Such Is Life (52 page)

I bowed. I would have licked the dust to see him stand not upon the order of his going, but go at once. “Well, I must be moving,” I mumbled hastily, glancing behind me at the sun, and backing Cleopatra into the scrub, to let the buggy pass—noting also that Priestley wasn't forty yards away.

“Now, confess the truth, Collins—you've been having a tiff with Mrs. Beaudesart?” continued Montgomery. “Lovers' quarrel? That's nothing. I didn't think you were so pettish as to run away like this.”

“Indeed, Mr. Montgomery,” said I earnestly; “I assure you I'm only going at the call of duty. I'll show”—here it struck me that the production of my letter would delay things worse, and—

“By the way, there's a parcel for Alf Jones in the mail-bag,” continued the squatter, with hideous dilatoriness. “I see it's a roll
of music. Better take it. And his newspaper. Get him to give you a tune on his violin, if you can. It will be something to remember.”

“Thank you for the suggestion, sir,” I continued slavishly, whilst backing Cleopatra a little further into the scrub, and clearing my throat with a sharp, penetrating sound, as if I had swallowed a fly.

Just then, the bullocks stopped of their own accord, within ten yards of the buggy; and Priestley, pre-occupied in laying out fresh work for himself, was roused by my loud r-r-rehm! and took in the situation.

Montgomery seemed amused at my tribulation. “Why, your manner betrays you, Collins! Never mind. You'll grow out of that in good time. When is it coming off?” He crossed his knees, and held the reins jammed between them, whilst deliberately filling and lighting his pipe. Meanwhile, Priestley, in silent communion with his Maker, stood by his team as if waiting to be photographed. The buggy was in a cool, pleasant shade; and Montgomery would maintain this flagitious procrastination of his managerial duties while I remained a butt for his ill-timed chaff. Critical is no name for the state of affairs.

But an angel seemed to whisper me soul to soul. I responded to the inspiration.

“Well, I'll show you the letter, Mr. Montgomery,” said I, with a petulance tempered by sycophancy. I first felt, then slapped, my pockets—“By japers! I've left my pocket-book on the seat in front of the barracks!” I continued hurriedly, as I turned Cleopatra back toward the station, and bounded off at a canter. I hadn't gone five strides, when, flick! went the buggy-whip; the vehicle started after me; and Priestley was saved. But there is no such thing as permanent safety in this world. The first rattle of the wheels was followed by a loud, pompous, bank-director cough from one of the bullocks.

“Hullo! what the (sheol) have we here?” It was Montgomery's voice, no longer jocular. I turned and rode back, as he swung his buggy round on the lock, skilfully threading the trees and scrub, till he resumed his old position, but now facing the bullock team. “And what, in the devil's name, brings you round this quarter?” he demanded sternly. “This is a bad job!”

“You're right, Mr. Magomery,” assented the bullock driver, with emphasis; “it
is
a bad job; it's a (adj.) bad job. Way it comes: you see, I got a bit o' loadin' for Nalrookar”—

“Two-ton-five. I know all about that, though I'm not interested
in the transaction,” retorted Montgomery. “I asked you what the (sheol) brings you here?”

“Well, that's just what I was goin' to explain when you took the word out o' my mouth. You see, Mr. Magomery, the proper road for me would 'a' been back along the main track to the Cane-grass Swamp, an' from there along the reg'lar Nalrookar track; but I was frightened o' the Convincer, so I thought I'd just cut across”—

“Great God! You thought you'd just cut across! Do you own this run?”

“Well, no, Mr. Magomery, I don't;
that's
(adj.) certain. But if I'd 'a' thought you'd any objection, I'd 'a' ast leaf.”

“That's what you should have done. You've acted like a d—d fool.”

“You'd 'a' give me leaf?” suggested the bullock driver, in a tone full of unspoken entreaty.

“I'd have seen you in (sheol) first. I decline to make a thoroughfare of the run. But by condescending to ask me, you'd have saved yourself some travelling. The nearest way to the main road is past the station. Here! rouse up your d—d mongrels, and make a start along this track. I'll see that you're escorted. If you loose-out before you reach the main road, I shall certainly prosecute you. Once there, I'll take care you don't trespass again during this trip. Come! move yourself!”

Priestley had never been taught to order himself lowly and reverently to all his betters; yet there was deeper pathos in the rude dignity of his reply than could have attended servility.

“It's this way, Mr. Magomery—I don't deny I got here in a sneakin' way. I feel it, Mr. Magomery; by (sheol) I do. Still, I'm here now. Well, if I tackle this track out to the main road, there's three o' them bullocks'll drop in yoke before I fetch the station. Would you like to see the bones layin' aside this track, every time you drive past? I bet you what you like, you'd be sorry when your temper is over. Then we'll say I'm out on the main road—how 'm I goin' to fetch Nalrooka? Not possible, the way I'm fixed. I wouldn't do it to you, Mr. Magomery.”

I had ridden to the side of the buggy. “Mr. Montgomery,” said I; “I wish to heaven that you were under one-tenth of the obligation to me that I am under to you, so that I might venture to speak in this case. But the remembrance of so much consideration at your hands in the past, encourages me. There's a great deal in what Priestley says; my own experience in bullock driving brings it
home to me; and I sympathise with him, rather than with you. Of course the matter rests entirely in your hands; but to me it appears in the light of a responsibility. It is noble to have a squatter's strength, but tyrannous to use it like a squatter.”

Something like a smile struggled to Montgomery's sunburnt face; and I could see that the battle was over.

But another was impending. It was now half-an-hour since I had met the buggy. Folkestone had calmly ignored me from the first. When the trouble supervened, his haughty immobility had still sustained him at such an altitude as to render Priestley, as well as myself, invisible even to bird's-eye view. But the small soul, rattling about loose in the large, well-fed body, couldn't let it pass at that. On my interposing, he placed a gold-mounted glass in his eye, and, with a degree of rudeness which I have never seen equalled in a navvies' camp, stared straight in my face till I had done speaking. Then the lens dropped from his eye, and he turned to his companion.

“Who is this person, Montgomery?” he asked.

The squatter looked plainly displeased. He was as proud as his guest, but in a different way. Folkestone, being a gentleman
per se
, was distinguished from the ordinary image of God by caste and culture; and to these he added a fatal self-consciousness. Don't take me as saying that caste and culture could possibly have made him a boor; take me as saying that these had been powerless to avert the misfortune. He was a gentleman by the grace of God and the flunkeyism of man. Montgomery was also a gentleman, but only by virtue of his position. So that, for instance, Priestley's personal fac-simile, appearing as a well-to-do squatter, would have been received on equal terms by Montgomery; whereas, Folkestone's disdain would have been scarcely lessened. The relative manliness of the two types of ‘gentleman' is a question which each student will judge according to his own fallen nature.

“Pardon me for saying that you Australians have queer ways of maintaining authority,” continued the European, lazily raising his eyebrows, and speaking with the accent—or rather, absence of accent—which, in an Englishman, denotes first-class education. “A vagrant, by appearance, and probably not overburdened with honesty, is found trespassing on your property; then this individual—by Gad, I feel curious to know who our learned brother for the defence is—bandies words with you on the other fellow's behalf. I confess I rather like his style. I expected to hear him address you as ‘old boy,' or ‘my dear fellow,' or by some such affectionate title.
Pardon my warmth, I say, Montgomery! but this phase of colonial life is new to me. Placed in your position (if my opinion, as a landlord, be worth anything), I should make an example of the trespassing scoundrel; partly as a tonic to himself, and partly as a lesson to this cad. If I rightly understand, you have the power to punish, by fine or imprisonment, any trespass on your sheep-walks. You don't exercise your prerogative, you say? By Gad, you'll have to exercise it, or, let me assure you, you will be sowing thorns for your children to reap. Here, I should imagine, is an excellent opportunity for vindication of your rights as a land owner.”

This reasoning wouldn't have affected Montgomery's foregone decision to suspend his own rights in the current case, had not Priestley been too industrious to notice the opening avenue of escape. But to the bullock driver's troubled mind it appeared that he had managed to wander inside the wings of the stockyard of Fate, and that Folkestone was lending a willing hand to hurroo him into the crush. Moreover, the rough magnanimity of the man's nature was outraged by some supposed insult sustained by me on his behalf.

Just three words of comment here. Built into the moral structure of each earthly probationer is a thermometer, graduated independently; and it is never safe to heat the individual to the boiling-point of his register. You never know how far up the scale this point is, unless you are very familiar with the particular thermometer under experiment. Romeo, for instance, pacific by nature, and self-schooled to forbearance by the second-strongest of inspirations, meets deadly public insult by the softest of answers—‘calm, dishonourable, vile submission,' his friend calls it. But the slaying of that friend touches Romeo's 212° Fahrenheit—then! ‘Away to heaven, respective lenity, and fire-eyed fury be my conduct now!' Whereupon, Tybalt, the tamperer, is scalded to death. In Ida, as we have seen, the insinuated aspersion of unchastity touched 100° Centigrade; and the experimentalist was glad to retreat, with damaged dignity, from the escaping steam. So, in Priestley, the wanton hostility of Folkestone touched 80° Reaumur; and the billy boiled over, wasting the water, and smothering the owner with ashes.

One moment more, please. Nations, kindreds, and peoples are individuals in mass; and here the existence of an overlooked boiling-point is the one thing that makes history interesting. Cowper puts on paper a fine breezy English contempt for the submissiveness and ultra-royalism of the pre-Revolutionary French—and lives to
wonder at the course of events. Macaulay's diction rolls like the swelling of Jordan, as he expatiates on the absolute subserviency, the settled incapacity for resistance, of the Bengalee—till presently the Mutiny (a near thing, in two widely different senses, and confined to the Bengalee troops) shakes his credit. So it has ever been, and ever shall be. But for that ingrained endowment of resilience, Man would long ago have ceased to inhabit this planet.

When Priestley came to the boil, all considerations of expediency, all natural love of peace and fear of the wrath to come, all solicitude for wife and children, vanished from his mind, leaving him fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. I must suppress about half the language in which he clothed his one remaining thought.

“An' who are you?” he thundered, advancing toward the buggy. “A loafer!—no better!—an' you must shove in your lip! I don't blame Magomery for bein' nasty; he's got a right to blaggard me, the way things is; an' I give him credit. But you! Cr-r-ripes! if I had you a couple o' hundred mile furder back, I'd learn you manners! I'd make you spring off o' your tail!”

Folkestone, his head canted to a listening angle, noted with a half-amused, half-tired smile the outlaw's tirade. Then he rose, drew off his light coat, and laid it across the back of the buggy seat.

“I will thump this fellow, Montgomery,” said he, and he certainly meant it. Priestley was a man of nine stone.

By your favour, once more, and only once. The Englishman proper is the pugilist of the world. The Australian or American maxima may be as brutal, or even more so, but the average efficiency in smiting with the fist of wickedness is, beyond all question, on the English side. ‘English fair-play' is a fine expression. It justifies the bashing of the puny draper's assistant by the big, hairy blacksmith; and this to the perfect satisfaction of both parties, if they are worthy the name of Englishmen. Also, the English gentleman may take off his coat to the potsherd of the earth; and so excellent is his discrimination that the combat will surely end even as your novelist describes; simply because no worshipper can make headway against his god, when the divinity hits back. At the same time, no insubordinate Englishman, named Crooked-nosed Yorkey, and made in proportion, ever did, or ever will, suffer manual mauling at the hands of an English gentleman—or any other gentleman, for that matter. What a fool the gentleman would be! No; Crooked-nosed Yorkey is always given in charge; and it takes three policeman to run him in.

English fair-play! Varnhagen von Ense tells us how Continental gentlemen envied the social usage which permitted Lord Castlereagh, in 1815, to show off his bruising ability at the expense of a Viennese cabman—probably some consumptive feather-weight, and certainly a man who had never seen a scrapping-match in his life. But English fair-play doesn't stand transplantation to Australia, except in patches of suitable soil. For instance, when bar-loafer meets pimp, at £1 a side, then comes the raw-meat business. The back-country man, though saturnine, is very rarely quarrelsome, and almost never a pugilist; nevertheless, his foot on his native salt-bush, it is not advisable to assault him with any feebler weapon than rifle-and-bayonet. There is a radical difference, without a verbal distinction, between his and the Englishman's notions of fair-play. Each is willing to content himself with the weapons provided by nature; but the Southern barbarian prefers a natural product about three feet long, and the thickness of your wrist at the butt—his conception of fair-play being qualified by a fixed resolution to prove himself the better counterfeit.