Such Is Life (64 page)

“'Ow the (fourfold expletive) do you hundertake to know wot Hi thort? But wot war the hupshot? ‘Look hout!' ses Hi; ‘we'll git hit to rights!' An' did we, hor did we not? Straight, now, Dave?”

“You're like Cassandra, Jack,” I observed, to fill up the pause which marked Dave's discomfiture.

“That bloke as spoke las', 'e's got more hunder 'is 'at nor a six-'underd-an'-fo'ty-hacre paddick full o' sich soojee speciments as you fellers,” said the old man impressively. “Wich o' you knows hanythink about Cassandra? Hin ‘twenty-six hit war, an' hit seems like las' week. Hi druv ole Major Learm'th to them races, Hi did; an' wen the 'osses comes hin, 'e looks roun' an' ses to 'is labour, a-stannin' aside the kerridge, ‘Cassandra fust,' ses 'e, ‘an' the rest nowheers,' ses 'e. Now what's the hupshot? Collings'll see the day. Them's ole Jack Goldsmith's words, an' jis' you mark ‘em. Collings'll see the day! Yes, Dave,” continued the heart of the old man to the Psalmist; “Hi won ten bob on Cassandra that day; an' ten bob war ten bob them times,” &c., &c.

All this while, I had been observing the silent swagman, who seemed to grow uneasy under my notice.

“I was remarking to a friend just now that I fancied I had seen you before,” I explained.

“Well, they ain't actilly sore, so much as sort o' dazzly and dim,” replied the man, in evident relief. “I been tryin' mostly everything this last four year, but I got better hopes now nor ever I had before. A boundary man he give me a little bottle o' stuff the other day; an' it seems to be about the correct thing. Jist feels like a spoonful o' red-hot ashes in your eye; an' if a drop falls outside, it turns your skin black. That ought to cut away the sort o' glassy phlegm off o' the optic nerve?”

“No; you want none of these burning quack remedies; you want three months' careful treatment”—

“I ain't denyin' it,” interrupted the man, sadly and sullenly. “An' I don't thank Tom for bein' so fast,” he continued, raising his voice in attempted anger. “He ain't the man I took him for—an' I'm sayin' it to his face.”

The general conversation dropped, and Tam, pannikin in hand, rose and advanced to his mate's side.

“An' wha' is 't ye're sayin' till ma face, Andraw?” he asked loudly, but with gentleness and commiseration. “Puir body's haird o' hearin',” he explained to the company.

“I'm sayin' you'd no right to go blurtin' out about a man gittin' a stretch for a thing o' that sort. Seems like as if there was a job for one of us on this station, an' you was takin' a mean advantage to collar it. It ain't like you”—

“Od, whisht! ye puir thrawart body!” interrupted Tam hastily.

“You might 'a' went about it a bit more manly,” continued the other, with the querulousness of a sick child. “I don't deny I done three months; but so help”—

“Whisht! ye daft”—

“So help me God, I never deserved it. I knowed no more about it nor the babe unborn, till I got it off o' the bobby that nabbed me.”

“But how could you (adj.) well get three months for a thing you (adj.) well knew nothing about?” asked the catechumen rouse-about. (Henceforth, the reader will have to supply from his own imagination the clumsy and misplaced expletive which preceded each verb used by this young fellow.)

“Ye moight foine it dang aisy yeerself, Dave,” observed a middle-aged diner significantly.

“I been a misfortunate man, there's no denyin',” continued the
swagman; “but I never done a injury to nobody in my life, so fur as I'm aware about.”

“What did he get the three months for?” asked Dave, turning to Tam.

“Gin ye speer onythin' frae me,” replied Carlyle's townie, after slowly surveying his questioner from head to foot, “A maun inform ye A ken naethin' bit gude o' Andraw; an' A hae warkit wi' him mair nir fowr minth.'Deed, the puir body taks owre muckle thocht fir ithers, an' disna' spare himsel' ava. A ken naethin' aboot yon three minth; yon's atween Andraw an's Makker; an' A'll nae jidge onybody, sin we maun a' be judgit by Ane wha jidgeth iprightly. Bit as lang's A hae a pickle siller, Andrew'll no want.” And Tam returned to his seat.

“What would
I
want of burnin' a stack?” remonstrated Andrew, blinking defiantly round the table. “Tell you how it come. Hold on a minute”—he went to the bucket, and refilled his pannikin—“It was this way: I was jist startin' to thatch a new haystack for two ole bosses o' mine, on the Vic. side o' the Murray, when up comes a trooper.

“‘What's your name?' says he.

“‘Andrew Glover,' says I.

“‘Well, Andrew Glover, you're my prisoner—charged with burnin' a stack,' says he. ‘I must fetch you along,' says he. So he gives me the usual warnin', an' walks me off to the logs.”

“And how did it go?” shouted Dave, who had shifted his pannikin and plate to Andrew's side.

“Well, the Court day it come roun'; an' when my case was called, the prosecutor he steps down off the bench, an' gives evidence; an' I foun' him sayin' somethin' about not wantin' to press the charge; an' there was a bit of a confab; an' then I foun' the Bench askin' me if I'd sooner be dealt with summary, or be kep' for the Sessions; an' I said summary by all means; so they give me three months.”

“What was the prosecutor's name?” shouted Dave.

“Waterman.”

“So called because he opens the carriage-doors,” I remarked involuntarily.

“Do you know him, Collins?” persisted Dave.

“I neither know him nor do I feel any aching void in consequence,” I replied, pointedly interpolating, in two places, the quidnunc's flowers of speech.

“How did the evidence go, mate?” asked the young fellow greedily.

“Eh?”

“How did the evidence go?”

“Oh yes! Well, I'm a bit hard o' hearin'—I dunno if you notice it on me, but I am—an' sometimes I'm worse nor other times; so I didn't ketch most o' what went on; an' the prosecutor he was a good bit off o' me; an' there was a sort o' echo. But I foun' one o' the magistrates sayin', ‘Quite so, Mr. Waterman—quite so, Mr. Waterman,' every now an' agen; an' I was on'y too glad to git off with three months. I'd 'a' got twelve, if I'd bin remanded for a proper trial. The jailer told me after—he told me this Waterman come out real manly. Seems, he got the charge altered to Careless Use o' Fire. So I can't help giving him credit, in a manner o' speakin'. But, so help me God, I never burned no stack.”

“Did you know this Waterman?” interrogated Dave. “Was you ever on his place?”

“Well, yes; I was on his place, askin' him for work, as it might be this mornin'; an' he give me rats for campin' so near his place, as it might be las' night. Seems, it was nex' mornin' his stack was burnt, jist after sunrise. But, so help me God, I never done it.”

“(Adj.) shaky sort o' yarn,” commented the bullock driver, in grave pity. “Let it drop, Dave.”

“Divil a shaky,” interposed the hon. member for Tipperary. “Arrah, fwy wud the chap call on the Daity? Fishper—did ye iver foine justice in a coort? Be me sowl, Oi 'd take the man's wurrd agin all the coorts in Austhrillia. An' more betoken—divil blasht the blame Oi 'd blame him fur sthrekin a match, whin dhruv to that same.”

“Shoosteece iss (adj.) goot,
mais
revahnsh iss (adj.) bat,” remarked another foreigner—a contractor's cook, who had come to the homestead for a supply of rations. “Vhere iss de (adj.) von?—vhere is de (adj.)
autre
? All mix—eh? De cohnseerashohn iss—I not know vat you vill call him ohn Angleesh,
mais
ve vill call him ohn Frahnsh, (adj.) cohnplecat.”

“Much the same in English, Theophile,” I observed.

“You vill barn de (adj.) snack,” continued Theophile, turning politely to me; “you vill call him shoosteece; mineself, I vill call him revahnsh. Mineself, I vill not barn de (adj.) snack; I vill be too (adj.) flash. I vill go to (sheol).”

“Not for your principles, Theophile,” I replied, with a courteous inclination of my belltopper.

“Course, it's all in a man's lifetime,” pursued Andrew resignedly. “Same time, it seems sort a' hard lines when a man's shoved in the logs for the best three months in the year for a thing he never done. 'Sides, I was on for a good long job with two as decent a fellers as you'd meet in a day's walk. I'd met one o' them ten mile up the river, as it might be this afternoon; an' the fire it took place as it might be to-morrow mornin'.”

“But where was you when the fire broke-out?—that's the question,” demanded Dave, with a pleasant side-glance round the table.

“Eh?”

“You'll be bumpin' up agen a snag some o' these times, young feller,” muttered the bullock driver.

“I was only askin' him where he was when the fire broke out,” protested Somebody's Darling; then in a louder voice he repeated his question.

“Dunno. Somewhere close handy,” replied the swagman hopelessly. “Anyhow, I never done it. Well, then, I'd jist got well started to work on Monday mornin', when up comes the bobby, an' grabs me. ‘S'pose you'll have to go,' says the missus—for the bosses was both away at another place they got. ‘S'pose so,' says I. ‘Better take my swag with me anyhow.' Course, by the time my three months was up, things was at the slackest; an' I couldn't go straight back to a decent place, an' me fresh out o' chokey. Fact, I can't go back to that district no more. But as luck would have it, I runs butt agen the very man I'd ratherest meet of anybody in the country.” The swagman paused, and slowly turned toward me, in evident trouble of mind—“He didn't tell you two blokes I was logged for stack-burnin'?” And the poor fellow's flickering eyes sought my face appealingly.

“Indeed he didn't, mate.”

“Why, you let the cat out of the bag yourself!” exclaimed Dave triumphantly. Then the conversation took a more general turn.

By this time, I had provisionally accounted for my vaguely-fancied recognition of the man. With the circumspection of a seasoned speculatist, I had bracketed two independent hypotheses, either of which would supply a satisfactory solution. One of these simply attributed the whole matter to unconscious cerebration. But here a question arose: If one half of my brain had been more alert than its duplicate when the object first presented itself—so that the observation of the vigilant half instantaneously appeared as an intangible memory to the judgment of the apathetic half—it still remained to be determined which of the halves might be said to be
in a normal condition. Was one half unduly and wastefully excited?—or was the other half unhealthily dormant? The thing would have to be seen into, at some fitting time.

But this hypothesis of unconscious cerebration seemed scarcely as satisfactory as the other—namely, that, having at a former time heard Terrible Tommy mention the name of Andrew Glover, my educated instinct of Nomenology, rising to the very acme of efficiency, had accurately, though unconsciously, snap-shotted a corresponding apparition on the retina of my mind's eye.

Then there were lessons to be gathered from Tom Armstrong's prompt acceptance of such
alibi
evidence, touching myself, as would have merely tended to unfathomable speculations on metempsychosis in an ether-poised Hamlet-mind. Tom, though crushing for a couple of ounces, was one of your practical, decided, cocksure men; guided by unweighed, unanalysed phenomena, and governed by conviction alone—the latter being based simply, though solidly, upon itself. These men are deaf to the symphony of the Silences; blind to the horizonless areas of the Unknown; unresponsive to the touch of the Impalpable; oblivious to the machinery of the Moral Universe—in a word, indifferent to the mysterious Motive of Nature's all-pervading Soul. In such mental organisms, opinion, once deflected tangentially from the central Truth, acquires an independent and stubborn orbit of its own. But the Absolute Truth is so large, and human opinion so small, that the latter cannot get away altogether, however eccentric its course may be; indeed, the more elongated the orbit of Error, the greater chance of its being swallowed up by the scorching Truth, on its return trip. In the present instance, my own ready co-operation with a marvellously conducive Providential legislation had been sufficient unto the deflection of Tom's opinion; and I was content to let the still-impending collision take thought for itself, particularly as Mrs. Beaudesart's conjunction was just about falling due. Then I rose to go.

“Here, mate,” said I, fearlessly removing my clouded glasses, and handing them, with their case, to Andrew; “you'll find the advantage of these.”

There was no trace of recognition in Tom's look of gratitude as his eyes rested on my face. But I sighed to reflect that he was still looking out for the tracks of that miserable impostor from the braes o' Yarra.

Now I had to enact the Cynic philosopher to Moriarty and Butler, and the aristocratic man with a ‘past' to Mrs. Beaudesart; with the
satisfaction of knowing that each of these was acting a part to me. Such is life, my fellow-mummers—just like a poor player, that bluffs and feints his hour upon the stage, and then cheapens down to mere nonentity. But let me not hear any small witticism to the further effect that its story is a tale told by a vulgarian, full of slang and blanky, signifying—nothing.

THE END.

NOTE
.—
Page 313
.—
The proportional intensity of sunlight to moonlight is subject to fluctuations, from many causes, and is therefore variously stated. The highest accepted ratio is 600,000 to 1; the lowest, 200,000 to 1. A constitutional repugnance to anything savouring of effect prompted me to indicate the lower proportion. The error in the text unfortunately escaped observation
.—
T.C
.