Such Is Life (32 page)

He took the child on his knee with an air of hopeless pity, and awkwardly but tenderly wiped the little fellow's nose. I was still lost in thought. We are the merest tyros in Ethnology. Nothing is easier than to build Nankin palaces of porcelain theory, which will fall in splinters before the first cannon-shot of unparleying fact. 
What authority had the boundary man or I to dogmatise on the Coming Australian? Just the same authority as Marcus Clarke, or Trollope, or Froude, or Francis Adams—and that is exactly none. Deductive reasoning of this kind is seldom safe. Who, for instance, could have deduced, from certain subtly interlaced conditions of food, atmosphere, association, and what not, the development of those silky honours which grace the upper lip of the Australienne? No doubt there are certain occult laws which govern these things; but we haven't even mastered the laws themselves, and how are we going to forecast their operation? Here was an example: Vivian was a type Englishman, of his particular sub-species; his wife was a type Australienne, of the station-bullock-driver species; and their little boy was almost comically Scottish in features, expression, and bearing. Where are your theories now? Atavism is inadmissible; and fright is the thinnest and most unscientific subterfuge extant. The coming Australian is a problem.

Mrs. Vivian overwhelmed me with instructions concerning Alf, and frankly urged me to hurry back to his assistance. I paid little heed to her advice, for I knew he would soon come round; and in the meantime, my mind was fully occupied with his team. After drinking a cup of tea, I shook hands with her, and lingered at the door, looking at her husband, as he amused himself with Roddy.

“I'll leave your coat on the fence, Mr. Vivian,” said I at length.

“Horrite.”

“You want to be as lively as God'll let you,” said the excellent woman, accompanying me to my horse. “I won't be satisfied till I see you off.”

Very well, thought I; on your own head be it. So I took off the linen coat, and handed it to her.

“You should 'a' kep' on a inside shirt,” she remarked kindly. “Them shoulders o' yours'll give you particular hell to-morrow. Why, you're like a boiled crawfish now. Hides like that o' yours,” she added, testing with her finger and thumb the integument on my near flank, as I hastily placed my bare foot in the stirrup, “ain't worth a tinker's dam for standin' the sun.” (For the information of people whose education may unhappily have been neglected, it will be right to mention that the little morsel of chewed bread which a tin-smith of the old school places on his seam to check the inconvenient flow of the solder, is technically and appropriately termed a ‘tinker's dam.' It is the conceivable minimum of commercial value.)

The sun was still above the trees when I unsaddled Cleopatra at
my camp, and resumed my clothes. The bullock-bells were ringing among the lignum, as the animals exerted themselves to make up for lost time.

“And how are we now?” said I, assuming a cheerful professional air, as I swung myself on the platform of the wagon. “I've secured a drop of one of our most valuable antiphlogistics, which is precisely what you require, as the trouble is distinctly arthrodynic. You'll be right in a couple of days.”

“No, Collins,” replied Alf gently; “I'll never be right—in the sense you mean. I won't take any medicine. I've done with everything. Help me to turn over again, please, and give me another drink of water. I want to tell you something.”

After giving him a turn over, I took the billy and replenished it at the river. Before getting into the wagon again, I emptied the contents of Mrs. Vivian's bottle into half a pannikin-full of the oxide of hydrogen, and stirred the potion thoroughly with a stick. Then returning to my patient, I raised his head, and held the pannikin to his lips. He finished the draught, unconscious of its medicinal virtues; and I refolded the old overcoat which served as a pillow, and laid him down as gently as possible.

“The water seems to have a peculiar taste,” he murmured. “I don't notice my sight failing yet, but my hearing is all deranged. I hear your voice through a ringing of bells, and a sound like a distant waterfall. I'm just on the border-land, Collins. I've very little more to suffer; and why should I come back, to begin it all again? How long is it since you left me?”

“From four to five hours, I think. I put your bullocks together; they're close by.”

“Well, now, I wouldn't have the slightest idea whether it was one hour or twelve. I've been in the spirit-world since then, or a spirit has visited me here. I heard, plain and clear, the voice of a woman singing old familiar songs; and that voice has been silent in death for ten years—silent to me for three years before that. Thirteen years! That may not seem much to you; but what an age it seems to me! It was no dream, Collins; I saw everything as I see now, but I heard her glorious voice as I used to hear it in our happy days; and I felt that her spirit was bringing forgiveness at last. I'm not a religious man, Collins; I don't know what will become of me after death; but God does, and that's sufficient for me. I never believed on Him so devoutly as I do now that He has vindicated His justice upon me. I praise him for avenging an act of the blindest folly and heartlessness; and I thank Him that
my punishment is over at last. There! Listen! No, it's nothing. But it was a favourite song of hers; and while you were away I heard her sing it, with new meaning in every syllable. My poor love!”

“Alf, Alf,” I remonstrated; “compose yourself, and go to sleep if you can.” The tears of feebleness had accumulated in the hollows of his sunken eyes, and, not having the use of his hands, he was throwing his head from side to side to clear them away.

“Did you ever make a terrible mistake in life, Collins?” he asked, at length. Before I could reply, he resumed absently, “When I was a boy, away on the Queensland border, I knew a squatter—as fine a fellow as ever lived—and this man married some young lady in Sydney, and brought her to live on the station. A few months afterward, he came home unexpectedly at about two o'clock one morning, and found his place occupied by an intimate friend of his own—a young barrister, who was staying at the station as a guest. He managed to conceal his discovery; and, within the next few days, he got his friend to draw out a new will, by which he left everything, without reservation, to his wife. A day or two after completing the will, he took his gun and went out alone, turkey-shooting. He didn't come home that night; and next day one of the station hands found him at a wire fence, shot straight through the heart. Accidentally, of course. But we knew better.”

“It might have been accidental, Alf,” I suggested. “There's a lot of supposition in the story.”

“None, Collins. Before going out with his gun, he wrote a letter to my father, and sent it by a trustworthy blackfellow. My father got the letter about ten o'clock at night; and he had a horse run-in at once, and started off for the station through a raging thunderstorm, arriving next day only in time to see his friend's body before it was moved to the house. My father was terribly cut-up about it. He was manager of an adjoining station at the time.

“Now let me tell you another true story,” pursued Alf dreamily. “Five years ago, I knew a man on the Maroo, a tank-sinker, with a wife and two children. The wife got soft on a young fellow at the camp; and everybody, except the husband, saw how things stood. Presently the husband began to circulate the report that he was going to New Zealand. In the meantime, he sent the two children to a boarding-school in Wagga. He was in no hurry. Afterward, he sold his plant to the station, and bade good-bye, in the most friendly way, to all hands, including the Don Juan. Then he
started across the country to Wagga, alone with his wife, in a wagonette. Are you listening?”

“Attentively, Alf. But suppose I boil your billy, and”—

“Two years afterward, a flock was sold off the station I was speaking of, for Western Queensland; and one of the station men went with the drover's party, to see the sheep delivered. Curious coincidence: he met on the new station his old acquaintance, the tank-sinker, with his two children and a second wife. The tank-sinker told him that his first wife had died soon after leaving the Maroo, and that he had changed his mind about going to New Zealand. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes; so far. You know the man you're speaking of?”

“Slightly. I delivered goods to him once on the Maroo, and casually heard the scandal that was in the air. Well, the shearing came round on the Maroo just as the station man got back from Queensland; and while the adjoining station was mustering for the shed, a boundary man found, in the centre of one of the paddocks—in the loneliest, barrenest hole of a place in New South Wales—he found where a big fire had been made, and some bones burnt into white cinders and smashed small with a stick. He kicked the ashes over, and found the steel part of a woman's stays, and the charred heel of a woman's boot, and even a thimble and a few shillings that had probably been in her pocket. I was on the station at the time, waiting for wool, and saw the relics when the boundary man brought them in. There are queer things done when every man is a law unto himself.”

“Supposition, Alf; and strained supposition at that. But why should you trouble your mind about these things?”

“There was no supposition on the station where the things were found, nor on the station the tank-sinker had left, when they compared notes. The things were found three or four miles off a bit of a track that led to Wagga; and there was a pine of a year and a half old growing in the ashes. But we'll pass that story. I want you to listen to another.”

“Some other time, Alf. I'll make you a drink of tea, and”—

“When I was young,” continued Alf doggedly, “I was very intimate with an American, a man of high principle and fine education. Best-informed man I ever knew. This poor fellow was a drunkard, occasional, but incorrigible. Misfortune had driven him to it. His wife was dead; his children had died in infancy; and at forty-five he was a hopeless wreck. He worked at my father's farm
on the Hawkesbury for two or three years, and died at our place when I was about twenty-five, immediately before I left home”—

“I don't like to correct you, Alf,” I interposed; “but I understood you to say that your father was a station-manager, on the Queensland border.”

“Up to the time I was twenty-one or twenty-two. Then he bought a place on the Hawkesbury, intending, poor man! to spend the evening of his life indulging his hobby of chemistry, while I took the care of the place off his hands—for though I have two sisters, I was his only son. His great ambition was to bequeath some chemical discovery to future generations. But I demolished his castles in the air along with my own. It's no odds about myself; but my poor father deserved better, after all his work and worry. Ah, my God! we parted in anger; and now I don't know whether he's alive or dead!” The prodigal paused, and sighed bitterly.

“And your mother?” I suggested experimentally.

“She was an invalid for several years before I left home,” replied Alf, his tone fulfilling my anticipation.

(Have you ever noticed that the prodigal son of real life, in nineteen cases out of twenty, speaks spontaneously and feelingly of his father, with, perhaps, a dash of reverent humour; whereas, to quote Menenius, he no more remembers his mother than an eight-year-old horse? This is cruel beyond measure, and unjust beyond comment; but, sad to say, it is true; and the platitudinous tract-liar, for the sake of verisimilitude, as well as of novelty, should make a memo, of it. Amongst all the hard-cases of my acquaintance, I can only think of one whose mother's unseen presence is a power, and her memory a holy beacon, shining, by-the-way, with a decidedly intermittent light. Unfortunately, a glance along the three 9ths yet to come shows me that this nobly spurious type of prodigal—Jack the Shellback, vassal of Runnymede Station—will not come within the scope of these memoirs.)

Alf dreamily resumed his inconsequent story: “However, this Charley Cross, or Yankee Charley, was an old Victorian digger. About twelve years before his death, he was working on Inglewood, with a mate that he would have trusted, and did trust, to any extent, and in any way. But it was the old, old story. He got a friendly hint, and watched, and watched, for weeks, without betraying any suspicion. At last he was satisfied. Then he carefully laid down his line of action, and followed it to the end. One day, his mate, sitting on the edge of the shaft, ready to put his foot in the rope, suddenly overbalanced, and went down head-foremost. Of course,
Cross was close beside him at the time, and no one else was in sight. Cross gave the alarm, and, in the meantime, went hand-under-hand down the rope, intending, like Bruce, to ‘mak sicker'; for the shaft was only about forty feet deep. But it happened that the man's neck was broken in the fall. Cross forgave his wife, and never breathed a word of his discovery or his vengeance; but in spite of this, the woman seemed to live in fear and horror. During the next couple of years, luck favoured him, and he made an independence. He invested his money judiciously; but there's no guarantee for domestic happiness—in fact, there's no guarantee for anything. First, his two surviving children died of diphtheria; then his wife followed, dying, Cross assured me, of a broken heart. He sorrowed for her more deeply, perhaps, because she had cost him so dear; and this, no doubt, was what drove him to drink.”

“Very probably,” I replied. “But, Alf, this taxing of your mind is about as good for you just now as footballing or boxing. Are you a smoker?”

“No.”

“That's what I feared. Now, take my advice, and give yourself absolute rest, while I boil”—

“One more story, Collins, as well authenticated as any of the three I have told. I knew a young fellow of between twenty-five and thirty”—