Such Is Life (53 page)

So Priestley, with a sinister glitter in his patient eyes, had reversed his whipstick, pliant end downward, and bent along the ground. He knew the nature of seasoned pine. A sharp jerk, and the whipstick would snap, supplying a nilla-nilla which would make him an over-match for a dozen Folkestones in rotation. My hand was on Cleopatra's mane, and my off-foot clear of the stirrup; it would be a Christian act to save Folkestone from the father of a batin', and Priestley from that sterner father, namely, old father antic, the law. But imminent as the collision seemed, it didn't come-off.

“Sit down, Folkestone,” said Montgomery, holding his companion's sleeve with a firm grip, whilst gazing steadily northward through the narrow fringe of timber. Following his eye, I saw a horseman, a mile and a half distant, heading for the homestead at a walk.

“Is that Arblaster, Collins?” demanded the squatter.

I brought my binocular to bear on the horseman. “Nelson,” I replied.

“Better still. Signal him.”

I galloped out into the plain, wheeled broadside on, and waved my hat. The equestrian profile changed to a narrow line, and I returned to the buggy, followed, at a decent interval, by Nelson. I was glad to see Priestley in the act of driving through the gate.

“Come here, Priestley,” said Montgomery quietly. “You have my permission to follow this track to the Nalrooka boundary”—

“I hope I'll git some slant to do as much”—

“Silence!—But if you trespass on my feed or water, by God I'll prosecute you. Another thing. Never in future load anything for me, or come to this station expecting wool. And I may as well warn you that every boundary man in my employ will be on the look-out for you from this time forward. Nelson; you ride behind his wagon to the boundary, and see that he keeps the track.”—A frown gathered on the young fellow's face, reinforced by a burning blush as Montgomery went on—“Perhaps you scarcely expected me to concur in your opinion, that one ought to spring a bit in a season like this; yet I have no intention of crushing a poor, decent, hard-working devil—that is, if he can add nine miles more to to-day's stage, without unyoking. I have already given him a thorough good blackguarding for calculating upon crossing the run. If he trespasses on feed or water—if he doesn't go straight on with his team, wagon or no wagon—you and I may quarrel.” Who was the spy? Ah! who is the ubiquitous station spy?

“Good-bye, Mr. Montgomery,” said I abjectly.

“Aren't you coming back to the station for your pocket-book?” he asked, with a glance out of the corner of his eye.

“I find I've got it here all the time—wonder how I came to overlook it.”

“Thinking too much about Mrs. Beaudesart,” suggested the squatter. “She won't be at all displeased to hear of it. Good-bye, Collins. Safe journey.”

I raised my wideawake to Folkestone, who again placed his glass in his eye, and stared at me wonderingly till we tore ourselves apart.

Another mile, and I cleared the pine-ridge. Looking back to the right, I could see Priestley and his guard of honour crawling toward the Faugh-a-ballagh sandhills, which lay two miles from the gate where we had parted. They would reach the tank as twilight merged into moonlight. Then Nelson would say, ‘I'm going to have a drink of tea at Jack's hut. I'll be back in three or four hours. Pity you're not allowed to loose-out, for there's a grand bit of crow's-foot round that pine tree in the hollow. Don't kindle a fire, unless you want to get lagged.' And Priestley would get to the boundary by ten o'clock on the morrow, without the loss of a beast; thanking heaven that he hadn't been escorted by Arblaster or Butler, and racking his invention to provide for the coming night. 
Also, Montgomery would, within a week, know all the details of the trip (station spy again), but, being a white man, he would silently condone Nelson's disobedience.

One more little incident enlivened the monotony of my journey to Alf's hut. Whilst giving my horses a half-mile walk, I took out the newspaper Toby had brought. I didn't look for any marginal marks, having recognised Jeff Rigby's handwriting in the address. Rigby is a man who never writes except on his own account. His way of acknowledging a letter is to pick up a newspaper, of perhaps a month old, tie a string round it, stamp and address it, and drop it in the nearest letter-box. This paper, however, happened to be the latest available issue of a Melbourne daily, and contained a copious account of the regatta, followed by the coarsely-executed portrait of a young man, with the neck and shoulders—and, by one of Nature's sad, yet just, compensations, also the face and head—of the average athlete. Rude as the engraving was, the subject of it at once suggested what the Life-Assurance canvassers call an ‘excellent risk'; and underneath ran the title: M
R
. R
UDOLPH
W
INTERBOTTOM
—S
TROKE OF THE
W
INNING
C
REW.
An ensuing paragraph briefly sketched the hero's history, habits, and physical excellencies. He was twenty-two years of age; had a good position in the N.S.W. Civil Service; and was now on leave of absence. He was a non-smoker, a life-abstainer, and in a word, was distinguished in almost every branch of those gambol faculties which show a weak mind and an able body. It gave me quite a turn.
Sic transit
, thought I, with a sigh. Such is life.

The cranky boundary rider's little weatherboard hut, standing just inside his horse-paddock fence, was neater than the average. The moonlight showed that a radius of five or six yards from the door had been swept with a broom; while some kerosene-tins, containing garden-flowers, occupied the angle formed by the chimney and the wall. The galvanised bucket and basin on the bench by the door were conspicuously clean; and the lamp-light showed through a green blind on the window.

A black-and-tan collie gave a few perfunctory barks as I drew near, whereupon Alf, with sleeves rolled up, and hands freshly blooded to the wrists, appeared at the door, and drew back on seeing me. I brought my horses through the gate, and he met me outside the hut; his hands washed, and his shirt-sleeves buttoned. He stood by, scarcely speaking, whilst I introduced myself, gave him his parcel and newspaper, and unsaddled my horses. Then I followed him into the hut, and he cleared away from the table the anatomy
of a fine turkey, shot during the day. Sullenly he replenished the kettle, and put the fire together; then washed the table, and laid it for one.

But the newspaper revelation, in giving me a turn, had turned me philosophic-side-upward; and I cared little for Alf's sullenness, provided he listened with attention to my discourse on the mutability of things. By the time he had poured out my tea, he was a vanquished man. He filled a cup for himself, to keep me company, and guardedly commented on the news I brought from the station and the Pine-ridge Gate. Still I was touched to observe that he kept his disfigured face averted as much as possible.

Did you ever reflect upon how much you have to be thankful for in the matter of noses? Your nose, in all probability, is your dram of eale—your club foot—your Mordecai sitting at the king's gate—but you would look very queer without it. In your morbid hypercriticalness, you may wish this indocile, undisguisable, and most unsheltered feature had been made a little longer, or a little shorter, or a little wider, or not quite so wide. Or perhaps you wish the isthmus between your eyes a little higher, or the ridge of the peninsula a little straighter, or the south cape a little more, or less, obtuse. Or possibly you wish that the front elevation (elevation is good) did not admit, through the natural grottoes above your moustache, so clear a perspective of the interior of Ambition's airy hall—forcing upon you the conviction that your own early disregard of your mother's repeated admonitions against wiping upward, had come home to you at last, and had come to stay. Check that rebellious spirit, I charge you. Your nose is good enough; better, probably, than you deserve; be thankful that you have one of any design at all.

This poor boundary man had none to speak of. And it seemed such a pity. More beautiful, otherwise, than a man's face is justified in being, it was (apart from sex) as if Pygmalion's masterpiece had fallen heavily, face downward, and then sprung into life, minus the feature which will least bear tampering with. The upper half of his nose was represented by an irregular scar, running off toward the left eye, which was dull and opaque; the other was splendid, soft, and luminous. And as he sat in the full light of the lamp, with his elbow on the table, in order to shade with his hand the middle part of his face, the combination of fine frontal development with exquisite and vigorous contour of mouth and chin was so striking that I involuntarily glanced round the hut for the bookshelf.

His lithe, graceful movements had at first led me to mark him down as a mere lad; but now the lamp-light showed a maze of incipient wrinkles on the sunburnt neck, and a few silver threads in the thick, strong, coal-black hair. Moreover, owing to inadvertence or ignorance on the part of people who should have known better, he had been christened in immediate succession to a girl. It is well and widely known that this oversight, small as it looks, will free a man for life from any rude inquiry as to when he is going to burn off the scrub. Alf had no scrub to burn off, except a faint moustache, unnoticeable but for its dark colour. For the rest, he was slightly above medium height, and by no means a good stamp of a man—tapering the wrong way, if I might so put it without shocking the double-refined reader. And, from stiff serge jumper to German-silver spur, he (Alf, of course) was unbecomingly clean for Saturday. The somewhat wearisome minuteness of this description is owing to his being, at least in my estimation, the most interesting character within the scope of these scrappy memoirs,

I looked round for the book-shelf. It was a book-case this time; a flat packing-case, nailed to the wall, fitted with shelves, and curtained on the front. I rose and inspected the collection: fifty or sixty volumes altogether—poetry, drama, popular theology, reference, and a few miscellaneous works; history meagrely represented, science and yellow-back fiction not at all.

“You don't find many people of my name in the country?” remarked the boundary man trivially, after a pause.

“Not many,” I replied, wondering whether he referred to his nickname or to the inexpensive, but lasting, gift of his godfathers and godmothers, at the time of their annoying mistake.

“I suppose you hardly know one,” he persisted.

“Not that I can think of,” I replied. “Have you any swapping-books?”

“Yes; you'll find
Elsie Venner
lying on top of the upper shelf.”

“I've read it years ago, but we'll change,” I replied. “When I first got my swapping-book, it was by Hannah More; now it's by Zola, and smutty enough at that; it has undergone about twenty intermediate metamorphoses, and it's still going remarkably strong—in both senses of the word. Therefore I can recommend it.”

“I don't think it does a person any good to read Zola,” remarked the boundary man gravely.

“Not the slightest, Alf—that is, in the works by which he is represented amongst us. But do you think it does a person any
good to read Holmes? Zola has several phases; one of them, I admit, blue as heaven's own tinct; but Holmes has only one phase, namely, pharisaism. Zola, even as we know him here in Riverina, has this advantage, that he gives you no rest for the sole of your foot—or rather, for the foot of your soul; whilst Holmes serenely seduces you to his own pinchbeck standard. Zola is honest; he never calls evil, good; whilst Holmes is spurious all through. Mind you, each has a genuine literary merit of his own.”

“But don't you like Holmes's poetry?” asked Alf.

“Well, his poems fill a little volume that the world would be sorry to lose; but why didn't he write one verse—just one—for the Abolitionists to quote?”

“Because it's not in his nature to denounce things,” objected Alf.

“Neither was it in Longfellow's nature; yet Longfellow's poems on Slavery are judged worthy to form a separate section of his works. But Holmes can denounce most valiantly. He denounces witch-burning and Inquisition-persecution, like the chivalrous soul that he is. He has achieved the distinction of being the only American poet of note who blandly ignores Slavery, and takes part with the aristocrat, as against the lowly. The same spirit runs through all his writings. He has a range of about three notes; a flunkeyish koo-tooing to soap-bubble eminence; a tawdry sympathy with aristocratic woe; and a drivelling contempt for angular Poor Relations, in bombazine gowns. Bombazine, by-the-way, is a cheap, carpetty-looking fabric, built of shoddy, and generally used for home-made quilts”—

“No, it's not!” broke in Alf, with a rippling laugh; “it's a very good dress-material; silk one way, and wool the other; and it's mostly black, or maroon, or”—he stopped with a gasp. “Why don't you sit down?” he continued, in an altered tone. “And that reminds me, my day's work's not done yet.”

He cleared the table, and placed upon it his half-dissected turkey, in a milk-dish. I had the conversation to myself till he finished his work and took the turkey outside to hang it on the meat-pole. This was a sapling of fifteen or twenty feet high, with a fork at the top, through which ran a piece of clothes-line. I followed him to the door, discoursing on literature, whilst he attached one end of the clothes-line to the turkey's legs, hauled it up to the fork, and hitched the fall of the rope to the pole. But just as the turkey reached its place, he had dropped his head with a movement of pain; and, after securing the rope, he groped his way into the hut, holding his hand over his right eye.

“Bit of bark, or something, dropped right into my eye,” he muttered. “It doesn't suit me to have anything wrong with the one I have left.”