
“But I always had an idea when there was trouble at home,” the digger
went on presently, in his quiet, patient tone. “I always knowed; I
always had a kind of feeling that way--I felt it--no matter how far I
was away. When the youngsters was sick I knowed it, and I expected the
letter that come. About a fortnight ago I had a feeling that way when
the wife was ill. The very stars out there on the desert by the Boulder
Soak seemed to say: 'There's trouble at home. Go home. There's trouble
at home.' But I never dreamed what that trouble was. One night I did
make up my mind to start in the morning, but when the morning came I
hadn't an excuse, and was ashamed to tell my mates the truth. They might
have thought I was going ratty, like a good many go out there.” Then he
broke off with a sort of laugh, as if it just struck him that we
might think he was a bit off his head, or that his talk was getting
uncomfortable for us. “Curious, ain't it?” he said.
“Reminds me of a case I knowed,----” commenced the Oracle, after a
pause.
I could have pitched him overboard; but that was a mistake. He and the
old digger sat on the for'ard hatch half the night yarning, mostly about
queer starts, and rum go's, and curious cases the Oracle had knowed,
and I think the Oracle did him a lot of good somehow, for he seemed more
cheerful in the morning.
We were overcrowded in the steerage, but Mitchell managed to give up his
berth to the old digger without letting him know it. Most of the chaps
seemed anxious to make a place at the first table and pass the first
helpings of the dishes to the “old cove that had lost his missus.”
They all seemed to forget him as we entered the Heads; they had their
own troubles to attend to. They were in the shadow of the shame of
coming back hard up, and the grins began to grow faint and sickly. But I
didn't forget him. I wish sometimes that I didn't take so much notice of
things.
There was no mistaking them--the little group that stood apart near the
end of the wharf, dressed in cheap black. There was the eldest single
sister--thin, pale, and haggard-looking--that had had all the hard
worry in the family till her temper was spoilt, as you could see by the
peevish, irritable lines in her face. She had to be the mother of them
all now, and had never known, perhaps, what it was to be a girl or a
sweetheart. She gave a hard, mechanical sort of smile when she saw her
father, and then stood looking at the boat in a vacant, hopeless sort of
way. There was the baby, that he saw now for the first time, crowing and
jumping at the sight of the boat coming in; there was the eldest boy,
looking awkward and out of place in his new slop-suit of black, shifting
round uneasily, and looking anywhere but at his father. But the little
girl was the worst, and a pretty little girl she was, too; she never
took her streaming eyes off her father's face the whole time. You could
see that her little heart was bursting, and with pity for him. They were
too far apart to speak to each other as yet. The boat seemed a cruel
long long time swinging alongside--I wished they'd hurry up. He'd
brought his traps up early, and laid 'em on the deck under the rail; he
stood very quiet with his hands behind him, looking at his children. He
had a strong, square, workman's face, but I could see his chin and mouth
quivering under the stubbly, iron-grey beard, and the lump working in
his throat; and one strong hand gripped the other very tight behind, but
his eyelids never quivered--only his eyes seemed to grow more and more
sad and lonesome. These are the sort of long, cruel moments when a man
sits or stands very tight and quiet and calm-looking, with his whole
past life going whirling through his brain, year after year, and over
and over again. Just as the digger seemed about to speak to them he met
the brimming eyes of his little girl turned up to his face. He looked
at her for a moment, and then turned suddenly and went below as if
pretending to go down for his things. I noticed that Mitchell--who
hadn't seemed to be noticing anything in particular--followed him down.
When they came on deck again we were right alongside.
“'Ello, Nell!” said the digger to the eldest daughter.
“'Ello, father!” she said, with a sort of gasp, but trying to smile.
“'Ello, Jack, how are you getting on?”
“All right, father,” said the boy, brightening up, and seeming greatly
relieved.
He looked down at the little girl with a smile that I can't describe,
but didn't speak to her. She still stood with quivering chin and mouth
and great brimming eyes upturned, full of such pity as I never saw
before in a child-face--pity for him.
“You can get ashore now,” said Mitchell; “see, they've got the gangway
out aft.”
Presently I saw Mitchell with the portmanteau in his hand, and the baby
on his arm, steering them away to a quiet corner of the shed at the top
of the wharf. The digger had the little girl in his arms, and both hers
were round his neck, and her face hidden on his shoulder.
When Mitchell came back, he leant on the rail for a while by my side, as
if it was a boundary fence out back, and there was no hurry to break up
camp and make a start.
“What did you follow him below that time for, Mitchell?” I asked
presently, for want of something better to say.
Mitchell looked at me out of the corners of his eyes.
“I wanted to score a drink!” he said. “I thought he wanted one and
wouldn't like to be a Jimmy Woodser.”