Selected Stories (58 page)

“And after the shearing season Bogan’s wife turned up in Bourke—”

“Bogan’s wife!” I exclaimed. “Why, I never knew Bogan was married.”

“Neither did anyone else,” said Mitchell. “But he was. Perhaps that was what accounted for Bogan. Sometimes, in his sober moods, I used to have an idea that there must have been something behind the Bogan to account for him. Perhaps he got trapped—or got married and found out that he’d made a mistake—which is about the worst thing a man can find out—”

“Except that his wife made the mistake, Mitchell,” said Tom Hall.

“Or that both did,” reflected Mitchell. “Ah, well!—never mind—Bogan had been married two or three years. Maybe he got married when he was on the spree—I knew that he used to send money to someone in Sydney and I suppose it was her. Anyway, she turned up after he was blind. She was a hard-looking woman—just the sort that might have kept a third-rate pub or a sly-grog shop. But you can’t judge between husband and wife, unless you’ve lived in the same house with them—and under the same roofs with their parents right back to Adam for that matter. Anyway, she stuck to Bogan all right; she took a little two-roomed cottage and made him comfortable—she’s got a sewing-machine and a mangle and takes in washing and sewing. She brought a carroty-headed youngster with her, and the first time I saw Bogan sitting on the verandah with that youngster on his knee I thought it was a good thing that he was blind.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because the youngster isn’t his,” said Mitchell.

“How do you know that?”

“By the look of it—and by the look on her face, once, when she caught me squinting from the kid’s face to Bogan’s.”

“And whose was it?” I asked, without thinking.

“How am I to know?” said Mitchell. “It might be yours for all I know—it’s ugly enough, and you never had any taste in women. But you mustn’t speak of that in Bourke. But there’s another youngster coming, and I’ll swear that’ll be Bogan’s all right.

“Acurious thing about Bogan is that he’s begun to be fidgety about his personal appearance—and you know he wasn’t a dood. He wears a collar now, and polishes his boots; he wears elastic sides, and polishes ’em himself—the only thing is that he blackens over the elastic. He can do many things for himself, and he’s proud of it. He says he can see many things that he couldn’t see when he had his eyes. You seldom hear him swear, save in a friendly way; he seems much gentler, but he reckons he would stand a show with Barcoo-Rot even now, if Barcoo would stand up in front of him and keep yelling—”

“By the way,” I asked, “how did Bogan lose the sight of his other eye?”

“Sleeping out in the rain when he was drunk,” said Mitchell. “He got a cold in his eye.” Then he asked, suddenly:

“Did you ever see a blind man cry?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, I have,” said Mitchell. “You know Bogan wears goggles to hide his eyes—his wife made him do that. The chaps often used to drop round and have a yarn with Bogan and cheer him up, and one evening I was sitting smoking with him, and yarning about old times, when he got very quiet all of a sudden, and I saw a tear drop from under one of his shutters and roll down his cheek. It wasn’t the eye he lost saving Campbell—it was the old wall-eye he used to use in the days before he was called ‘One-eyed Bogan’. I suppose he thought it was dark and that I couldn’t see his face. (There’s a good many people in this world who think you
can’t see because they can’t.) It made me feel like I used to feel sometimes in the days when I felt things——”

“Come on, Mitchell,” said Tom Hall, “you’ve had enough beer.”

“I think I have,” said Mitchell. “Besides, I promised to send a wire to Jake Boreham to tell him that his mother’s dead. Jake’s shearing at West-o’-Sunday; shearing won’t be over for three or four weeks’ and Jake wants an excuse to get away without offending old Baldy and come down and have a fly round with us before the holidays are over.”

Down at the telegraph-office Mitchell took a form and filled it in very carefully: “Jacob Boreham. West-o’-Sunday Station. Bourke. Come home at once. Mother is dead. In terrible trouble. Father dying.—MARY BOREHAM.”

“I think that will do,” said Mitchell. “It ought to satisfy Baldy, and it won’t give Jake too much of a shock, because he hasn’t got a sister or sister-in-law, and his father and mother’s been dead over ten years.”

“Now, if I was running a theatre,” said Mitchell, as we left the office, “I’d give five pounds a night for the face Jake’ll have on him when he takes that telegram to Baldy Thompson.”

MITCHELL and I rolled up our swags after New Year and started to tramp west. It had been a very bad season after a long drought. Old Baldy Thompson had only shorn a few bales of grass seed and burrs, so he said, and thought of taking the track himself; but we hoped to get on shearing stragglers at West-o’-Sunday or one of the stations of the Hungerford track.

It was very hot weather, so we started after sunset, intending to travel all night. We crossed the big billabong, and were ploughing through the dust and sand towards West Bourke, when a buggy full of city girls and swells passed by. They were part of a theatrical company on tour in the Back-Blocks, and some local Johnnies. They’d been driven out to see an artesian bore, or wool-shed, or something. The horses swerved, and jerked a little squawk out of one of the girls. Then another said:

“Ow-w! Two old swaggies. He! he! he!”

I glanced at Mitchell to see if he was hit, and caught his head down; but he pulled himself up and pretended to hitch his swag into an easier position.

About a hundred yards further on he gave me a side look and said:

“Did that touch you, Harry?”

“No,” I said, and I laughed.

“You see,” reflected Mitchell, “they’re more to be pitied than blamed. It’s their ignorance. In the first place, we’re not two old tramps, as they think. We are professional shearers; and the Australian shearers are about the most independent and intelligent class of men in the world. We’ve got more genius in one of our little fingers than there is in the whole of that waggonette-load of diddle-daddle and fiddle-faddle and giggles. Their intellects are on a level with the rotten dramas they travel with, and their lives about as false. They are slaves to the public, and their home is the pub parlour, with sickly, senseless Johnnies to shout suppers and drink for them and lend their
men money. If one of those girls is above the average, how she must despise those Johnnies—and the life! She must feel a greater contempt for them than the private barmaid does for the boozer she cleans out. He gets his drink and some enjoyment, anyhow. And how she must loathe the life she leads! And what’s the end of it as often as not? I remember once, when I was a boy, I was walking out with two aunts of mine—they’re both dead now, God rest their fussy, innocent old souls!—and one of ’em said suddenly, ‘Look! Quick, Jack! There’s Maggie So-and-So, the great actress.’ And I looked and saw a woman training vines in a porch. It seemed like seeing an angel to me, and I never forgot her as she was then. The diggers used to go miles out of town to meet the coach that brought her, and take the horses out and drag it in, and throw gold in her lap, and worship her.

“The last time I was in Sydney I saw her sitting in the back parlour of a third-rate pub. She was dying of dropsy and couldn’t move from her chair. She showed me a portrait of herself as I remembered her, and talked quite seriously about going on the stage again.

“Now, our home is about two thousand miles wide, and the world’s our stage. If the worst comes to the worst we can always get tucker and wood and water for nothing. If we’re camping at a job in a tent there’s no house-cleaning to bother us. All we’ve got to do when the camp gets too dirty is to shift the tent to a fresh place. We’ve got time to think and—we’re free.

“But then, agen,” he reflected, “there’s the world’s point of view to be considered. Some day I might be flashing past in a buggy or saloon carriage—or the chances are it will be you—and you might look out the window and see an old swaggy tramping along in the dust, or camped under a strip of calico in the rain in the scrub. (And it might be me—old Mitchell—that really wrote your books, only the world won’t know it.) And then you’ll realise what a wretched, miserable life it was. We never realise the miseries of life till we look back—the mistakes and miseries that had to be and couldn’t be helped. It’s all luck—luck and chance.”

But those girls seemed to have gravelled Mitchell, and he didn’t seem able to talk himself round. He tramped on, brooding for a while, and then suddenly he said:

“Look here, Harry! Those girls are giving a dance to-night, and if I liked to go back to Bourke and tog up and go to the dance I could pick out the prettiest, dance with her all the evening, and take her for a stroll afterwards, old tramp as they thought me. I’ve lived.—But it wouldn’t be worth my while now.”

I’d seen Jack in a mood like this before, and thought it best to say nothing. Perhaps the terrible heat had affected him a little. We walked on in silence until we came to the next billabong. “Best boil the billy here, Harry,” said Mitchell, “and have some tea before we go any further.”

I got some sticks together and made a fire and put the billy on. The country looked wretched—like the ghost of a burnt-out land—in the moonlight. The banks of the creek were like ashes, the thin, gnarled gum-bush seemed dry-rotting fast, and in many places the surface of the ground was cracked in squares where it had shrunk in the drought. In the bed of the creek was a narrow gutter of water that looked like bad milk.

Mitchell sat on his swag, with his pint of tea on the ground by his foot, and chewed his pipe.

“What’s up, Jack?” I asked. “Have you got the blues?”

“Well, yes, Harry,” he said. “I’m generally dull the first day on the track. The first day is generally the worst, anywhere or any time—except, perhaps, when you’re married…I got—Well, I got thinking of the time when a woman’s word could have hurt me.”

Just then one of the “travellers” who were camped a bit up the creek suddenly commenced to sing. It was a song called “The Shearer’s Dream”, and I suppose the buggy of girls, or the conversation they started, reminded him of it. He started his verses and most of his lines with a howl; and there were unexpected howls all through the song, and it wailed off, just as unexpectedly, in places where there was no pathos that I could see:

Oh, I dreamt I shore in a shearers’ shed, and it was a dream of joy, For every one of the rouseabouts was a girl dressed up as a boy—Dressed up like a page in a pantomime, and the prettiest ever seen—They had flaxen hair, they had coal-black hair—and every shade between.

“Every” with sudden and great energy, a long drop on to “shade”, and a wail of intense sadness and regret running on into “between”, the dirge reaching its wailsomest in the “tween” in every case.

The shed was cooled by electric fans that was over every “shoot”; The pens was of polished ma-ho-gany, and ev’rything else to suit; The huts was fixed with spring-mattresses, and the tucker was simply grand, And every night by the biller-bong we danced to a German band.

“Chorus, boys!”

There was short, plump girls, there was tall, slim girls, and the handsomest ever seen—They was four-foot-five, they was six-foot high, and hevery size between.

Our pay was the wool on the jumbucks’ backs, so we shore till all was blue—The sheep was washed afore they was shore (and the rams was scented too); And we all of us cried when the shed cut out, in spite of the long, hot days, For hevery hour them girls waltzed in with whisky and beer on tr-a-a-a-ys!

“Chorus! you——!”

They had kind grey eyes, they had coal-black eyes, and the grandest ever seen—They had plump pink hands, they had slim white hands, and hevery shape be-tw-e-e-n. There was three of them girls to every chap, and as jealous as they could be—

“Ow! you——”

The singer’s voice or memory seemed suddenly to have failed him at this point, but whether his mates hit him on the back of the head with a tomahawk, or only choked him, I do not know. Mitchell was inclined to think, from the sound of it, that they choked him.

THIS promises to be a rambling sort of sketch; or it may turn out to be a short story—or several short stories. Or a suggestion for some, or even for a novel. It might be the beginning of a series of sketches. I don’t know definitely where it will end, but I’m sure it will end somewhere. That depends on the eccentricities, not of genius, but of Australian editors.

Within a sling-shot of the
Bulletin
office, in a northerly direction, lies a waterside lane which I shall call Elder Man’s Lane, because the one flagged footpath is so narrow that it is impossible for two ordinary men to pass each other on it abreast, though two “slabs” might sidle past face to face (they might do it back to back, but that wouldn’t be polite), and because it seems the unwritten law of the lane that the feelingly younger wanderer therein should step off into the dust or mud and give way to the seemingly older one, irrespective of size or dress. The Lane is unmade, as yet, and
can
be muddy or dusty when it likes.

The Lane runs from George Street North to nowhere in particular as yet. You can climb out of it by a green hill if you think you’re wanted at the other end (there’s an old pub on top of that hill, and many ways of escape); but it leads to a dingy North Shore Horse Ferry, and so may be said to lead to all the Northern Suburbs, and even to Manly and Hornsby. For the matter of that, it might even be said to lead to Europe, Asia, Africa and America, and a good many of the South Sea Islands; for there’s a short side branch, or bottomless pocket, a step down to the wharves where the principal liners lie. Agood deal of our raw material goes out of the country that way, so “bottomless pocket” fits the case. The Lane itself is boomerang-shaped, so you can’t see what’s at the end of it till you get there. It’s like Middle Age Lane in this respect. I know of no other lane less frequented by ordinary folk, or the aristocracy, or the demi-monde; though the dead pass through it often. Also the dead beat, and those who wish they were dead—or drunk.

Occasionally, about nine o’clock on a fine morning, you’ll see (or observe) a fairly well dressed and apparently respectable citizen and business man coming over on the Horse Ferry, or in Elder Man’s Lane. He holds himself aloof, paces slowly, even nervously, up and down, or resolutely surveys the beautiful Harbour with his back to the World and all its paltrinesses; yet he seems to have a definite immediate object in view. And you may be almost sure (1) that that man has been in very recent trouble, extending over breakfast this morning; (2) that he has eaten little or no breakfast; and (3) that the definite object is to get a good whisky and soda just as soon as he reaches a bar he knows.

I’ll tell you how it was.

There’s my friend Johnson—or, rather, there was. Better put it all in the past tense, for various reasons. Johnson lived on the Shore and was employed in a Government office where he was indispensable. Say, draughtsman or something. He was exceedingly clever in his art or profession, and so, of course, he drank too much. When his “week” came to him—generally at the end of the month—he’d leave the office with his screw, have a few drinks with the fellows at the Exchange or Empire; and then, as repeatedly instructed right out the gate that morning, he’d conscientiously take a tram right back and down to Anthony Hordern’s, with a finger and thumb constantly and anxiously feeling a half-sheet of cheap, closely-folded note-paper, in his upper, left-hand waist-coat pocket, which he had been constantly losing, and hunting for, and finding again all day, and which would contain something as follows, written in a feminine hand that was characteristic:

1 yard Black Satin (for Piping)

3/4 yard Fancy Cream Lace (for Yoke)

2 doz. Black Satin Buttons

1 yard cream gipuire edging

2 reels of silk to match material

2 doz. Pat. Fasteners

2 cards hooks and eyes

1 set collar supports

Be sure you go to Anthony Hordern’s and don’t forget what I told you. And don’t lose this.

Then Johnson would have another drink, opposite Anthony Hordern’s, to clear his brain and brace him up; and then a hurried, blurred recollection of carved lifts, and vistas of varnish and everything a woman knows, and lovely, graceful, saint-like shop girls (or sales ladies), and a smiling, sympathetic shop-walker, taken into his (Johnson’s) confidence, and asked if he was a married man, and informed, in return that he (Johnson) was a married man too, and shaken hands with, with the exaggerated warmth of affected sympathy—and shown that list. Then various stairs and different departments. The shop-walkers and salesmen on different floors and behind different counters would stick to Johnson like a brother and see him through. Perhaps they were mostly married men too. Then, after a friendly and jocular (on Johnson’s part) interval, he’d be conducted gently to the right lift and bowed in, after the last shop-walker had smilingly declined an invitation to come out and have a drink. And Johnson would find himself on the level again, with his bag half full of very soft and perishable feminine rubbish in brown tissue paper parcels—and in urgent need of another whisky.

Then Johnson would charge two Circular Quay trams, catch a third, and cling to it tooth and nail, possibly with an instinctive idea of putting as much of the jumbled city between him and Anthony Hordern’s as he could in the shortest possible time, and regaining the beloved vicinity of Circular Quay, where he could feel safe. He’d drop off short of the Quay, have another drink, at the
Bulletin’s
own pub, and then go into the shop of another friend of mine, Jack Sotero the Greek hairdresser, to have a shave and a trim—and a shampoo, maybe, to freshen him up, and to collect his thoughts. (It’s all right! We’ll get back to the Horse Ferry and Elder Man’s Lane soon enough.) And he’d get talking with Sotero about the “Eastern Question”, and maybe argue, and they’d both get excited. Sotero would, sure. Johnson reckoned the Turks would have to get out of Europe; but Sotero and his friends would have a tough job. The Turks didn’t go much on uniforms and gold braid, but they had the latest rifles and the best ammunition, and they kept their rifles clean. And they had pluck. Ask Russia.
(Sotero, by the way, never forgave his countrymen for throwing away their chance in ’76, and letting Russia in for it.)

Then Johnson, partly sober, would retire to a private place and take stock of his finances. He’d abstract a few more shillings, for current expenses, from that portion of his monthly “screw” set apart earlier in the afternoon for the use of his wife, wrap the remainder up tight in another half-sheet of newspaper, and button it up in his hip pocket. Then he’d make for the Quay, calling in on Ireland on the way, and getting another drink and more inspiration there.

Then the world would begin to move.

Fate would have one—or, more likely, two; they mostly go by twos—of Johnson’s deplorable acquaintances loitering on the footpath opposite the Quay; and Johnson would stumble into their arms; and they’d go into one of the first-and-last hotels to see if they could keep another one down. And, as likely as not, they’d find others of the Johnsonian school there.

The vicinity would remind Johnson of fish, and another thing; so they’d adjourn, and maybe there’d be stewed oysters; and Johnson would make one or two purchases on his own account. But the fat, futile, vacuously smiling, oily, and fish-like faces of degenerate Italy would exasperate Johnson by-and-by, and the Trouble in Southern Europe would come to the surface again, and Johnson would hold forth to the edification of the cropped and grinning dagoes of the fish shop. He’d be all Turk now—he was always for the weaker side, was Johnson—and he’d get fightable. But his friends would steer him out before Tripoli had a chance of being avenged by her latest ally.

Then they’d adjourn to keep another one down, and Johnson would buy a “parrot” (i.e., flask of whisky for the morning), with the fixed intention of going right across and straight home now. His friends would see him to the turnstiles, and he’d go through, informing an unresponsive public, in a loud voice, and with curious inconsistency (considering the fish shop), that Her Naiad grace had brought him home, To the grandeur which was Greece, And the glory which was Rome. He had the choice of two ferry boats, the Milson’s Point one and the Lavender Bay one, and was
known equally well on either; but his Fate would have the most crowded one of the evening, and the one with the greatest number of his acquaintances, friends, enemies, neighbours, and those who knew him by sight on board, just ready for him to the minute, and his Fate would steer him on board. And, of course, he’d make a prize ass of himself. He’d surpass all previous efforts in that direction. He’d hold forth on politics; he’d sing and recite revolutionary verses; he’d sing—or try to sing—“The Wearin’ o’ the Green” and “The Marseillaise”. He’d be “Wae’s me for Prince Chairlie” till his friends were heartbroken; and he’d bellow while his enemies applauded. He was Pro-Russ, Pro-Boer, Pro-Australia, Pro-Husband, Pro-Man, Pro-Beer—all Pro at this stage; and he’d arise on the upper deck and denounce the Antis with indignation and enthusiasm that brought him to the verge of tears. And all this in the heart of the Liberal stronghold. And he’d continue on the tram, only interrupted when he refused to pay a degenerate Government a fare, and one of his friends, the tram guards, took his name and address for appearances’ sake. They used to have their books full of Johnson’s name and address. He wrote it, sometimes, himself. They all seemed to like Johnson. I don’t know why.

At the Last Pub on the Heights, near his home, Johnson would pull himself together a bit and seek a private parlour—or still more private place—and once more review the state of his finances. (The Horse Ferry and Elder Man’s Lane are very near now.) He’d carefully distribute threepences and sixpences through his various pockets for his wife to find when he’d be asleep. Then, if short, he’d borrow another half-crown or five shillings from her share, to finish up the night with, and have something in hand for the morning; then he’d carefully wrap up the Share again and button it down in his hip pocket; then he’d put one half-crown in one of the other pockets, take off his boot, put the other half-crown in his sock under the instep, put on his boot again, and seek the bar—where, as likely as not, he’d meet yet another of the Johnsonian Brotherhood, and they’d finish the night. Unless his Fate led him home through the main street, singing, just as the majority of his fellow-suburbanites were pouring out of the picture shows and
down to the tram line. Anyway, he’d go his way, singing in the moonlight, with two bottles of White Horse on top of his wife’s forgotten vanities—All is Vanity; and he’d arrive at his own gate, still singing, and still flourishing the Crayfish of Confidence, or the Lobster of Faith. (Those vain peace-offerings.) He knew, or thought he knew, his wife’s tastes on all occasions. He’d tell her to put her hand in his coat pocket and see what she’d find, and as like as not she’d find nothing there but dampness. Also, as like as not, she’d find It afterwards, under the bottles, and on top of her precious dress trimmings: a squashed and busted newspaper parcel of very damp and stringy prawns. But he’s utterly hopeless, lying on his back on the bed, and singing, or rather roaring at the top of his voice, that “He’ll vote for Andy Fisher, No matter what he said!” So she undresses him hastily, gives him a stiff nip, and puts him under cover. And silence reigneth.

Now you’ve already forgotten the fairly well-dressed and apparently respectable citizen and man of business (or professional man—or artist) seen occasionally on the Horse Ferry or in Elder Man’s Lane on a fine morning about nine, whom I described some pages back as holding himself aloof on board or pacing rather nervously to and fro, yet seemingly with some definite object in view? I told you I’d tell you how it was. Well, that man was Johnson, the Morning After the Night Before. Clean-shirted, clean-collared, and clean-socked; and cleaned out and tray-bitless. Remember the Sock of Precaution? The half-caser was in
her
stocking now, along with the rest.

His wife knew Johnson’s ways. He would humbly accept the copper that she spared (at great personal inconvenience, according to herself) from that voracious little instrument of unblushing capitalism (though it
is
painted red) and demoraliser of good house-wives, the accursed gas machine. Johnson had a season ticket on the passenger ferry; but he’d be far too shaky and ashamed to face it, so he’d slip unobtrusively down bys-streets and lanes, and down Blue’s Point Road, and on to the
Horse Ferry. But he’d get a couple of good whiskies in the Bar that Knew Him, and feel his manhood returning, and go to work.

He’d slip out and have another during the forenoon and one or two during lunch hour, and maybe one in mid-afternoon, to keep his deft right hand steady. Then, between four and five, several with bachelor mates, or unprincipled husbands, who still held a fair share of their salaries. Consequently the previous night would then be repeated, but on a grander scale, and with trimmings, because there would be no Anthony Hordern or shave-trim-an’-shampoo intervals to steady things. Johnson would make a more glorious ass of himself than ever. Apatriot, an orator, a fine singer and reciter, and the only possible saviour of his country; and with loftier contempt for the alleged spirit of Sydney (and more especially that of North Sydney), he’d time himself to catch the most crowded ferry boat across. Then, with a soul above gangways he’d go to get off. The deck hands would save his life for the severalth time and see him safe ashore and into the hands of his friends, the tram guards. The deck hands seemed to love Johnson too. I don’t know why. He broke the awful deadly monotony of Sydney in its wowser days.

Sometimes he’d insist on taking a stray mongrel home with him, in premeditated defiance of Company and Government, even if he had to carry it through the turnstiles and across on the boat to the tram, fighting for it all the way. Stray dogs took to Johnson. So did all the kids of his terrace, but
they
often left him literally penniless. Even in his sober periods his yard and house were sanctuary to any useless, neglected, homeless and mangy mongrel selfishly kicked out about registration time, or any deplorable outcast cat that had loved too wisely and too well—until such time as Fate provided otherwise for them. Anyway, on the tram, he’d insist on boarding and smoking defiantly in the compartment set apart for smokers; which was generally crowded with our awful New Women, though all the other compartments might be empty. And he’d hold forth against the Frightful Political Female, and female suffrage and Women’s Rights, and the Wowser and the Better Protection of Women and Girls and the Sunday Hell and Rose Scott.