IX

While I stood in the yard cogitating, a woman whose white-spotted blue

dress was for the most part covered by a very white apron emerged from

the scullery door, holding one hand over her eyes to shade them from

the morning sun.

'Ha!' she said, in a managing tone; 'so you're the new lad, are you?'

I smiled somewhat bashfully, this being a question I was not yet in a

position to answer definitely. 'Well, you're to come into breakfast

anyhow, and be sure and rub your boots on the-- Oh, you haven't any.

Well, rub your feet, then. Come on! I must see to my fire.'

So I followed her through the scullery (a spacious and airy place)

into the kitchen, having first carefully rubbed the dust off my horny

soles on the door-mat. And then, with a boy's ready adaptability in

the matter of meals, I gave a good account of myself behind a plate of

bacon and eggs, with plentiful bread and butter and tea, though I had

broken my fast in the bush an hour or two earlier by polishing off the

sketchy remains of the previous night's supper, washed down by water

from a bright creek.

Domestic capability was the quality most apparent in my breakfast

companion. Her age, I should say, was nearer fifty than forty, but she

was exceedingly well-preserved; and she was called, as she explained

when we sat down, Mrs. Gabbitas. That in itself, I reflected, probably

recommended her warmly to Mr. Perkins. (I guessed in advance that he

might refer to the lady as the Gabbitacious one; and he did, more than

once, in my hearing.)

'Nick Freydon's your name, I'm told. Oh, well, that's all right then.'

Mrs. Gabbitas always spoke, not alone as one having authority, but,

and above all, as one who managed all affairs, things, and people

within her reach, as indeed she did to a great extent. A most capable

and managing woman was Mrs. Gabbitas. I adopted an air of marked

deference towards her, I remember; in part from motives of policy, and

partly too because her capability really impressed me. Before the

bacon was finished we had become quite friendly. I had learned that my

hostess had a full upper set of artificial teeth--quite a distinction

in those days--and that on a certain occasion, I forget now at what

exact period of her life, she had earned undying fame by being called

upon by name, from the pulpit of her chapel, to rise in her place

among the congregation and sing as a solo the anthem beginning: 'How

beautiful upon the mountains!' I gathered now and later that this

remarkable event formed in a sense the pivot upon which Mrs.

Gabbitas's career turned. Having spent all her life in Australia, she

had not been presented at Court; but, alone, unaccompanied, and from

her place among the chapel congregation, she had, in answer to the

minister's call, made one service historic by singing 'How beautiful

upon the mountains!' It was a pious and pleasant memory, and I admit

the story of it did add to her dignity in my eyes. Her false teeth,

though admittedly a distinction at that period, did not precisely add

to her dignity. They were somehow too mobile, too responsive in front

to the forces of gravitation, for a talkative woman.

'Has he given you a name yet?' she asked, as we rose from the table,

giving her head a jerk as she spoke in the direction of the little

pantry, in which I gathered there was a revolving hatch communicating

with the dining-room.

'Well, he called me "Nickperry,"' I said, 'or "Peripatacious Nick."'

'Ah! Yes, that sounds like one of his,' she said, apparently weighing

the name and myself, not without approval. 'There's nothing nor nobody

he hasn't got some name for. He don't miscall me to me face, for I'd

allow no person to do such. But in speakin' to Missis, I've heard him

refer to me with some such nonsensical words as "Gabbitular" and

"Gabbitaceous," or some such rubbish, although no one wouldn't ever

think such a thing of me--nobody but him, that is. But he means no

harm, y'know. There's no more vice in the man than--than in Bella

there.'

She pointed with a wooden spoon toward the open window, through which

we could see the red cow, still contentedly chewing over the memories

of her last meal.

'No, there's no harm in him, or you may be sure I wouldn't be here;

but he's a great character, is Mr. Perkins; a regler case, he is, an'

no mistake. Well, this won't get my kitchen cleaned up--and Sunday

morning, too! You might take out that bucket of ashes for me. You'll

find the heap where they go down in the little yard behind the stable.

There now! That's what comes o' talkin'! If I didden forget to ask a

blessin', an' you an orphan, too, I believe! F'what we've received.

Lor', make us truly thangful cry-say-carmen--Off you go!'

Her eyes were screwed tightly shut while the words of the gabbled

invocation passed her lips, and opened widely as, with its last

mysterious syllables, she dropped the wooden spoon she had been

holding and turned to her fire. The fire was always 'my' fire to

worthy Mrs. Gabbitas. So was the kitchen, for that matter, the

scullery, the pantry, and all the things that therein were. Indeed,

she frequently spoke of 'my' dining-room table, bedrooms, silver,

front hall, windows, and the like. Even the meals served to Mr. and

Mrs. Perkins were, until eaten, 'my dining-room breakfast,' 'my

dining-room tea,' and so forth.

On my way back from the ash-heap with Mrs. Gabbitas's bucket, I almost

collided with Mr. Perkins, as he rolled swiftly and silently into view

from round the end of the rustic pergola, between the house yard and

the big cedar.

'Aha! The Peripatacious one! Tssp! Yes. Mrs. Perkins wants a word with

you, youngfellermelad. Come on this way. She's on the front verandah.'

I found myself involuntarily seeking to emulate Mr. Perkins's

remarkable method of locomotion. But I might as well have sought to

mimic an albatross or a balloon. It was not only his splendid

rotundity which I lacked. The difference went far beyond that. He had

oiled castors running on patent ball bearings, and I was but the

ordinary pedestrian youth.

We found Mrs. Perkins reclining on a couch on the front verandah, a

very gaily coloured dust-rug covering the lower part of her figure.

Like many people in Australia she could hardly be classified socially;

or, perhaps, I should say she did not possess in any marked form the

characteristics which in England are associated with this or that

social grade. If there was nothing of the aristocrat about her, it

might be said that she was not in the least typically 'middle-class';

and I am sure the severest critic would have hesitated to say that

hers were the manners, disposition, or outlook of any 'lower' class.

Yet she had married an itinerant cobbler, or at best a

'pedestrialatory specialist,' and, I am sure, without the smallest

sense of taking a derogatory step.

Mrs. Perkins was the more a revelation to me perhaps, because, as it

happened, Mrs. Gabbitas had said nothing whatever about her. I learned

presently that she had not stood upon her feet for more than ten

years. I was never told the exact nature of the disease from which she

suffered, but I know she had lost permanently the use of her legs, and

that she was not allowed to sit up in a chair for more than an hour at

a time. She never moved anywhere without her husband. He carried her

from one room to another, and at times to different parts of the

garden; always very skilfully, and without the slightest appearance of

exertion. I think it likely she did not weigh more than six or seven

stone. Whenever I saw her carried, there was always draped about her a

gaily coloured rug or large shawl; and she was for ever smiling, or

actually laughing, or making some quaintly humorous little remark. I

wondered sometimes if she had borrowed her playfulness in speech from

her husband, or if he had borrowed from her. I do not think I ever met

a happier pair.

'So here you are!' she said, as we drew near. Her tone suggested that

my coming were the arrival of a very welcome and long-looked-for

guest. 'You see, Nick, I am so lazy that I never go to any one; and

people are so kind that every one comes to me, sooner or later.'

I experienced a desire to do something graceful and chivalrous, and

did nothing, I suspect, but grin awkwardly and shuffle my toes in the

dust. It seemed to me clumsy and rude to stand erect before this

crippled little lady, yet impossible to adopt any other attitude. Mr.

Perkins had subsided, softly as a down cushion, on the edge of the

verandah. But he had no angles, and I had no curves. Mr. Perkins

removed his hat and caressingly polished that glistening orb, his

head, with a large rainbow-hued handkerchief.

'You see, Insect,' he said, beaming upon his wife, 'this young feller,

Nickperry, an orphantual lad, as I explained, has taken a fancy to

Dursley.'

'And you've taken a fancy to Nickperry, I suppose--as you call him.'

The master waved his fat arms to demonstrate his aloofness from

fancies. 'Well, we want a new handy lad,' he said; 'and this

peripatacious young chap comes strolling along just as Bella wants

milking. The Gabbitual one says he's all right.' This is an elaborate

stage aside.

'And how did Bella behave, Nick?' asked the mistress.

'She gave down her milk very nicely--madam,' I said, conscious of a

blush over the matter of addressing this little lady.

'Merely a passing weakness for the servileacious, inherited from

feudalising ancestors,' said Mr. Perkins in an explanatory tone to his

wife. And then to me: 'This is Missis Perkins, Nickperry, not "Madam."

When you want to speak to the Missis, you must always come and find

her, because she don't get about much, do you, Pig-an'-Whistle?'

One of the points of difference between husband and wife, in their

spoken whimsicalities, was that the man had no sense of shame and the

wife had. Mr. Perkins was no respecter of persons. He would have

addressed his wife as 'Blow-fly,' or 'Sossidge,' or 'Piggins,' or by

any of the ridiculous names of the sort that he affected, in the

presence of the queen or his own handy lad. I have overheard similar

expressions of playful ribaldry upon his wife's lips many a time, but

never when I was obviously and officially in their presence.

'And what about pay, Nickperry? How do you stand now on the wages

question? What did the Drooper start on, Whizz?' This last question

was addressed to Mrs. Perkins, whose real name, as I learned later--never

once heard upon her husband's lips--was Isabel.

'Eight shillings,' replied Mrs. Perkins. 'But, of course, wages have

risen a good bit since then.'

'Yes, yes; the gas of the agitators does sometimes serve to inflate

wages; I'll say that for the beggars. What do you say, Nickperry?'

'Well, si--Mister Perkins----'

'He always calls me "Smister." It's a friendly way they have in

England, like the eye-glass and the turned-up trousers.'

In her smile Mrs. Perkins managed to convey merriment, sympathy for me

as the person chaffed, and humorous disapproval of her husband. I

would gladly have worked for her for nothing, for admiration of her

bright eyes.

'I was going to say that I'd be willing to work for whatever you

liked, till you saw whether I suited you or not,' I managed to

explain.

Mrs. Perkins nodded approvingly, and her husband said: 'That's a very

fair offer. You have an engagious way with you, Nickperry; and so

we'll engage you at ten bob and all found for a start. How's that,

Whizkers?'

The mistress assented pleasantly, and added: 'You'll tell Mrs.

Gabbitas to see to the room, George, won't you, and--and to give

Nickperry what he needs? She will understand. I dare say he'd like a

bath.'

I blushed red-hot at this, but Mrs. Perkins kindly refrained from

looking my way, and the interview ended. Then, like a dinghy in the

wake of a galleon, I followed my new employer to the rearward parts of

the establishment.

X

I used to tell Heron, and others who came into my later life, that the

happiest days I ever knew were the 'ten bob a week and all found' days

of my handy-lad time. It was very likely true, I think; though really

it is next door to impossible for any man to tell which period in his

life has been the more happy; and especially is this so in the case of

the type of man who finds more interest in the past than in the

future. The other side of the road always will be the cleaner, the

trees on the far side of the hill will always be the greener, for a

great many of us. Any other time seems preferable before the present

moment, to some folk; and to many, times past are in every sense

superior to anything the future can have to offer.

At all events I was fortunate in the matter of my first situation, and

I was contented in it, being satisfied that it was an excellent means

to an end which I had decided should be very fine indeed.

I have never yet been able to make up my mind whether I am like or

unlike to the majority of mankind in this: with me every phase of

life, every occupation, every effort, almost every act and thought

have been regarded, not upon their own merits or in relation to

themselves, but as means to ends. The ends, it always appeared, would

prove eminently desirable; they would give me my reward. The ends,

once they were attained, would certainly bring me peace, happiness,

fame, health, enjoyment, leisure, monetary gain, or whatever it was

they were designed to bring. I am still uncertain whether or not the

bulk of my fellow-men are similarly constituted; but I am tolerably

certain that one misses a great deal in life as the result of having

this kind of a mind.

To a great extent, for example, one misses whatever may be desirable

in the one moment of time of which we are all sure--the present. One

is not spared the worries and anxieties of the present, because they

seem to have their definite bearing upon the end in view. But the

good, the sound sweetness of the present, when it chances to be there,

so far from cherishing and savouring every fraction of it, we spare it

no more than a hurried smile in passing, as a trifling incident of our

progress toward the grand end which (just then) we have in view. And

how often time proves the end a thing which never actually draws one

breath of life; a mere embryo, a phantom, vaporous product of our own

imagination! So that for one, two, or fifty years, as the case may be,

we have derived no benefit from a number of tangible good things, by

reason of our strenuous pursuit of a shadow.

Is this a peculiar disease, or am I merely noting a characteristic of

my own which is also a characteristic of the age in which I have

lived? I wonder! It is, at all events, a way of living which involves

a rather tragical waste of the good red stuff of life; and, yes, upon

the whole it is a form of restless waste and extravagance which I

fancy is far from rare among the thinking men and women of my time.

They do not travel; they hurry from one place to another. They do not

enjoy; they pursue enjoyment. They do not rest; they arrange very

elaborately, cleverly, strenuously to catch rest--and miss it. Is it

not possible that some of us do not live, but use up all the time at

our disposal in sweating, toiling, scheming preparation for the

particular sort of life we think would suit us; the kind of life we

are aiming at; the end, in fact, in pursuit of which we expend and

exhaust our whole share of life as a means?

Though these things strike me now, it is needless to say they formed

no part of my mental outlook in Dursley.

As is often the case in Australian homes, the colony of out-buildings

upon Mr. Perkins's premises at Dursley was more extensive than the

parent building. Between the main house and the stable, with all its

attendant minor sheds and lean-to, was a long, low-roofed wooden

structure, divided into dairy, wash-house, tool-room, workshop, and,

at the end farthest from the dairy, what is called a 'man's room.'

This latter apartment was now my private sanctuary, entered by nobody

else, unless at my invitation. I grew quite fond of this little room,

which measured eight feet by twelve feet, and had a window looking

down the ridge and across the creek to Dursley in its valley and the

wooded hills beyond.

I had no lamp in my sanctuary, and no fireplace. But the climate of

New South Wales is kindly, and, when one is used to it and one's eyes

are young, the light of a single candle is surprisingly satisfying.

That, at all events, was the light by which I mastered the intricacies

of Pitman's system of shorthand, besides reading most of the volumes

in Dursley's School of Arts library. The reading I accomplished in

bed; the shorthand studies on the top of a packing-case which hailed

originally from a match factory in east London, and doubtless had

contained the curious little cylindrical cardboard boxes of wax

vestas, stamped with a sort of tartan plaid pattern, that are seen so

far as I know only in Australia, though made in England.

At first, like others who have trodden the same thorny path, I went

ahead swimmingly with my shorthand, confining myself to the writing of

it on the packing-case. Being at the end of the current bed-book (it

was Charles Reade's _Griffith Gaunt_) I took my latest masterpiece of

shorthand to bed with me one night, only to find that I could barely

read one word in ten. That was a rather perturbed and unhappy night,

and my progress thereafter was a somewhat slower and more laborious

process.

The habit of rising with the sun was now fairly engrained in me. At

about daybreak then my first duties would take me to the wood-heap,

with axe and saw, and subsequently to the scullery with a heaped

barrow-load of fuel for the day. Arrived there I polished the

household's boots and knives, washed my hands at Mrs. Gabbitas's

immaculate sink--a more scrupulously clean housewife I have yet to

meet--and proceeded to the feeding and milking of Bella. Then I fed

the horse, cleared out the stable, spruced myself up, and so to

breakfast with 'The Gabbitular One.' Three meat meals and two

snacks--'the eleven o'clock' and 'the four o'clock'--were the order of

the day in this establishment. The snacks consisted of tea, which was

also served at every meal, including dinner, and scones and butter; the

meals included always some sort of flesh food and varying adjuncts.

After the lean dietary of St. Peter's this regime seemed almost

startling to me at first, a thing which could hardly be expected to

last. But I adapted myself to it without difficulty or complaint, and

thrived upon it greatly.

During the day my main work was the cultivation of the garden, and the

care of the front lawn, in which Mr. Perkins took a very special pride

and interest; chiefly, I think, because it was the foreground of his

wife's daily outlook. But the routine work of the garden, which always

was demanding a little more time than one had to spare for it, was

subject, of course, to interruptions. I did the churning twice a week,

and Mrs. Gabbitas the 'working' and 'making up' of the butter. And

there were other matters, including occasional errands to the town--a

message for a storekeeper, or a note for the master at his office.

Over the entrance to this office of Mr. Perkins's hung a huge board on

which were boldly painted in red letters on a white ground the name of

George Perkins, and the impressive words--'Dursley's Omnigerentual and

Omniferacious Agent.' It really was a remarkable notice-board, and

residents invariably pointed it out to visitors as one of the sights

of the town. Indeed, Dursley was very proud of its Omniferacious

Agent, who for three successive years now had been also its mayor.

But I gathered from veteran gossips in the town's one street that this

had not always been so. Mr. Perkins had originally arrived in the town

but very slightly more burdened with worldly gear than I was. The

tools of his craft as a cobbler had left room enough in one bundle for

the rest of his property. Dursley did not want a cobbler at that time,

I gathered; so in this respect Mr. Perkins had been less fortunate

than I was; for when I arrived some one had wanted a handy lad.

However, what proved more to the point was the fact that the cobbler

did want Dursley. He stayed long enough to teach the townsfolk to

appreciate him as a cobbler of boots--and of affairs, of threatened

legal proceedings, frayed friendships, and the like. And then, for

some months prior to a general election, the cobbler edited the local

weekly newspaper, and was largely instrumental in returning the

Dursley-born candidate to parliament, in place of an interfering

upstart from Kempsey way. It was not at all a question of politics,

but of Dursley and its interests.

By this time Mr. Perkins had gone some way towards Omniferacious

Agenthood. He had very successfully negotiated sundry sales and

purchases for townsmen, who shared that disinclination to call in

conventionally recognised professional assistance which I have often

noticed in rural Australia. Then he married the daughter of the

newspaper proprietor, whose brother was one of Dursley's leading

storekeepers. Everybody now liked him, except a few crotchety or petty

souls, who, not understanding him, suspected him of ridiculing or

exposing them in some way, and in any case mistrusted his jollity, his

success, and his popularity. Even in the beginning, before the famous

notice-board was thought of, and while Mr. Perkins's work was yet

'awlicular,' I gathered that several old residents had set their faces

firmly against this invincibly merry fellow, and done all they could

to 'keep him in his place.'

And now he bought and sold for them: their houses, land, timber,

fruit, produce, live-stock, and property of every sort and kind,

making a larger income than most of them in the doing of it, and

accomplishing all this purely by force of his personality. He

succeeded where others failed, because so few could help liking him;

and if he failed but seldom in anything he undertook, that was

probably due in part to the fact that he never thought and never spoke

of failure, preferring always as topics more cheerful matters. His

wife had become a permanent invalid very shortly after their marriage,

yet no person could possibly have made the mistake of thinking George

Perkins's marriage a failure. I doubt if a happier married pair could

have been found in Australia.

The meal we called tea (though we drank tea at every other meal) was

partaken of by Mrs. Gabbitas and myself at half-past five, and by Mr.

and Mrs. Perkins at six o'clock. I was given to understand at the

outset that no work was expected of me after tea. Once or twice of a

summer evening I went out into the garden to perform some trifling

task I had overlooked, and upon being seen there by Mr. Perkins was

saluted with some such remark as:

'Stealing time, Nickperry, stealing time! You an' me'll fall out, my

friend, if you can't manage to keep proper working hours.

Applicatiousness is all very well, but stealing time after tea is

gluttish and greedular, and must be put down with an iron hand, with

an iron hand, Nickperry. Tssp! Howzashorthandgetnon?'

Before expelling the last interrogative omnibus word, he would clench

one fat fist and knead the air downward with it, to illustrate the

process of putting down greediness with an iron hand.

I saw comparatively little of him, of course, owing to his

preoccupation with business, his own and that of Dursley and most of

its inhabitants; but we were excellent good friends, and it was rarely

that he missed his Sunday morning walk round the whole place with me,

when my week's work would be passed in more or less humorous review,

and the programme for the next week discussed. After this tour of

inspection I generally went to church, and the afternoon I almost

invariably spent in my room over the packing-case. That is a period

which many people give to letter-writing, and it is queer to recall

the fact that, so far as I can remember, I had written only two

letters in my life up to this period--one to a Sydney bookseller,

whose address I got from Mr. Perkins, and one to Mr. Rawlence, the

Sydney artist, to tell him of my present position, and to say that I

had made a start upon shorthand. His kindly and encouraging reply was,

I think, the first letter I ever received through the post. But I now

began to write letters by the score, addressed to imaginary

correspondents, and based in style upon my studies of correspondence

in various books. These epistles, however, all ended their brief

careers under the kindling wood in Mrs. Gabbitas's kitchen grate.

'Applicatious and industrial, with bettermentatious ambitions,' Mr.

Perkins had said of me within a few moments of our first meeting, and

at this period I think I justified the sense of his comment. My daily

work was pleasant enough, of course, healthy and not fatiguing. Still,

it was perhaps odd in a youth of my age that I should have had no

desire for recreation or amusement. My study of shorthand did not

interest me in the faintest degree; but I was greatly interested by my

growing mastery of it, because I thought of the mastery of shorthand,

as Mr. Rawlence had described it, as a very valuable means to an end,

to various ends. I thought of it, in short, as the key which should

open Sydney's doors to me; for, happy as my life was in Dursley, I

never regarded it in any other light than as a useful preliminary to

the next stage of my career. And that again, from all I have since

been told, was hardly an attitude proper to my years.

It certainly was not due to any conscious discontent with my life and

work in Dursley. I must suppose it was the beginning of that restless

temperamental itch which all through life has made me regard

everything I did as no more than the necessary prelude to some more or

less vague thing I meant presently to do, which should be much better

worth doing. A praiseworthy doctrine I have heard it called. It may

be. But I would like to be able to warn all and sundry who cultivate

or inculcate it in this present century, that the margin between it

and the wastefully extravagant body and soul-devouring restlessness

which I sometimes think the key-note of our time--the margin is a

perilously slender one.