Such Is Life (62 page)

“Mrs. Bodysark”—and his grin deepened—“she's all right. Moriarty, of course, he's loafin' in the store; lis'n him now, laughin' fit to break his neck at some of his own gosh foolishness. I'll shove your horses in the paddick. I say! ain't they fell-away awful?”

“Yes; the season's telling on them. Now will you look after Pup, like a good chap? Here's his chain. I want to keep him fresh for travelling.”

“Right. I don't wish you no harm, Collins; but I wouldn't mind if you was in heaven, s'posen you left me that dog.”

I went across to the store, and looked in. Moriarty's laughing suddenly ceased, as his eye fell on me; and he respectfully rose to his feet.

“Wherefore that crackling of thorns under a pot?” I asked sternly, as I removed my belltopper and placed it on the counter. “Don't you see the spirits of the wise sitting in the clouds and mocking you?”

“Well, I'll be dashed!” he exclaimed admiringly. “You are coming out in blossom. Now you only want the upper half of your head shaved, and you could start a Loan and Discount bank, with a capital of half a million.”

“Thanks, worthy peer,” I replied, with dignity. “But, talking of finance, I trust you haven't forgotten the trifle that there is between us, and the terms of our agreement?”

“I'm not likely to forget. Take that chair. I've got such fun here.” He had sliced some corks into flat discs; into the centre of each disc he had stuck a slender piece of pine, about two inches in height, and spatulated at the upper end, like a paddle. Then to the flat part of each upright he had attached a blow-fly, by means of a touch of gum on the insect's back, and had placed in the grasp of each fly a piece of pine an inch long, cut into the shape of a rifle. The walking motion of the fly's feet twirled and balanced the stick in rather droll burlesque of musketry drill; and a dozen of these insects-at-arms, disposed in open order on the counter, were ministering to the young fool's mirth.

“Just you notice the gravity of the beggars,” he laughed. “Not a smile on them. Solemn as Presbyterians. 'Tention! Present! Recover! Not a lazy bone in their bodies. I say, Collins: a person could make a perpetual motion, with a fly on a sort of a treadmill? Ah! but then it wouldn't pass muster unless it went of its own accord—would it? Perpetual motion's a thing I've been giving my attention to lately. You remember you advised me to study
mechanics? Well, I've been thinking of arranging a clock so as to wind itself up as it went on. That's one idea. Another is a little more complicated. It's a water-wheel, driving a pump that throws a stream into the race that feeds the water-wheel, so that you use the same water over and over again, and the whole concern's self-acting. The idea came into my head like an inspiration. Mind, I'm telling you in confidence, for there's a thousand notes hanging on to it.”

“Moriarty,” said I sadly; “you're worse than ever. Try something else. You're not a born mechanician.”

“If I'm not, I'd like to know who the devil is?” replied the young fellow hotly. “Possibly, your own self? Wasn't my father a foreman in one of the largest machine-shops in Victoria, in his day? I know what's the matter with you. Jealousy.”

“It must be so. Plato, thou reasonest well,” said I hopelessly. “But supposing you are a born mechanician, you have neither the theoretical nor the practical training. Do you know for instance, the use of the brass slide you often see on a carpenter's rule?”

“Of course I do! Why I could calculate with that slide before I was ten years old.”

One to Moriarty. I should have remembered that his abnormal breadth across the temples qualified him to do a sum in his head, in ten seconds, that I couldn't do on a slate in ten hours, nor for that matter, in ten years. No accounts in Riverina were better kept than those of Runnymede.

“Good, so far,” I replied benevolently. “But how much do you know of prismoidal formulas, or logarithmic secants?—not to speak of segmental ordinates, or the cycloidal calculus; or even of adiabatic expansion, or torsional resistance, or the hydrostatic paradox, or the coefficient of friction? Now, these things are the very A B C of mechanics, as you'll find to your utter confusion.”

Moriarty's countenance fell; but happening to glance at the performing flies, he laughed himself weak and empty. “Just look at the beggars,” he murmured, wiping his eyes.

“Business first,” said I. “How about my scandal?”

“It's going grand!” replied Moriarty, beaming with new pleasure. “I carried out your suggestions to the letter. First, I took Mooney and Nelson into my confidence; and we arranged to meet accidentally, one evening after dusk, under that willow beside her bed-room. At last we sat down, with our backs against the weatherboard wall, and talked about”—

“Day, chaps,” said a stranger, appearing at the door of the store. “Got any pickles in stock, Moriarty?”

“Lots. Half-a-crown a bottle.”

“Say three bottles,” replied the stranger, seating himself on the counter. “And—let's see—a pound of tobacco; a dozen of matches; a tin of baking-powder; and a couple of hobble-chains. I'll make that do till I get as far as Hay. My chaps are squealing for pickles,” he continued, turning to me. “I didn't know you at the first glance. Your name's Collins—isn't it? You might remember me passing by you last spring, a few miles back along the track here, where you'd been helping Steve Thompson and a big, gipsy-looking fellow to load up some wool on a Sydney-pattern wagon? So that chestnut was a stolen horse, after all. Smart bit of work. Another devil of a season—isn't it? I've been trying to shift 900 head of forward stores from Mamarool to Vic; but I advised the owner to give it best, though it was money out of my pocket, when I had none in it to begin with. Managed to arrange for them on Wooloomburra till the winter comes on.”

While speaking, he had opened his knife and removed the capsule and cork from one of the bottles of pickles; then, after drinking some of the vinegar out of the way, he began harpooning the contents of the bottle, and eating them with a relish that was pleasant to see.

I made a suitable reply, whilst Moriarty, having made up his order, noted the items and price on the paper which contained the tobacco.

“I see Alf Jones is gone, Moriarty,” I remarked, after a pause—the stranger being occupied with his pickles. “Wisest thing he could do.”

“Foolishest thing he could do,” replied the storekeeper. “Nosey was a fixture on Runnymede; he was one of Montgomery's pets; and if he thinks he can better that in Australia, he's got a lot to learn. And what a hurry he was in, to get out of the best billet he'll ever have, poor beggar! with his shyness and his disfigurement. But he's been on the pea, like a good many more. Let's see—it was just the day after you went away that he came to Montgomery, and said he must go. That'll be six or eight weeks ago now. Montgomery went a lot out of his way to persuade him to stop, but it was no use; he was like a hen on a hot griddle till he got away. Decent chap, too; and, by gosh! can't he sing and play! We found afterward that he had given his books to the station library, with the message that we were to think kindly of him when
he was gone. I felt sort of melancholy to see him drifting away to beggary, with his fiddle-case across the front of his saddle, and his spare horse in his hand. He knew no more where he was going than the man in the moon.”

“Don't you believe it,” I replied. “These cranky fellows have always sane spots in their heads; and Alf is particularly lucky in that respect. There's not above two—or, at the most, three—lobes of that fellow's brain in bad working order. Just you watch the weekly papers, and you'll get news of him in his proper sphere. He's gone to Sydney, or perhaps Melbourne, to do something better than boundary riding.”

“No; he's gone to Western Queensland,” remarked the stranger, who had been watching Moriarty's flies, without the trace of a smile on his saturnine face. “I met him sixty or eighty mile beyond the Darling, on the Thargomindah track, three weeks ago.”

“Not the same fellow, surely?” I suggested.

“Well,” replied the stranger tolerantly, “the young chap I'm speaking of had some disfigurement of the face, so far as I could distinguish through a short crape veil; and he was carrying a box that he evidently wouldn't trust on his pack-horse, but whether it was a violin-case or a child's coffin, I wasn't rude enough to ask. Old-fashioned Manton single-barrel slung on his back. Good-looking black-and-tan dog. Brown saddle-horse; small star; WD conjoined, near shoulder; C or G, near flank. Bay mare, packed; J S, off shoulder; white hind-foot. Horses in rattling condition; and he was taking his time. He'd been boundary riding in the Bland country before coming here. Peculiar habit of giving his head a little toss sometimes when he spoke.”

“That's him, right enough,” said Moriarty. “Had you a yarn with him?”

“Not much of a yarn certainly,” replied the stranger, holding his bottle up to the light while he speared a gherkin with his knife. “It was coming on evening when I met him; and, says he, ‘I'm making for the Old-man Gilgie—haven't you come past it?' So I told him if he wanted to camp on water, he'd have to turn back five mile, and come with me to where I knew of a brackish dam. I'd just been disappointed of water, myself, at the Old-man Gilgie. It had been half-f a few days before, but a dozen of Elder's camels had called there, carrying tucker to Mount Brown; and each of them had scoffed the full of a 400-gallon tank. Talk about camels doing without water!”—Just here, though the stranger's ordinary language was singularly quotable in character, he digressed
into a searching and comprehensive curse, extending, inclusively, from Sir Thomas Elder away back along the vanishing vista of Time to the first man who had conceived the idea of utilising the camel as a beast of burthen.

“So we camped late at night,” he resumed, in a relieved tone; “and this friend of yours cleared-off early in the morning. He wasn't interested in anything but the Diamantina track, and I was nasty over the gilgie, so we didn't yarn much. However, that chap's no more off his head than I am. Bit odd, I daresay; but that's nothing. I often find myself a bit odd—negligent, and forgetful, and sort of imbecile—but that's a very different thing from being off your head. Why, just now, I saw your two horses in the paddock as I came up; and, if I was to be lagged for it, I couldn't think where I had seen them before—in fact, not till I recognised you. Want of sleep, I blame it on. Well, if I don't shift, there won't be many pickles left for my chaps. They were to boil the billy at the Balahs. Better give us another bottle.” He handed Moriarty the money for the goods, and stowed them in a small flour-bag. “So-long, boys—see you again some day.” And the imbecile stranger trailed his four-inch spurs from our presence.

“Do you know him, Moriarty?” I asked.

“I can't say I do,” replied the storekeeper. “One day, last winter, I happened to be out at the main road when he passed with 400 head of fats; and somehow I knew that his name was Spooner. Never saw him again till now. But how about Nosey Alf—wasn't I right for once?—and weren't you wrong for once?”

“So it appears,” I replied. “But you haven't told me how you worked the scandal. You were sitting with your backs against the wall—Go on”—

“Sitting with our backs against the wall,” repeated my agent complacently. “Well, we began to talk about the jealousy there was amongst the station chaps on account of Jack the Shellback being picked to take Nosey's place; and from that we got round to gossip about you stopping with Nosey the evening you left here, and wondering how you got on together, being queer in different ways. Then the conversation settled down on you; and we even quoted a remark Mrs. Beaudesart had made about you, only a couple of hours before. She had said that, though you were such a wonderful talker, you were surprisingly reticent respecting your own former life, and your family connections, and the place you came from. We commented on this remark, and laughed a bit, not at you, but at her. Clever engineering—wasn't it?”

“Not unless she was in her room, with her ear against the wall.”

“Trust her,” replied my ambassador confidently. “She saw us sitting-down as she went across the yard; and we counted on her. We knew her meanness in the matter of listening.”

“Don't say ‘meanness,'” I remonstrated. “I must take her part there. You can't judge even a high-minded woman by the standard of a moderately mean man, in this particular phase of character. Our deepest student of human nature makes his favourite Beatrice, on receiving a hint, run down the garden like a lapwing, to do a bit of deliberate eavesdropping; whilst her masculine counterpart, Benedick, has to hear his share of the disclosure inadvertently and reluctantly. Similarly, in
Love's Labour Lost
, when the mis-delivered letter is handed to Lord Boyet to read, he says:—

This letter is mistook; it importeth none here;

It is writ to Jaquenetta.

That, of course, settles the matter in his mind; but the Princess, true to her sex, says eagerly, and with a perfectly clear conscience :—

We will read it, I swear;

Break the neck of the wax, and let every one give ear.

Don't let us judge women by our standard here, for we can't afford to be judged by their standard in some other”—

“Hear, hear; loud applause; much laughter,” interrupted the delegate flippantly. “Well, we were yarning and laughing over Mrs. Beaudesart's simplicity; and it came out that Nelson and Mooney knew there was some reason why you daren't go back to where you were known; but they had never heard the story; so I put them on their honour, and told them the whole affair.”

“How did the story run?” I asked.