The custom of St. Peter's Orphanage was to allow farmers and local
residents generally to choose an orphan, as they might pick out a
heifer or a colt from a stockyard, and take him away for good--or ill.
I believe the only stipulation was that the orphan could not in any
case be returned to St. Peter's. If the selector found him to be a
damaged or incomplete orphan, that was the selector's own affair, and
he had to put up with his bargain as best he might. The person who
chose an orphan in this way became responsible for the boy's
maintenance while boyhood lasted, and I believe it was not customary
to send out lads under the age of ten or twelve years. After a time
the people who took these lads into their service were, theoretically,
supposed to allow them some small wage, in addition to providing them
with a home.
It was rather a blow to my self-esteem, I remember, to see my
companions being removed from the institution one by one as time ran
on, and to note that nobody appeared to want me. I may have been
somewhat less sturdy than the average run of 'inmates,' but I think we
were all on the spare and lean side. It is possible, however, that in
view of my father's legacy to St. Peter's, the authorities felt it
incumbent upon them to keep me. The departure of a boy always had an
unsettling effect upon me; and when, as happened now and again, an
ex-inmate paid us a visit on a Sunday, possibly with members of the
family with whom he worked, I was filled with yearning interest in the
life of the world outside our island farm and workshop.
But these yearnings of mine were quite vague; mere amorphous
emanations of the mind, partaking of the nature of nostalgia, and
giving birth to nothing in the shape of plans, nor even of definite
desires. Then, suddenly, this vague uneasiness became the dominant
factor in my daily life, as the result of one of those apparently
haphazard chances upon which human progress and development so often
seem to pivot.
In the late afternoon of a visitors' Sunday, as I was making my way
down to the milking-yard with a pail on either arm, my eyes fell upon
the broad shoulders of a man who was leaning contemplatively over the
slip-rails of the yard. The sight of those shoulders sent a thrill
right through me; it touched the marrow of my spine. I, who had
thought myself the most forlorn and friendless of orphans; I had a
friend, and he was here before me. There was no need to see his face.
I knew those shoulders.
'Ted!' I cried. And positively I had to exercise deliberate
self-restraint to prevent myself from rushing at our _Livorno_ friend and
factotum, and flinging my arms about him, as in infantile days I had
been wont to make embracing leaps at Amelia from the kitchen table of
the house off Russell Square.
'God spare me days! Is it you, then, chum?' exclaimed Ted, as he swung
round on his high heels. (In those days the Sunday rig of men like Ted
Reilly comprised much-polished, pointed-toe, elastic-side boots with
very high heels, and voluminously 'bell-bottomed' trousers.) I rattled
questions at him, as peas from a pea-shooter; and when I had laid
aside my buckets he pumped away at my right arm, as though providing
water to put a fire out.
It seemed he had only that week returned to the district, after a long
spell of wandering and desultory working in southern Queensland. No,
he had not had time yet to go out to the _Livorno_, and he had not
heard of my father's death--'Rest his soul for as good an' kindly a
gentleman as ever walked!' And so--'Spare me days!'--I was an orphan
at St. Peter's! The queer thing it was he had taken it into his head
to be wandering that way, an' all, having nothing else to do to pass
the time, like! How I blessed the casual ways of the man, the marked
absence of 'Systum' in his character, that led him to make such
excursions! He squatted beside me on his heels, whilst I, fearing
admonition from above, got to work with my cows, and saw the rest of
the milking gang started.
Passionate disappointment swept across my mind when I learned that he
had been several hours on the island before I saw him, and that it
wanted now but ten minutes to five o'clock, the hour at which the punt
made its last trip with visitors. And in almost the same moment joy
shook and thrilled me as I realised the romantic hazard of our meeting
at all, which was accentuated really by the narrowness of our margin
of time. A matter of minutes and he would be gone. A matter of minutes
and I should never have seen him at all. But that could not have been.
I refused to contemplate a life at St. Peter's in which this
inestimable amelioration (now nearly five minutes old) played no part.
The hopeless emptiness of life at the Orphanage without a meeting with
Ted was something altogether too harrowing to be dwelt upon. It could
not have been borne.
'You'll be here first thing next visitors' Sunday, Ted--first thing?'
I charged him, as he rose in response to the puntman's bell. 'I
couldn't stand it if you didn't come, Ted.'
'Oh, I'll come, right enough, chum. But that's a month. Why, spare me
days, surely I---'
'You'll have to go, Ted. That's his last ring. Sister Agatha's
looking. Don't seem to take much notice o' me, Ted, or she might-- Oh,
good-bye, Ted! Don't seem to be noticing. Good-bye, good-bye!'
My head was back in the cow's flank now, and very hot tears were
running down my cheeks and into the milk-pail. My lip was cut under my
front teeth, and--'Oh, Ted, first thing in the morning--don't forget
the Sunday,' I implored, as he passed away, drawing one hand
caressingly across my shoulder as he went.
In a hazy, golden dream I finished my milking, staggering and swaying
up to the dairy under my two brimming pails, and turned to the
remaining tasks of the evening, longing for bed-time and liberty to
review my amazing good fortune in privacy; thirsting for it, as a
tippler for his liquor. I dared not think about it at all before
bed-time. In some recondite way it seemed that would have been indecent,
an exposure of my new treasure to the vulgar gaze. Now, it was
securely locked away inside me, absolutely hidden. And there it must
remain until, lights being doused, I could draw it out under the
friendly cover of my coarse bed-clothes (after visiting-day sheets had
been removed) and voluptuously abandon myself to it. Meantime, I moved
among my fellows as one having possession of a talisman which raised
him far above the cares and preoccupations of the common herd. I even
looked forward with pleasure to the next day, to Monday! I should have
no breakfast. Sister Agatha would be on duty. I should be pestered,
and probably robbed of dinner, too. But what of that? The coming of
that cheerless and hungry Monday would carry me forward one whole day
toward the next visitors' Sunday, and--Ted.
I had not begun yet to consider in any way the question of how seeing
Ted could help me. Enough for me that I had seen him; that I had a
friend; and that I should see him again. Indeed, even if I had had no
hope of seeing him again, I still should have been thrilled through
and through by the delicious kindliness, the romantic interest of the
thought that, out there in the world beyond Myall Creek, I had a
friend; a free and powerful man, moving about independently among the
citizens of the great world, in which Sister Agatha was a mere nobody;
in which all sorts of delightful things continually happened, in which
task work was no more than one incident in a daily round compact of
other interests, hazards, meetings, and--and of freedom.
It was extraordinary the manner in which ten minutes in the society of
a man, who would have been adjudged by many most uninspiring, had
transformed me. It seemed the mere sight of this simple bushman, in
his 'bell-bottomed' Sunday trousers, had lifted me up from a slough of
hopeless inertia to a plane upon which life was a master musician, and
all my veins the strings from which he drew his magic melodies.