VIII

The freedom of the open road was infinitely delightful to me after the

incessant task work of St. Peter's. And perhaps this, quite as much as

the policy of getting well away from the Myall Creek district, was

responsible for the fact that I held on my way, with never a pause for

work of any sort, through a whole week. My lodging at night cost me

nothing, of course; and the expenditure of something well under a

shilling a day provided a far more generous dietary than that to which

St. Peter's had accustomed me. I began to lay on flesh, and to feel

strength growing in me.

Mere living, the maintenance of existence, has always been cheap and

easy in Australia, where an entirely outdoor life involves no hardship

at any season. This fact has no doubt played an important part in the

development of the Australian national character. The Australian

national character is the English national character of, say, seventy

or eighty years ago, subjected to isolation from all foreign

influences, and to general conditions much easier and milder than

those of England; given unlimited breathing-space, and freed from all

pressure of confined population; cut off also, to a very great extent,

from the influence of tradition and ancient institutions. For the

lover of our British stock and the student of racial problems, I

always think that Australia and its people offer a field of unique

interest.

I did not come upon Jim Gray, the slab-sided one, in Port Lawson, so

was unable to bid him mind his ensanguined p's and q's. Indeed, up to

this point, I sternly repressed my social instincts, and refrained, so

far as might be, from entering into talk with any one. But after the

third day I began to feel that my freedom was assured, and that the

chances of meeting any one from the Orphanage neighbourhood were too

remote to be worth considering. My tramping became then so much the

more enjoyable, for the reason that I chatted with all and sundry who

showed sociable inclinations, and at that time this included

practically every wayfarer one met in rural Australia. (There has been

no great change in this respect.)

'The curse o' this country, my sonny boy,' said one red-bearded

traveller whom I met and walked with for some miles, 'is the near-enough

system. It's a great country, all right; whips o' room, good

land, good climate, an' all the like o' that; but, you mark my words,

the curse of it is the "near-enough" system--that an' the booze, o'

course; but mainly it's the "near-enough" system, from the nail in

your trousers in place of a brace button to the saplin's tied wi'

green-hide in place of a gate, an' the bloomin' agitator in parliament

in place of a gentleman. It's "near-enough" that crabs us, every time.

Look at me! I owned a big store in Kempsey one time. You wouldn't

think it to look at me, would ye? Well, an' I didn't booze, either.

But it was "near-enough" in the accounts, an' "near-enough" in the

buyin', an' "near-enough" in the prices, an'--here I am, barely makin'

wages--worse wages than I paid counter hands--cuttin' sleepers. But I

get me tucker out of it, an' me bitter 'baccy, an' that; an'---well,

it's "near-enough," an' so I stick at it.'

It was on a Sunday morning of delicious brightness and virginal

freshness that I reached the irregularly spreading outskirts of

Dursley, a pretty little town in Gloucester county, the appearance of

which, as I approached it from the highest point of the long ridge

upon whose lower slopes it lay, appealed to me most strongly. Though

still small Dursley is an old town, for Australia. The figures against

it in the gazetteers are not imposing: 'School of Arts, 1800 vols.,

etc.--' But, even in the late 'seventies, it possessed that sort of

smoothness, that comparative trimness and humanised air of comfort,

which only the lapse of years can give. Your new settlement cannot

have this attraction, no matter how prosperous or well laid out; and

it is a quality which must always appeal especially to the native of

an old, much-handled land, such as England. A newcomer from old

Gloucester might have thought Dursley raw and new-looking enough, with

its galvanised iron roofs and water-tanks, and its painted wooden

houses, fences, and verandah posts. But in such a matter my standards

had become largely Australian, no doubt. At all events, as I skirted

the orchard fence of the most outlying residence of Dursley, I

remember saying to myself aloud, as my habit was since I had taken to

the road:

'Now this Dursley is the sort of place I'd like to get a job in. I'd

like to live here, till----'

'H'm! Outer the mouths o' babes and suckerlings! Tssp! Well, I admire

your perspicashon, youngfellermelad, anyhow, an' you can say I said

so.'

At the first sound of these words, apparently launched at me from out

the _Ewigkeit_, I spun round on my bare heels in the loamy sand of the

track, with a moving picture thought in my mind of little gnomes in

pointed caps and leathern jerkins, with diminutive miner's picks in

their hands, and a fancy for the occasional bestowal of magical gifts

upon wandering mortals. The picture was gone in a second, of course;

and I glared at the orchard fence as though that should make it

transparent.

'Higher up, sonny! Think of your arboracious ancestors, an' that

sorter thing.'

This time my ears gave me truer guidance as to the direction from

which the voice came, and, looking up, I saw a man reclining at his

ease upon a 'possum-skin rug, which was spread on a sort of platform

set between the forked branches of a giant Australian cedar, fully

thirty feet from the ground, and higher than the chimneys of the house

near by. The man's head and face seemed to me as round and red as any

apple, and what I could see of his figure suggested at least a

comfortable tendency to stoutness. Whilst not at all the sort of

person who would be described as an old man, or even elderly, the

owner of the mysterious voice and round, red face had clearly passed

that stage at which he would be spoken of by a stranger as a young

man.

'He doesn't look a bit like a tree-climber,' I thought. The girth of

the great cedar prevented my seeing the species of ladder-stairway

which had been built against its far side. I had breakfasted as the

sun rose this fine Sunday morning, and walked no more than a couple of

miles since, so that the majority of Dursley's inhabitants had

probably not begun to think of breakfast yet. My 'arboracious'

gentleman, anyhow, was still in his pyjamas, the pattern and colouring

of which were, for that period, quite remarkably daring and bright.

'Well, young peripatater, I suppose you're wondering now if I've got a

tail, hey? No, sir, I am fundamentally innocent--virginacious, in

fact. But, all the same, if you like to just go on peripatating till

you get to my side gate, and then come straight along to this

arboracious retreat, I will a tale unfold that may appeal greatly to

your matutinatal fancy. So peri along, youngfellermelad, an' I'll come

down to meet ye.'

'All right, sir, I'll come,' I told him. And those were the first

words I spoke to him, though he seemed already to have said a good

deal to me.

By this time I had become seized with the idea that here was what is

called 'a character.' I had, as it were, caught on to the whimsical

oddity of the man, and liked it. Indeed, he would have been a

singularly dull dog who failed to recognise this man's quaint good-humour

as something jolly and kindly and well-meaning. The gentleman

spoke by the aid, not alone of his mouth, but of his small, bright,

twinkling eyes, his twitching, almost hairless brows, his hands and

shoulders, and his whole, rosy, clean-shaved, multitudinously lined,

puckered, and dimpled face. And then his words; the extraordinary

manner in which he twisted and juggled with the longer and less

familiar of them--arboreal, peripatetic, matutinal, and the like! He

had an entirely independent and original way of pronouncing very many

words, and of converting certain phrases, such as 'young fellow my

lad,' into a single word of many syllables. I never met any one who

could so clearly convey hyphens (or dispense with them) by intonation.

Having passed through a small gateway, I skirted the side of a

comfortable-looking house of the spreading, bungalow type, with wide

verandahs; and so, by way of a shaded path, arrived at the foot of the

big cedar, just as the rosy-faced gentleman reached the ground from

his stairway.

'Well-timed, young peripatater,' he said, with a chuckling smile. I

noticed as he reached the earth that he walked with a peculiar,

rolling motion of the body. He certainly was stout. There were no

angles about him anywhere, nothing but rotundity. Withal, and despite

the curious, rotary gait, there was a suggestion of quickness and of

well-balanced lightness about all his movements. His hands and feet I

thought quite remarkably small. There was a short section of the bole

of a large tree, with a flattened base, lying on the ground near the

stairway. The gentleman subsided upon this airily, as though it had

been made of eider-down, and, crossing his pyjamed legs, beamed upon

me, where I stood before him.

'Peripatacious by habit, what might your name be, youngfellermelad?'

I told him, and he repeated it after me, twice, with a distinct

licking of his lips, suggestive of the act of deliberate wine-tasting.

'Good. Yes. Ah! Nicholas Freydon, Nick to his friends, no doubt. Quite

a mellifluant name. Nicholas Freydon. Tssp! Very good. You'd hardly

think now that my name was George Perkins, would you? Don't seem

exactly right, does it?--not Perkins. But that's what it is; and it's

a significacious name, too, in Dursley, let me tell you. But that's

because of the meaning I've given to it. But for that, it's certainly

an unnatural sort of a name for me. Perkins is a name for a thin man,

with a pointed nose, no chin, a wisp of hair over his forehead, and an

apron. Starch, rice, tapioca: a farinatuous name, of course. But there

it is; it happens to be the name of Dursley's Omnigerentual and

Omniferacious Agent, you see; and that's me. Tssp! Wharejercomefrom,

Nickperry, or Peripatacious Nick?'

The idea of using precautions with or attempting to deceive this

rosily rotund 'character' seemed far-fetched and absurd. I not only

told him I came from Myall Creek, but also named the Orphanage.

'Ah! I'm an orphantulatory one myself. You absquatulated, I presume; a

levantular movement at midnight--ran away, hey?'

I admitted it, and Mr. Perkins nodded in a pleased way, as though

discovering an accomplishment in me.

'That's what I did, too; not from an orphanage, but from the paternal

roof and shop. My father was a pedestrialatory specialist, a

shoemaker, in fact, and brought me up for that profession. But I gave

up pedestriality, finding omniferaciousness more in my line. Matter of

temperment, of course--inward, like that, with an awl, you know, or

outward, like that'--he swung his fat arms wide--'as an omnigerentual

man of affairs: an Agent. I'm naturally omnigerentual; my father was

awlicular or gimletular--like a centre-bit, y'know. Tssp! So you like

Dursley, hey? Little town takes your fancy as you see it from the

ridge? Kinduv cuddlesome and umbradewus, isn't it? Yes, I felt that

way myself when I came here looking for pedestrial work--repairs a

speciality, y' know. Whatsorterjobjerwant?'

I found that Mr. Perkins usually wound up his remarks with a question

which, irrespective of its length, was generally made to sound like

one word. The habit affected me as the application of a spur affects a

well-fed and not unwilling steed. I did not resent it, but it made me

jump. On this occasion I explained to the best of my ability that I

wanted whatever sort of job I could get, but preferably one that would

permit of my doing a little work on my own account of an evening.

'Ha! Applicacious and industrial--bettermentatious ambitions, hey?

Quite right. No good sticking to the awlicular if you've anything

of the embraceshunist in you.' He embraced his own ample bosom

with wide-flung arms, as a London cabman might on a frosty

morning. 'Man is naturally multivorous--when he's not a vegetable.

Howjerliketerworkferme?'

'Very much indeed,' said I, rising sharply to the spur.

'H'm! Tssp!' It is not easy to convey in writing any adequate idea of

this 'Tssp' sound. It seemed to be produced by pressing the tongue

against the front teeth, the jaws being closed and the lips parted,

and then sharply closing the lips while withdrawing the tongue inward.

I am enabled to furnish this minutiae by reason of the fact that I

deliberately practised Mr. Perkins's favourite habit before a

looking-glass, to see how it was done. This was on the day after our

first meeting. The habit was subtly characteristic of the man, because it

was so suggestive of gustatory enthusiasm. He was for ever savouring

the taste of life and of words, especially of words.

'Well, as it happeneth, Nickperry, your desire for a job is curiously

synchronacious with my need of a handy lad. My handy lad stopped being

a lad yesterday morning, was married before dinner, and is now away

connubialising--honeymoon. After which he goes into partnership with

his father-in-law--greens an' fish. It's generally a mistake to make

partnerial arrangements with relations, Nickperry--apt to bring about

a combustuous staterthings. So I wanterandyladyersee.'

'Yes, sir.'

'My name is Mister Perkins, Nickperry, not "Sir."'

'Yes, Mr. Perkins.'

'That's better. I know you don't mean to be servileacious, but that

English "sir" is--we don't like it in Australia, Nickperry. You are

from the Old Country, aren't you?'