Such Is Life (28 page)

“One of the obstacles in a position like mine is the thing you just implied, Mr. Connellan,” responded the waywode, almost deferentially. “Same time, this case ought to be followed up, for the sake of the public weal. As valuable as the stack was, I don't give that for it.” And he snapped his finger and thumb.

“You may be morally certain of the identity of the scoundrel, but your proofs require to be legally impregnable,” I continued, pressing home where he had disclosed weakness of guard. “I know
a very respectable man—a Mr. Johnson—who dropped something over a thousand in a case similar to this. The scoundrel was a deep subject; and he got at Johnson for false imprisonment. These roving characters can always get up an
alibi
, if they're clever. Excuse my meddling in this case, Mr. Q—, but you've interested me strongly. You have evidence that this suspected incendiary was seen somewhere down the river yesterday—or up the river was it?—and you saw him somewhere here, this morning. Very well. Would the two descriptions of dress and deportment tally exactly with each other, and with the appearance of the person whom, independently of that evidence, you know to be the perpetrator—I mean the scoundrel of the camp-fire? Consider the opening for an
alibi
there! You hold the incentive in reserve, I think you said? Pardon me—is it a sufficient one?”

“It don't take much incentive to be sufficient for a vagabone without a shirt to his back!” replied the ratepayer, suddenly boiling-over.

“True,” I conceded; “but, ‘Seek whom the crime profits,' says Machiavelli. What profit would it be to such a scoundrel to do you an injury, Mr. Q—?”

“The propertied classes is at the mercy of the thriftless classes,” he remarked, with martyr-pride.

“But incendiarism! Mr. Q—,” I urged in modest protest.

“Why, the whole country lives by the farmer; and I'm sure”—

“We won't argy the matter, Mr. Collingwood,” replied my antagonist, lowering his point “Possibly I won't trouble you any further over this affair. Your business keeps you on the move,” he continued, looking at the paper beside him; “and it might be difficult to effect service. You want your dog. Go into the kitchen; inquire for Miss Jemima, and tell her I authorise her to give you the dog. And a very fine dog he is.”

“Thank you, Mr. Q—. Good day.”

“Good day,” replied the boyard, acknowledging my obeisance by a wave of his hand.

It was a near thing, but I had scored, after all. You can't beat the pocket-stroke. Passing through the kitchen, I met the graceful Jim.

“Are you Miss Jemima?” I asked, in the tone you should always use towards women.

A dimple stole into each beautiful cheek as she nodded assent

“Well, Mr. Q— authorises Miss Jemima to give me the kangaroo-dog.”

“Come this way, then, please.” There was a slight flush of vexation on the girl's face now. And, indeed, it was scarcely fair of Dogberry, when his own soft thing had fallen through, to make Jim cover his dignified retreat. With deepening colour, she led the way to the stable, and opened a loose-box, disclosing Pup, crouched, sphynx-like, with a large bone between his paws. The red collar was gone; and he was chained to the manger by a hame-strap. Of course, I didn't blame the franklin, nor do I blame him now; rather the reverse. There seems something touching and beautiful in the thought that respectability, at best, is merely poised—never hard home; and that our clay will assert itself when a dog like Pup throws himself into the other scale. But I could feel the vicarious crimson spreading over Jim's forehead and ears as I unbuckled the hame-strap, whilst vainly ransacking my mind for some expression of thanks that wouldn't sound ironical. A terrible tie of sympathetic estrangement bound this sweet scapegoat and me asunder, or divided us together; and each felt that salvation awaited the one who spoke first, and to the point—or rather, from the point. All honour to Jim; she paced—

“You call him Pup',” observed the girl girlishly. “He's a big pup.”

“His proper name is ‘The Eton Boy',” replied the wretch wretchedly. And neither of us could see anything in the other's remark.

But the tension was relaxed; and, leaving the stable together, we gravely agreed that a thunderstorm seemed to be hanging about. Still a new embarrassment was growing in the girl's face and voice, even in the uneasy movement of her hands. At last it broke out—

“I s'pose you haven't had any dinner?”

“Don't let that trouble you, Miss Q—.”

“Father's not himself to-day,” she continued hastily. “He blames us for burning an old straw-stack; and I'm sure we never done it. Mother's been at him to burn it out of the way this years back, for it was right between the house and the road; and it was '78 straw”, rotten with rust. But I'm glad we didn't take on us to burn it, for father's vowing vengeance on whoever done it; and he's awful at finding out things.”

“Mr. Q—mentioned it to me,” I replied, with polite interest “But don't you think it seems a most unlikely thing for a stranger to do? Perhaps some of your own horses or cattle trod on a match that Mr. Q— had accidentally dropped there himself?”

“That couldn't be; for father never allows any matches about
the place, only them safety ones that strikes on the box. And he hates smoking. My brothers has to smoke on the sly.”

“Have you many Irish people about here, Miss Q—?”

“None only the Fogartys; and they're the best neighbours we got.”

“And was nobody seen near the stack before the fire broke out?”

“Not a soul. I was past there myself, not twenty minutes before we seen the fire; but I was going middling smart, and I didn't see anybody—nothing only Morgan's big white pig, curled under the edge of the stack, that always jumps out of the sty, and comes over here, and breaks into our garden. Well, father's always threatening to shoot that pig; and me, never thinking, I told him it was there; and he got his gun and went after it; and us in a fright for fear he would find it, but he didn't. Then when we seen him well out of sight, I went over to the stack quietly, to shoo the pig home, but it was gone; and there was no sign of fire then, and nobody in sight. Then my sisters and me was just starting out to the milking-yard, and mother had begun to take the things off the line, when little Enoch seen the fire. We couldn't make it out at all; and I examined up and down the drain for boot-marks, but there was none. And just before you come, I picked up the track of the horse I was riding, to see if his feet had struck fire on anything; but I was as wise as ever.”

“Ah! the horse was shod, Miss Q—?”

“No; he's barefooted all round. Well, he trod on a piece of a brick, near the corner of the garden; but the fire never travelled from there. It's very unaccountable.”

“Very. I wonder would there have been such a thing as a broken bottle anywhere about the stack, Miss Q—? The sun came out unusually strong this morning, I noticed; and it's a well-known scientific fact that the action of the solar rays, focussed by such a medium as I have suggested, will produce ignition—provided, of course, that the inflammable material is in the angle of refraction.”

“I don't know, sir,” she replied reverently.

“Why, gold has been melted in four seconds, silver in three, and steel in ten, under the mere influence of the sun's heat-rays, concentrated by a lens”—she shivered, and I magnanimously withheld my hand. “If this hypothesis should prove untenable,” I continued gently, “we may assume spontaneous ignition, produced by chemical combination. Nor are we confined to this supposition. Silex is an element which enters largely into the composition of wheaten straw; and it is worthy of remark that, in most cases where fire
is purposely generated by the agency of thermo-dynamics, some form of silex is enlisted—flint, for instance, or the silicious covering of endogenous plants, such as bamboo, and so forth. A theory might be built on this.”

“It seems very reasonable, sir,” she murmured. “Anyway, I 'm glad the old stack's out of the road. The place looks a lot cleaner.”

“Well, I won't keep you out in the sun,” said I reluctantly. “Good-bye, Miss Q—. And I'm very much obliged to you.”

“Oh, don't mention it! I'm sure we're very happy to”—she hesitated, blushing desperately.

“Well, good-bye, Miss Jemima.”

“Good-bye,” she murmured, half-extending her hand.

“I might see you again, some time,” I remarked, almost unconsciously, as our fingers met.

“I hope so,” she faltered.

“Good-bye, Jim,” said I, slowly releasing her hand.

“Good-bye.” The word sounded like a breath of evening air, kissing the she-oak foliage.

Then the maiden with the meek brown eyes, and the pathetic evidence of Australian nationality on her upper lip, returned to her simple duties. And the remembrance of Mrs. Beaudesart came down on me like a thousand of bricks. Such is life.

But my difficulties were over for the time being. My loco. had jolted its way over the rough section, carrying away an obstruction labelled V.R., and had reached the next points. I was still two or three days ahead of my official work; and there had happened to be a stray half-crown in the pocket of the spare oriflamme I had unfurled at my camp. Should I push on to Hay on the strength of that half-crown, draw my £8 6s. 8d., and send my clothier a guileful letter, containing a money-order for, say, thirty shillings? This would test his awfulness at finding out things, besides giving myself, morally, a clean bill of health. Or should I first walk across to B—'s and get Dick L— to shift some of my inborn ignorance
re
Palestine?

I decided on the latter line of action, and followed it with— Well, at all events, I have the compensating consciousness of a dignity uncompromised, and a nonchalance unruffled, in the face of Dick's really interesting descriptions of South-eastern Tasmania. Concerning my lapse of engagement on the previous evening, I merely remarked that the default was caused by circumstances over which &c.

I spent a couple of days, besides Sunday, at B—'s place; while the fisherman kept an eye on my horses. I helped B— to work out a new and rotten idea of a wind-mill pump; Dick handing me things, and holding the other end. On the first afternoon, a couple of hours after my arrival, I drove into — for some blacksmith work; and, whilst it was being done, I looked in at the
Express
office, and had a gossip with Archimedes on the topics of the day.

And now, whilst duly appreciating the rectitude of soul which has carried me through this trying disclosure, you will surely condone the obscurity in which I have been compelled to envelop all names used herein.

Now what would your novelist rede you from that record, if he had possession of my diary? Something mysterious and momentous, no doubt, and probably connected with buried treasure. Yet it is only the abstract and brief chronicle of a fair average day; a day happy in having no history worth mentioning; merely a drowsy morning, an idle mid-day, and a stirring afternoon. Life is largely composed of such uneventful days; and these are therefore most worthy of careful analysis.

How easy it is to recall the scene! The Lachlan river, filled by summer rains far away among the mountains, to a width of something like thirty yards, flowing silently past, and going to waste. Irregular areas of lignum, hundreds of acres in extent, and eight or ten feet in height, representing swamps; and long, serpentine reaches of the same, but higher in growth, indicating billabongs of the river. The river itself fringed, and the adjacent low ground dotted, with swamp box, river coolibah, and red-gum—the latter small and stunted in comparison with the giants of its species on the Murray and Lower Goulburn. On both sides of the river, far as the eye can command, extend the level plains of black or light-red soil, broken here and there by clumps and belts of swamp box, now cut off from the line of the horizon by the quivering, glassy stratum of the lower atmosphere.

And where the boundary fence of Mondunbarra and Avondale crosses the plain, is seen a fair example of the mirage—that phenomenon so vaguely apprehended in regions outside its domain, and so little noticed where repetition has made it familiar. But there it is; no smoky-looking film on the plain, no shimmering distortion of objects in middle-distance, but, to all appearance, a fine sheet of silvery water, two hundred yards distant, about the same in average width, and half-a-mile in length from right to left. Both banks are clearly defined; irregular promontories jut
far out into the smooth water from each side; and the boundary fence crosses it, post after post, in diminishing perspective, like any fence standing in shallow, sunlit water. The most critical and deliberate examination can no more detect evidence of phantasy in the unreal water than in the real fence.

The mirage is one of Nature's obscure and cheerless jokes; and in this instance, as in some few others, she is beyond Art. She even assists the illusion by a very slight depression of the plain in the right place. In fact, an artist's picture of a mirage would be his picture of a level-brimmed, unruffled lake; also, the most skilful word-painter, in attempting to contrast the appearance of water with that of its fac-simile, would become as confused and hazy as any clergyman taxed to differentiate his creed from that of the mollah running the opposition. And Nature, in taking this mirthless rise out of the spectator, never repeats herself in the particulars of distance, area, or configuration of her simulacre; it may be a mere stripe across the road—the brown, sinuous track disappearing beneath its surface, to re-appear on the opposing shore—it may be no larger than a good gilgie; or it may be the counterfeit presentment of a sheet of water, miles in extent, though this last is rare.