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diff --git a/7447.txt b/7447.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9097b9c --- /dev/null +++ b/7447.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3703 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rising of the Court, by Henry Lawson + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Rising of the Court + +Author: Henry Lawson + +Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7447] +Posting Date: July 25, 2009 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISING OF THE COURT *** + + + + +Produced by Geoffrey Cowling + + + + + +THE RISING OF THE COURT + + +By Henry Lawson + + +Note: Only the prose stories are reproduced here, not the poetry. + + + + + +THE RISING OF THE COURT + + Oh, then tell us, Sings and Judges, where our meeting is to be, + when the laws of men are nothing, and our spirits all are free + when the laws of men are nothing, and no wealth can hold the fort, + There'll be thirst for mighty brewers at the Rising of the Court. + + +The same dingy court room, deep and dim, like a well, with the clock +high up on the wall, and the doors low down in it; with the bench, +which, with some gilding, might be likened to a gingerbread imitation +of a throne; the royal arms above it and the little witness box to one +side, where so many honest poor people are bullied, insulted and laughed +at by third-rate blackguardly little "lawyers," and so many pitiful, +pathetic and noble lies are told by pitiful sinners and disreputable +heroes for a little liberty for a lost self, or for the sake of a +friend--of a "pal" or a "cobber." The same overworked and underpaid +magistrate trying to keep his attention fixed on the same old miserable +scene before him; as a weary, overworked and underpaid journalist or +author strives to keep his attention fixed on his proofs. The same row +of big, strong, healthy, good-natured policemen trying not to grin at +times; and the police-court solicitors ("the place stinks with 'em," a +sergeant told me) wrangling over some miserable case for a crust, and +the "reporters," shabby some of them, eager to get a brutal joke for +their papers out of the accumulated mass of misery before them, whether +it be at the expense of the deaf, blind, or crippled man, or the alien. + +And opposite the bench, the dock, divided by a partition, with the women +to the left and the men to the right, as it is on the stairs or the +block in polite society. They bring children here no longer. The +same shaking, wild-eyed, blood-shot-eyed and blear-eyed drunks and +disorderlies, though some of the women have nerves yet; and the same +decently dressed, but trembling and conscience-stricken little wretch +up for petty larceny or something, whose motor car bosses of a big +firm have sent a solicitor, "manager," or some understrapper here to +prosecute and give evidence. + +But, over there, on a form to one side of the bench-opposite the witness +box--and as the one bright spot in this dark, and shameful, and useless +scene--and in a patch of sunlight from the skylight as it happens--sit +representatives of the Prisoners' Aid Society, Prison Gate and Rescue +Brigades, etc. (one or two of the ladies in nurses' uniforms), who are +come to help us and to fight for us against the Law of their Land and of +ours, God help us! + +Mrs Johnson, of Red Rock Lane, is here, and her rival in revolution, +One-Eyed Kate, and Cock-Eyed Sal, and one or two of the other +aristocrats of the alley. And the weeping bedraggled remains of what was +once, and not so long ago, a pretty, slight, fair-haired and blue-eyed +Australian girl. She is up for inciting One-Eyed Kate to resist +the police. Also, Three-Pea Ginger, Stousher, and Wingy, for some +participation in the row amongst the aforementioned ladies. (Wingy, +by the way, is a ratty little one-armed man, whose case is usually +described in the head-line, as "A 'Armless Case," by one of our great +dailies.) And their pals are waiting outside in the vestibule--Frowsy +Kate (The Red Streak), Boko Bill, Pincher and his "piece," etc., getting +together the stuff for the possible fines, and the ten-bob fee for the +lawyer, in one case, and ready to swear to anything, if called upon. And +I myself--though I have not yet entered Red Rock Lane Society--on bail, +on a charge of "plain drunk." It was "drunk and disorderly" by the way, +but a kindly sergeant changed it to plain drunk (though I always thought +my drunk was ornamental). + +Yet I am not ashamed--only comfortably dulled and a little tired--dully +interested and observant, and hopeful for the sunlight presently. We low +persons get too great a contempt for things to feel much ashamed at any +time; and this very contempt keeps many of us from "reforming." We hear +too many lies sworn that we know to be lies, and see too many unjust and +brutal things done that we know to be brutal and unjust. + +But let us go back a bit, and suppose we are still waiting for the +magistrate, and think of Last Night. "Silence!"--but from no human +voice this time. The whispering, shuffling, and clicking of the court +typewriter ceases, the scene darkens, and the court is blotted out as a +scene is blotted out from the sight of a man who has thrown himself into +a mesmeric trance. And: + +Drink--lurid recollection of being "searched"--clang of iron cell +door, and I grope for and crawl on to the slanting plank. Period of +oblivion--or the soul is away in some other world. Clang of cell +door again, and soul returns in a hurry to take heed of another soul, +belonging to a belated drunk on the plank by my side. Other soul says: + +"Gotta match?" + +So we're not in hell yet. + +We fumble and light up. They leave us our pipes, tobacco and matches; +presently, one knocks with his pipe on the iron trap of the door +and asks for water, which is brought in a tin pint-pot. Then follow +intervals of smoking, incoherent mutterings that pass for conversation, +borrowings of matches, knockings with the pannikin on the cell door +wicket or trap for more water, matches, and bail; false and fitful +starts into slumber perhaps--or wild attempts at flight on the part of +our souls into that other world that the sober and sane know nothing of; +and, gradually, suddenly it seems, reason (if this world is reasonable) +comes back. + +"What's your trouble!" + +"Don't know. Bomb outrage, perhaps." + +"Drunk?" + +"Yes." + +"What's yours!" + +"Same boat." + +But presently he is plainly uneasy (and I am getting that way, too, to +tell the truth), and, after moving about, and walking up and down in +the narrow space as well as we can, he "rings up" another policeman, who +happens to be the fat one who is to be in charge all night. + +"Wot's up here?" + +"What have I been up to?" + +"Killin' a Chinaman. Go to sleep." + +Policeman peers in at me inquiringly, but I forbear to ask questions. + +Blankets are thrown in by a friend of mine in the force, though we are +not entitled to them until we are bailed or removed to the "paddock" +(the big drunks' dormitory and dining cell at the Central), and we +proceed to make ourselves comfortable. My mate wonders whether he asked +them to send to his wife to get bail, and hopes he didn't. + +They have left our wicket open, seeing, or rather hearing, that we are +quiet. But they have seemingly left some other wickets open also, for +from a neighbouring cell comes the voice of Mrs Johnson holding forth. +The locomotive has apparently just been run into the cleaning sheds, +and her fires have not had time to cool. They say that Mrs Johnson was a +"lady once," like many of her kind; that she is not a "bad woman"--that +is, not a woman of loose character--but gets money sent to her from +somewhere--from her "family," or her husband, perhaps. But when she +lets herself loose--or, rather, when the beer lets her loose--she is +a tornado and a terror in Red Rock Lane, and it is only her fierce, +practical kindness to her unfortunate or poverty-stricken sisters in her +sober moments that keeps her forgiven in that classic thoroughfare. +She can certainly speak "like a lady" when she likes, and like an +intelligent, even a clever, woman--not like a "woman of the world," but +as a woman who knew and knows the world, and is in hell. But now her +language is the language of a rough shearer in a "rough shed" on a +blazing hot day. + +After a while my mate calls out to her: + +"Oh! for God's sake give it a rest!" + +Whereupon Mrs Johnson straightway opens on him and his ancestry, and +his mental, moral, and physical condition--especially the latter. She +accuses him of every crime known to Christian countries and some Asiatic +and ancient ones. She wants to know how long he has been out of jail +for kicking his wife to pieces that time when she was up as a witness +against him, and whether he is in for the same thing again? (She has +never set eyes on him, by the way, nor he on her.) + +He calls back that she is not a respectable woman, and he knows all +about her. + +Thereupon she shrieks at him and bangs and kicks at her door, and +demands his name and address. It would appear that she is a respectable +woman, and hundreds can prove it, and she is going to make him prove it +in open court. + +He calls back that his name is Percy Reginald Grainger, and his town +residence is "The Mansions," Macleay Street, next to Mr Isaacs, the +magistrate, and he also gives her the address of his solicitor. + +She bangs and shrieks again, and states that she will get his name from +the charge sheet in the morning and have him up for criminal libel, +and have his cell mate up as a witness--and hers, too. But just here +a policeman comes along and closes her wicket with a bang and cuts her +off, so that her statements become indistinct, or come only as shrieks +from a lost soul in an underground dungeon. He also threatens to cut us +off and smother us if we don't shut up. I wonder whether they've got her +in the padded cell. + +We settle down again, but presently my fellow captive nudges me +and says: "Listen!" From another cell comes the voice of a woman +singing--the girl who is in for "inciting to resist, your worship," in +fact. "Listen!" he says, "that woman could sing once." Her voice is low +and sweet and plaintive, as of a woman who had been a singer but had +lost her voice. And what do you think it is? + + The crowd in accents hushed reply-- + "Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." + +Mrs Johnson's cell is suddenly silent. Then, not mimickingly, mockingly, +or scornfully, but as if the girl is a champion of Jesus of Nazareth, +and is hurt at the ignorance of the multitude, and pities _Him_: + + Now who is this Jesus of Nazareth, say? + +The policeman, coming along the passage, closes the wicket in her door, +but softly this time, and not before we catch the plaintive words again. + + The crowd in accents hushed reply + "Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." + +My fellow felon throws the blanket off him impatiently, sits up with a +jerk, and gropes for his pipe. + +"God!" he says. "But this is red hot! Have you got another match?" + +I wonder what the Nazarene would have to say about it. + +Sleep for a while. I wonder whether they'll give us time, or we'll be +able to sleep some of our sins off in the end, as we sleep our drink off +here? Then "The Paddock" and day light; but there's little time for the +Paddock here, for we must soon be back in court. The men borrow and lend +and divide tobacco, lend even pipes, while some break up hard tobacco +and roll cigarettes with bits of newspaper. If it is Sunday morning, +even those who have no hope for bail, and have long horrible day and +night before them, will sometimes join in a cheer as the more fortunate +are bailed. But the others have tea and bread and butter brought to +them by one of the Prisoners' Aid Societies, who ask for no religion +in return. They come to save bodies, and not to fish for souls. The men +walk up and down and to and fro, and cross and recross incessantly, as +caged men and animals always do--and as some uncaged men do too. + +"Any of you gentlemen want breakfast?" Those who have money and +appetites order; some order for the sake of the tea alone; and some +"shout" two or three extra breakfasts for those who had nothing on them +when they were run in. We low people can be very kind to each other in +trouble. But now it's time to call us out by the lists, marshal us up in +the passage and draft us into court. Ladies first. But I forgot that I +am out on bail, and that the foregoing belongs to another occasion. Or +was it only imagination, or hearsay? Journalists have got themselves +run in before now, in order to see and hear and feel and smell for +themselves--and write. + + +"Silence! Order in the Court." I come like a shot out of my nightmare, +or trance, or what you will, and we all rise as the magistrate takes his +seat. None of us noticed him come in, but he's there, and I've a quaint +idea that he bowed to his audience. Kindly, humorous Mr Isaacs, whom +we have lost, always gave me that idea. And, while he looks over his +papers, the women seem to group themselves, unconsciously as it were, +with Mrs Johnson as front centre, as though they depended on her in some +vague way. She has slept it off and tidied, or been tidied, up, and +is as clear-headed as she ever will be. Crouching directly behind her, +supported and comforted on one side by One-Eyed Kate, and on the other +by Cock-Eyed Sal, is the poor bedraggled little resister of the Law, +sobbing convulsively, her breasts and thin shoulders heaving and shaking +under her openwork blouse--the girl who seemed to pity Jesus of Nazareth +last night in her cell. There's very little inciting to resist about her +now. Most women can cry when they like, I know, and many have cried men +to jail and the gallows; but here in this place, if a woman's tears +can avail her anything, who, save perhaps a police-court solicitor and +gentleman-by-Act-of-Parliament, would, or dare, raise a sneer. + +I wonder what the Nazarene would have to say about it if He came in to +speak for her. But probably they'd send Him to the receiving house as a +person of unsound mind, or give Him worse punishment for drunkenness and +contempt of court. + +His Worship looks up. + +Mrs Johnson (from the dock): "Good morning, Mr Isaacs. How do you do? +You're looking very well this morning, Mr Isaacs." + +His Worship (from the Bench): "Thank you, Mrs Johnson. I'm feeling very +well this, morning." + +There's a pause, but there is no "laughter." The would-be satellites +don't know whom the laugh might be against. His Worship bends over the +papers again, and I can see that he is having trouble with that quaintly +humorous and kindly smile, or grin, of his. He has as hard a job to +control his smile and get it off his face as some magistrates have to +get a smile on to theirs. And there's a case coming by and by that he'll +have to look a bit serious over. However-- + +"Jane Johnson!" + +Mrs Johnson is here present, and reminds the Sergeant that she is. + +Then begins, or does begin in most courts, the same dreary old drone, +like the giving out of a hymn, of the same dreary old charge: + + +"You--Are--Charged--With--Being--Drunk--And--Disorderly--In--Such--And-- +Such--A--Street--How--Do--You--Plead--Guilty--Or--Not--Guilty?" But they +are less orthodox here. The "disorderly" has dropped out of Mrs +Johnson's charge somehow, on the way from the charge room. I don't know +what has been going on behind the scenes, but, anyway, it is Christmas- +time, and the Sergeant seems anxious to let Mrs Johnson off lightly. It +means anything from twenty-four hours or five shillings to three months +on the Island for her. The lawyers and the police--especially the +lawyers--are secretly afraid of Mrs Johnson. + +However, again-- + +The Sergeant: "This woman has not been here for six weeks, your +Worship." + +Mrs Johnson (who has him set and has been waiting for him for a year or +so): "It's a damned lie, Mr Isaacs. I was here last Wednesday!" Then, +after a horrified pause in the Court: "But I beg _your_ pardon, Mr +Isaacs." + +His Worship's head goes down again. The "laughter" doesn't come here, +either. There is a whispered consultation, and (it being Christmas-time) +they compromise with Mrs Johnson for "five shillings or the risin'," and +she thanks his Worship and is escorted out, rather more hurriedly than +is comportable with her dignity, for she remarks about it. + +The members of the Johnsonian sisterhood have reason to be thankful for +the "lift" she has given them, for they all get off lightly, and even +the awful resister of Law-an'-order is forgiven. Mrs Johnson has money +and is waiting outside to stand beers for them; she always shouts for +the boys when she has it. And--what good does it all do? + +It is very hard to touch the heart of a woman who is down, though they +are intensely sympathetic amongst themselves. It is nearly as hard as it +is to combat the pride of a hard-working woman in poverty. It was such +women as Mrs Johnson, One-Eyed Kate, and their sisters who led Paris to +Versailles; and a King and a Queen died for it. It is such women as +Mrs Johnson and One-Eyed Kate and their sisters who will lead a greater +Paris to a greater Versailles some day, and many "Trust" kings and +queens, and their princes and princesses shall die for it. And that +reminds me of two reports in a recent great daily: + + Miss Angelina De Tapps, the youngest daughter of the well-known + great family of brewers, was united in the holy bonds of matrimony + to Mr Reginald Wells--(here follows a long account of the smart + society wedding). The happy pair leave en route for Europe per the + --next Friday. + + Jane Johnson, an old offender, again faced the music before Mr + Isaacs, S.M., at the Central yesterday morning--(here follows a + "humorous" report of the case). + +Next time poor Mrs Johnson will leave _en route_ for "Th' Island" and +stay there three months. + +The sisters join Mrs Johnson, who has some money and takes them to a +favourite haunt and shouts for them--as she does for the boys sometimes. +Their opinions on civilization are not to be printed. + +Ginger and Wingy get off with the option, and, though the fine is heavy, +it is paid. They adjourn with Boko Bill, and their politics are lurid. + +Squinny Peters (plain drunk--five bob or the risin'), who is peculiar +for always paying his fine, elects to take it out this time. It appears +that the last time Squinny got five bob or the risin' he ante'd up the +splosh like a man, and the court rose immediately, to Squinny's intense +disgust. He isn't taking any chances this time. + +Wild-Flowers-Charley, who recently did a fortnight, and has been out +on bail, has had a few this morning, and, in spite of warnings from and +promises to friends, insists on making a statement, though by simply +pleading guilty he might get off easily. The statement lasts some ten +minutes. Mr Isaacs listens patiently and politely and remarks: + +"Fourteen days." + +Charley saw the humour of it afterwards, he says. + +But what good does it all do? + +I had no wish to treat drunkenness frivolously in beginning this sketch; +I have seen women in the horrors--that ought to be enough. + + + + +"ROLL UP AT TALBRAGAR" + + Jack Denver died at Talbragar when Christmas Eve began, + And there was sorrow round the place, for Denver was a man; + Jack Denver's wife bowed down her head--her daughter's grief was wild, + And big Ben Duggan by the bed stood sobbing like a child. + But big Ben Duggan saddled up, and galloped fast and far, + To raise the longest funeral ever seen on Talbragar. + + -_Ben Duggan_. + + +Both funerals belonged to Big Ben Duggan in a way, though Jack Denver +was indirectly the cause of both. + +Jack Denver was reckoned the most popular man in the district (outside +the principal township)--a white man and a straight man--a white boss +and a straight sportsman. He was a squatter, though a small one; a real +squatter who lived on his run and worked with his men--no dummy, super, +manager for a bank, or swollen cockatoo about Jack Denver. He was on +the committees at agricultural shows and sports, great at picnics and +dances, beloved by school children at school feasts (I wonder if they +call them feasts still), giver of extra or special prizes, mostly sovs. +and half-sovs., for foot races, etc.; leading spirit for the scrub +district in electioneering campaigns--they went as right as men could go +in the politics of those days who watched and went the way Jack Denver +went; header of subscription lists for burnt-out, flooded-out, sick, +hurt, dead or killed or otherwise knocked-out selectors and others, +or their families; barracker and agitator for new provisional schools, +assister of his Reverence and little bush chapels, friend of all manner +of wanderers--careless, good-hearted scamps in trouble, broken-hearted +new chums, wrecks and failures and outcasts of any colour or creed, and +especially of old King Jimmy and the swiftly vanishing remnant of his +tribe. His big slab-and-shingle and brick-floored kitchen, with its +skillions, built on more generous plans and specifications than even the +house itself, was the wanderer's goal and home in bad weather. And--yes, +owner, on a small scale, of racehorses, and a keen sportsman. + +Jack Denver and Big Ben Duggan were boys together on the old selections, +and at the new provisional bark school at Pipeclay; they went into the +Great North-West together "where all the rovers go"--stock-riding and +droving and overlanding, and came back after a few years bronzed and +seasoned and with wild yarns. + +Jack married and settled down on a small run his father had bought near +Talbragar, and his generous family of tall, straight bush boys and tall, +straight bush girls grew up and had their sweethearts. But, when Jack +married, Big Ben Duggan went back again, up into Queensland and the +Great North-West, with a makeshift mate who had also lost his mate +through marriage. Ever and again, after one, and two, and three +years--the periods of absence lengthening as the years went on--Big Ben +Duggan would come back home, and stay a while (till the Great North-West +began to call insistently) at Denver's, where he would be welcomed +jubilantly by all--even the baby who had never seen him--for there was +"something about the man." And, until late on the night of his return, +he and Jack would sit by the fire in winter, or outside on the woodheap +in summer, and yarn long and fondly about the Wide Places, and strange +things they knew and understood. + +How sudden things are! Ben was back (just in time for the holidays and +the Mudgee races) out of the level lands, where distance dwells in her +halls of shimmering haze, after following her for five years. + +They were riding home from the races, the women and children in carts +and buggies, the men and boys on horseback--of course. They raced each +other along the road, across short cuts, through scrub and timber, and +back to the slow-coming overloaded vehicles again, some riding wildly +and recklessly. Jack Denver was amongst them, his heart warmed with +good luck at the races, good whisky to wet it, and the return of his old +mate. "We're as good as the best of the young 'uns yet, Ben!" he cried, +as they swung through the trees. "Ain't we, you old--?" + +And then and there it happened. + +A new chum suggested that Jack had more than he thought aboard and was +thrown from his horse; but the new chum was repudiated with scorn and +bad words and indignation by bushmen and bushwomen alike--as indeed he +would be by any bushman who had seen a drunken rider ride. + +"I learnt him to ride when he was a kiddy about so high," said old +Break-the-News Fosbery, resentfully gasping and gulping, "and Jack +wasn't thrown." It was thought at first that his horse had shied and run +him against a tree, or under an overhanging branch; but Ben Duggan +had seen it, and explained the thing to the doctor with that strange +calmness or quietness that comes to men in the midst of a life's grief. +Jack was riding loosely, and swung forward just as the filly, a fresh +young thing, threw back her head; and it struck him with sledge-hammer +force, full in the face. + +He was dead, even before they got him to Anderson's Halfway Inn. There +was wild racing back to town for doctors, and some accidents; one horse +was killed and another ridden to death. Others went as a forlorn hope in +search of Doc. Wild, eccentric Yankee bush "quack," who had once saved +one of Denver's little girls from diphtheria; others, again, for Peter +M'Laughlan, bush missionary, to face the women--for they couldn't. + +Big Ben Duggan, blubbering unashamed by the bedside, put his hand on +Mrs Denver's shoulder, as she crouched there, wild-eyed, like a hunted +thing. "Nev--never mind, Mrs Denver!" he blurted out, with a note as of +indignation and defiance--just for all the world as if Jack Denver had +done a wrong thing and the district was down on him--"he'll have the +longest funeral ever seen in these parts! Leave that to me." Then some +of the women took her out to her daughter's. Big Ben Duggan gave terse +instructions to some of the young riders about, and then, taking the +best and freshest horse, the cross-country scrub swallowed him--west. +The young men jumped on their horses and rode, fan-like, east. + +They took Jack Denver home. They always took their dead home first, +whenever possible, and no matter the distance, before taking them to +their last long home; and they do it yet, I suppose. They are not always +so particular about it in cities, from what I've seen. + +But this was a strange funeral. They had arranged mattress and sheet in +the bottom of a four-wheeler, and covered him with sheet, blanket, and +quilt, though the weather was warm; and over the body, from side to +side of the trap, they had stretched the big dark-green table-cloth from +Anderson's dining-room. The long, ghostly, white, cleared government +road between the dark walls of timber in the moonlight. The buggies and +carts behind, and the dead-white faces and glistening or despairingly +staring eyes of the women--wife, daughters, and nieces, and those who +had come to help and comfort. The men--sons and brothers, and few mates +and chums and sweethearts--riding to right and left like a bodyguard, to +comfort and be comforted who needed comfort. + +Now and again a brother or son--mostly a brother--riding close to the +wheel, would suddenly throw out his arm on the mud splasher, of buggy or +cart, and, laying his head on it, sob as he rode, careless of tyre and +spokes, till a woman pushed him off gently: + +"Take care of the wheel, Jim--mind the wheel." + +The eldest son held the most painful position, by his mother's side in +the first buggy, supported by an aunt on the other side, while somebody +led his horse. In the next buggy, between two daughters, sat a young +fellow who was engaged to one of them--they were to be married after the +holidays. The poor girls were white and worn out; he had an arm round +each, and now and again they rested their heads on his shoulders. The +younger girl would sleep by fits and starts, the sleep of exhaustion, +and start up half laughing and happy, to be stricken wild-eyed the next +moment by terrible reality. Some couldn't realize it at all--and to most +of them all things were very dreamy, unreal and far away on that lonely, +silent road in the moonlight--silent save for the slow, stumbling hoofs +of tired horses, and the deliberate, half-hesitating clack-clack of +wheel-boxes on the axles. + +Ben Duggan rode hard, as grief-stricken men ride--and walk. At Cooyal he +woke up the solitary storekeeper and told him the news; then along that +little-used old road for some miles both ways, and back again, rousing +prospectors and fossickers, the butcher of the neighbourhood, clearers, +fencers, and timber-getters, in hut and tent. + +"Who's that?" + +"What's up?" + +"What's the matter?" + +"Ben Duggan! Jack Denver's dead! Killed ridin' home from the races! +Funeral's to-morrow. Roll up at Talbragar or the nearest point you can +get to on the government road. Tell the neighbours and folks." + +"Good God! How did it happen?" + +But the hoofs of Ben's horse would be clattering or thudding away into +the distance. + +He struck through to Dunne's selection--his brother-in-law, who had not +been to the races; then to Ross's farm--Old Ross was against racing, but +struck a match at once and said something to his auld wife about them +black trousers that belonged to the black coat and vest. + +Then Ben swung to the left and round behind the spurs to the school +at Old Pipeclay, where he told the schoolmaster. Then west again to +Morris's and Schneider's lonely farms in the deep estuary of Long Gully, +and through the gully to the Mudgee-Gulgong road at New Pipeclay. The +long, dark, sullenly-brooding gully through which he had gone to school +in the glorious bush sunshine with Jack Denver, and his sweetheart--now +but three hours his hopelessly-stricken widow; Bertha Lambert, Ben's +sweetheart--married now, and newly a grandmother; Harry Dale--drowned +in the Lachlan; Lucy Brown--Harry's school-day and boy-and-girl +sweetheart--dead; and--and all the rest of them. Far away, far away--and +near away: up in Queensland and out on the wastes of the Never-Never. +Riding and camping, hardship and comfort, monotony and adventure, +drought, flood, blacks, and fire; sprees and--the rest of it. Long dry +stretches on Dead Man's Track. Cutting across the country in No Man's +Land where there were no tracks into the Unknown. Chancing it and +damning it. Ill luck and good luck. Laughing at it afterwards and joking +at it always; he and Jack--always he and Jack--till Jack got married. +The children used to say Long Gully was haunted, and always hurried +through it after sunset. It was haunted enough now all right. + +But, raising the gap at the head of the gully, he woke suddenly and came +back from the hazy, lazy plains; the + + Level lands where Distance hides in her halls of shimmering haze, + And where her toiling dreamers ride towards her all their days; + +where "these things" are ever far away, and Distance ever near--and +whither he had drifted, the last hour, with Jack Denver, from the old +Slab School. + +"I wonder whether old Fosbery's got through yet?" he muttered, with +nervous anxiety, as he looked down on the cluster of farms and scattered +fringe of selections in the broad moonlight. "I wonder if he's got there +yet?" Then, as if to reassure himself: "He must have started an hour +before me, and the old man can ride yet." He rode down towards a farm on +Pipeclay Creek, about the centre of the cluster of farms, vineyards, and +orchards. + +Old Fosbery--otherwise Break-the-News--was a character round there. If +he was handy and no woman to be had, he was always sent to break the +news to the wife of a digger or bushman who had met with an accident. +He was old, and world-wise, and had great tact--also great experience in +such matters. Bad news had been broken to him so many times that he had +become hardened to it, and he had broken bad news so often that he had +come to take a decided sort of pleasure in it--just as some bushman are +great at funerals and will often travel miles to advise, and organize, +and comfort, and potter round a burying and are welcomed. They had +broken the news to old Fosbery when his boy went wrong and was "taken" +("when they took Jim"). They had broken the news to old Fosbery when his +daughter, Rose, went wrong, and bolted with Flash Jack Redmond. They had +broken the news to the old man when young Ted was thrown from his horse +and killed. They had broken the news to the old man when the unexpected +child of his old age and hopes was accidentally burnt to death. So the +old man knew how it felt. + + +The farm was the home of one of Jack Denver's married sisters, and, as +there was no woman to go so far in the night they had sent old Fosbery +to tell her. Folks were most uneasy and anxious, by the way, when they +saw old Fosbery coming unexpectedly, and sometimes some of them got a +bad start--but it helped break the news. + +"Well, if he ain't there, I suppose I'll have to do it," thought Ben as +he passed quietly through the upper sliprails and neared the house. "The +old man might have knocked up or got drunk after all. Anyway, no one +might come in the morning till it's too late--it always happens that +way--and--besides, the women'll want time to look up their black +things." + +But, turning the corner of the cow-yard, he gave a sigh of relief as +he saw old Fosbery's horse tied up. They were up, and the big kitchen +lighted; he caught a glimpse of a shock of white hair and bushy white +eyebrows that could have belonged to no one except old Break-the-News. +They were sitting at the table, the tearful wife pouring out tea, and by +the tokens Ben knew that old Fosbery had been very successful. He rode +quietly to the lower sliprails, let them down softly, led his horse +carefully over them, put them up cautiously, and stood in a main road +again. He paused to think, leaning one arm on his saddle and tickling +the nape of his neck with his little finger; his jaw dropped, reflecting +and grief forgotten in the business on hand, and the horse "gave" to +him, thinking he was about to mount. He was tired--weary with that +strange energetic weariness that cannot rest. It was five miles from +Mudgee and the news was known there and must have spread a bit already; +but the bulk of the Gulgong and Gulgong Road race-goers had passed here +before the accident. Anyway, he thought he might as well go over and +tell old Buckolts, of the big vineyard, across the creek, who was a +great admirer of Jack Denver and had been drinking with him at the races +that day. Old Buckolts was a man of weight in the district, and was +always referred to by all from his old wife down, as "der boss," and by +no other term. The old slab farmhouse and skillions and out-houses, +and the new square brick house built in front, were all asleep in the +moonlight. The dogs woke the old man first (as was generally the +case), as Ben opened the big white home gate and passed through without +dismounting. + +"Who's dat? Who voss die [there]?" shouted the old man as the horse's +hoofs crunched on the white creek-bed gravel between the two houses. + +"Ben Duggan!" + +"Vot voss der matter?" + +"Jack Denver's dead--killed riding home from the races." + +"Vot dat you say?" + +Ben repeated. + +"Go avay! Go home and go to sleep! You voss shoking--and trunk. Vat for +you gum by my house mit a seely cock mit der bull shtory at dis hour of +der night?" + +"It's only too true, Mr Buckolts," said Ben. "I wish to God it wasn't." + +"You've got der yoomps, Pen. Go to der poomp and poomp on your head and +den turn in someveers till ter morning. I tells von of der pot's to gif +you a nip and show you a poonk. Vy! I trink mit Shack Denver not twelf +hour ago!" + +But Ben persisted: "I'm not drunk, Mr Buckolts, and I ain't got +the horrors--I wish to God I was an' had. Poor Jack was killed near +Anderson's, riding home, about six o'clock." + +Though Ben couldn't see him, he could feel and hear by his tones, that +old Buckolts sat up in bed suddenly. + +"_Mein Gott_! How did it happen, Pen?" + +Ben told him. + +"Ven and veer voss der funeral?" + +Ben told him. + +"Frett! Shonny! Villie! Sharley!" shouted the old man at the top of his +voice to the boys sleeping in the old house. "Get up and pring all der +light horses in from der patticks, and gif dem a goot feet mit plenty +corn; and get der double-parrelled puggy ant der sinkle puggy and der +three spring carts retty. Dere vill pe peoples vanting lifts to-morrow. +Ant get der harnesses and sattles retty. Vake up, olt vomans!" (Mrs +Buckolts must have been awake by this time.) "Call der girls ant see to +dere plack tresses. Py Gott, ve _moost_ do dis thing in style. Does his +poor sister know over dere across the creeks, Pen? Durn out! you lazy, +goot-for-noddings, or I will chain you up on an ants' bed mit a rope +like a tog; do you not hear that Shack Denver voss dett?" + +"I vill sent some of der girls over dere first thing in der morning. +Holt on, Pen, ant I vill sent you out some vine." + +Ben rode with the news to Lee's farm where Maurice Lee--at feud with +Buckolts and a silent man--was, for he had known Denver all his life, +and had gone, in his young days, on a long droving trip with him and Ben +Duggan. + +A little later Ben returned to the main road on a fresh horse. He turned +towards Gulgong, and rode hard; past the new bark provisional school +and along the sidings. He left the news at Con O'Donnell's lonely tin +grocery and sly-grog shop, perched on the hillside--("God forgive +us all!" said Con O'Donnell). He left the news at the tumble-down +public-house, among the huts and thistles and goats that were left of +the Log Paddock Rush. There were goats on the veranda and the place +seemed dead; but there were startled replies and inquiries and matches +struck. He left the news at Newton's selection, and Old Bones Farm, and +at Foley's at the foot of Lowe's Peak, close under the gap between Peak +and Granite Ridge. Then he turned west, at right angles to the main +road, and took a track that was deserted except for one farm and on +every alternate Sunday. He passed the lonely little slab bush "chapel" +of the locality, that broke startlingly out of the scrub by the track +side as he reached it; and left the news at Southwick's farm at the +end of the blind track. At more than one farm he left the bushwoman +hurriedly looking up her "black things;" and at more than one, one of +the boys getting his bridle to catch his horse and ride elsewhere with +the news. + +Ben rode back, through the moonlight and the moon-shadow haunted +paddocks, and the naked, white, ringbarked trees, along Snakes Creek, +parallel with the main road he had recently travelled till he struck +Pipeclay Creek again lower down. He turned down the track towards +the river, and at the junction left word at Lowe's--one of the old +land-grant families. The dogs woke an old handy man (who had been "sent +out" in past ages for "knocking a donkey off a hen-roost"-as most of +them were) and Ben told him to tell the family. + +At Belinfante's Bridge across the Cudgegong Ben struck a big camp of +bullock-drivers, some going down with wool and some going back for more. + +"Hold on, Ben," cried Jimmy Nowlett, from his hammock under his wagon as +Ben was riding off--"Hold on a minute! I want to look at yer." + +Jimmy got his head out of his bunk very cautiously and carefully, and +his body after it--there were nut ends of bolts, a heavy axle, and +extremely hard projections, points, and corners within a very few short +inches of his chaff-filled sugar-bag pillow. Slipping cannily on to +his hands and knees, he crawled out under the tail-board, dragging his +"moles" after him, and stood outside in the moonlight shaking himself +into his trousers. + +Jimmy was a little man who always wore a large size in moleskins--for +some reason best known to himself--or more probably for no reason at +all; or because of a habit he'd got into accidentally years ago--or +because of the motherly trousers his mother used to build for him when +he was a boy. And he always shook himself into his pants after the +manner of a woman shaking a pillow into a clean slip; his chin down on +his chest and his jaw dropped, as if he'd take himself in his teeth, +after the manner of the woman with a pillow, were he not prevented by +sound anatomical reasons. + +"You look reg'lerly tuckered out, Ben," he said, "an' yer horse could do +with a spell too. Git down, man, and have a pint er tea and a bite." + +Ben got down wearily and knew at once how knocked up he was. He sat +right down on the hard ground, embracing and drawing up his knees, and +felt as if he'd like never to get up again: while Jimmy shook some chaff +and corn that he carried for his riding hack into a box for the horse, +and his travelling mate, Billy Grimshaw, lifted his big namesake half +full of cold tea, on to the glowing coals by the burning log--looking +just like an orang-outang in a Crimean shirt. + +Ben got a fresh horse at Alfred Gentle's farm under the shadow of +Granite Ridge, and then on to Canadian (th' Canadian Lead of the roaring +days), which had been saved from the usual fate by becoming a farming +township. Here he roused and told the storekeeper. Then up the creek to +Home Rule, dreariest of deserted diggings. + +He struck across the ages-haunted bush, and up Chinaman's Creek, past +"the Chinamen's Graves," and through the scrub and over the ridges for +the Talbragar Road. For he had to see Jack Denver home from start to +finish. + +Glaring, hot and dusty, lay the long, white road; coated with dust that +felt greasy to the touch and taste. The coffin was in a four-wheeled +trap, for the solitary hearse that Mudgee boasted then was to meet them +some three miles out of town--at the racecourse, as it happened, by +one of those eternal ironies of fate. (Jones, the undertaker, had had +another job that morning.) The long string of buggies and carts and +horsemen; other buggies and carts and horsemen drawn respectfully back +amongst the trees here and there along the route; male hats off and +held rigidly vertical with right ears as the coffin passed; and drivers +waiting for a chance to draw into the line. + +Think of it; up early on the first morning, a long day at the races, a +long journey home, awake and up all night with grief and sympathy. Some +of the men had ridden till daylight; the women, worn out and exhausted, +had perhaps an hour or so of sleep towards morning--yet they were all +there, except Ben Duggan, on the long, hot, dusty road back, heads +swimming in the heat and faces and hands coated with perspiration and +dust--and never, never once breaking out of a slow walk. It would +have been the same had it been pouring with rain. I have seen funerals +trotting fast in London, and they are trotting more and more in +Australian cities, with only "the time" for an excuse. But in the bush I +have never seen a funeral faster than the slowest of walks no matter who +or what might wait, or what might happen or be lost. They stood by their +dead well out there. Maybe some of the big, simple souls had a sort of +vague idea that the departed would stand a better show if +accompanied as far as possible by the greatest possible number of +friends--"barrackers," so to speak. + +Here all the shallow and involuntary sham of it, the shirking of a dull +and irksome duty--a bore, though the route be only a mile or so. The +satisfied undertaker, and the hard-up professional mutes and mourners +in seedy, mouldy, greeny-black, and with boozers' faces and noses and a +constant craving for beer to help them bear up against their grief and +keep their mock solemn faces. Out there you were carried to the hearse +or trap from your home, and from the hearse or trap to your grave--and +with infinite carefulness and gentleness--on the shoulders of men, and +of men who had known and loved you. + +There had been wonder and waiting in the morning for Ben Duggan; and +the women especially, on the way home, when free from restraint, were +greatly indignant against him. To think that he should break out and go +on the drunk on this day of all days, when his oldest mate and friend +was being carried to his grave. The men, knowing how he had ridden all +night, found great excuses; but later on some grew anxious and wondered +what could have become of him. + +Some, returning home by a short cut, passed over Dead Man's Gap beyond +Lowe's Peak. + +"Wonder what could have become of Ben Duggan." mused one, as they rode +down. + +There and then their wonders ceased. + +A party of road-clearers had been at work along the bottom, and there +was much smoke from the burning-off, which must have made the track dim +and vague and uncertain at night. Just at the foot of the gap, clear +of the rough going, a newly-fallen tree lay across the track. It was +stripped--had been stripped late the previous afternoon, in fact; and, +well, you won't know, what a log like that is when the sap is well +up until you have stepped casually on to it to take a look round. A +confident skip, with your boot soles well greased, on to the ice in a +glaciarium for the first time would be nothing to it in its results, I +fancy. (I remember we children used to scrape the sap off, and eat +it with satisfaction, if not with relish--white box I think the trees +were.) + +Ben must have broken into a canter as he reached the level, as indeed +his horse's tracks showed he did, and the horse must have blundered in +the smoke, or jumped too long or too short; anyway, his long slithering +shoe marks were in the sap on the log, and he lay there with a broken +leg and shoulder. He had struck it near the stump and the sharp edge of +an outcrop of rock. + +There was more breakneck riding, and they got a cart and some bedding +and carried Ben to Anderson's, which was handiest, if not nearest, and +there was more wild and reckless riding for the doctor. + +One got a gun, and rode back to shoot the horse. + +Ben's case was hopeless from the first. He was hurt close to that big +heart of his, as well as having a fractured skull. He talked a lot of +the selections and old John Tierney, of the old bark school; and the +Never-Never country with Jack--and, later on, of the present. "What's +Ben sayin' now, Jim?" asked one young bushman as another came out of the +room with an awestruck face. + +"He's sayin' that Jack Denver's dead, killed ridin' home from the races, +an' that the funeral's to-morrow, an' we're to roll up at Talbragar!" +answered the other, with wide eyes, a blank face and in an awed voice. +"He's thinkin' to-day's yisterday." + +But towards the end, under the ministrations of the doctor, Ben became +conscious. He rolled his head a little on the pillow after he woke, and +then, seeming to remember all that happened up to his stunning fall, he +asked quietly: + +"What sort of a funeral did Jack have?" + +They told him it was the biggest ever seen in the district. + +"Muster bin more'n a mile long," said one. + +"Watcher talkin' about, Jim?" put in another. "Yer talkin' through yer +socks. It was more'n a mile an' a half, Ben, if it was er inch. Some of +the chaps timed it an' measured it an' compared notes as well as they +could. Why, the head was at the Racecourse when the tail was at Old--" + +Ben sank back satisfied and a little later took the track that Jack +Denver had taken. + + + + +WANTED BY THE POLICE + + + +Could it have been the Soul of Man and none higher that gave spoken and +written word to the noblest precepts of human nature? For the deeper you +sound it the more noble it seems, in spite of all the wrong, injustice, +sin, sorrow, pain, religion, atheism, and cynics in the world. We +make (or are supposed to make, or allow others to make) laws for the +protection of society, or property, or religion, or what you will; and +we pay thousands of men like ourselves to protect those laws and see +them carried out; and we build and maintain expensive offices, police +stations, court-houses and jails for the protecting and carrying out of +those laws, and the punishing of men--like ourselves--who break them. +Yet, in our heart of hearts we are antagonistic to most of the laws, +and to the Law as a whole (which we regard as an ass), and to the police +magistrates and the judges. And we hate lawyers and loathe spies, pimps, +and informers of all descriptions and the hangman with all our soul. For +the Soul of Man says: Thou shalt not refuse refuge to the outcast, and +thou shalt not betray the wanderer. + +And those who do it we make outcast. + +So we form Prisoners' Aid Societies, and Prisoners' Defence Societies, +and subscribe to them and praise them and love them and encourage them +to protect or defend men from the very laws that we pay so dearly +to maintain. And how many of us, in the case of a crime against +property--and though the property be public and ours--would refuse +tucker to the hunted man, and a night's shelter from the pouring rain +and the scowling, haunting, threatening, and terrifying darkness? Or +show the police in the morning the track the poor wretch had taken? I +know I couldn't. + +The Heart of Man says: Thou shalt not. + +At country railway stations, where the trains stop for refreshments, +when a prisoner goes up or down in charge of a policeman, a native +delicacy prevents the local loafers from seeming to notice him; but at +the last moment there is always some hand to thrust in a clay pipe and +cake of tobacco, and maybe a bag of sandwiches to the policeman. + +And, when a prisoner escapes, in the country at least--unless he be a +criminal maniac in for a serious offence, and therefore a real danger +to society--we all honestly hope that they won't catch him, and we don't +hide it. And, if put in a corner, most of us would help them not to +catch him. + +The thing came down through the ages and survived through the dark +Middle Ages, as all good things come down through the ages and survive +through the blackest ages. The hunted man in the tree, or cave, or hole, +and strangers creeping to him with food in the darkness, and in fear and +trembling; though he was, as often happened, an enemy to their creed, +country, or party. For he was outcast, and hungry, and a wanderer whom +men sought to kill. + +These were mostly poor people or peasants; but it was so with the rich +and well-to-do in the bloody Middle Ages. The Catholic country gentleman +helping the Protestant refugee to escape disguised as a manservant (or +a maidservant), and the Protestant country gentleman doing likewise by +a hunted Catholic in his turn, as the battles went. Rebel helping +royalist, and royalist helping rebel. And always, here and there, down +through those ages, the delicate girl standing with her back to a door +and her arms outstretched across it, and facing, with flashing eyes, the +soldiers of the king or of the church--or entertaining and bluffing +them with beautiful lies--to give some poor hunted devil time to hide +or escape, though she a daughter of royalists and the church, and he a +rebel to his king and a traitor to his creed. For they sought to kill +him. + +There was sanctuary in those times, in the monkeries--and the churches, +where the soldiers of the king dared not go, for fear of God. There +has been sanctuary since, in London and other places, where His or Her +Majesty's police dared not go because of the fear of man. The "Rocks" +was really sanctuary, even in my time--also Woollomooloo. Now the only +sanctuary is the jail. + +And, not so far away, my masters! Down close to us in history, and in +Merrie England, during Judge Jeffreys's "Bloody Assize," which followed +on the Monmouth rebellion and formed the blackest page in English +history, "a worthy widow named Elizabeth Gaunt was burned alive at +Tyburn, for having sheltered a wretch who himself gave evidence against +her. She settled the fuel about herself with her own hands, so that the +flames should reach her quickly; and nobly said, with her last breath, +that she had obeyed the sacred command of God, to give refuge to the +outcast and not to betray the wanderer." (Charles Dickens's _History of +England._) + +Note, I am not speaking of rebel to rebel, or loyalist to loyalist, +or comrade to comrade, or clansman to clansman in trouble--that goes +without saying--but of man and woman to man and woman in trouble, the +highest form of clannishness, the clannishness that embraces the whole +of this wicked world--the Clan of Mankind! + +French people often helped English prisoners of war to escape to the +coast and across the water, and English people did likewise by the +French; and none dared raise the cry of "traitors." It was the highest +form of patriotism on both sides. And, by the way, it was, is, and shall +always be the women who are first to pity and help the rebel refugee or +the fallen enemy. + +Succour thine enemy. + + +There must have been a lot of human kindness under the smothering, +stifling cloud of the "System" and behind the iron clank and swishing +"cat" strokes of brutality--a lot of soul light in the darkness of our +dark past--a page that has long since been closed down--when innocent +men and women were transported to shame, misery, and horror; when mere +boys were sent out on suspicion of stealing a hare from the squire's +preserves, and mere girls on suspicion of lifting a riband from the +merchant's counter. But the many kindly and self-sacrificing and +even noble things that free and honest settlers did, in those days of +loneliness and hardship, for wretched runaway convicts and others, +are closed down with the pages too. My old grandmother used to tell me +tales, but--well, I don't suppose a wanted man (or a man that wasn't +wanted, for that matter) ever turned away from her huts, far back in +the wild bush, without a quart of coffee and a "feed" inside his hunted +carcass, or went short of a bit of bread and meat to see him on, and a +gruff but friendly hint, maybe, from the old man himself. And they were +a type of the early settlers, she an English lady and the daughter of a +clergyman. Ah! well-- + +Do you ever seem to remember things that you could not possibly +remember? Something that happened in your mother's life, maybe, if you +are a girl, or your father's, if you are a boy--that happened to your +mother or father some years, perhaps, before you were born. I have many +such haunting memories--as of having once witnessed a murder, or an +attempt at murder, for instance, and once seeing a tree fall on a +man--and as a child I had a memory of having been a man myself once +before. But here is one of the pictures. + +A hut in a dark gully; slab and stringy-bark, two rooms and a detached +kitchen with the boys' room roughly partitioned off it. Big clay +fire-place with a big log fire in it. The settler, or selector, and his +wife; another man who might have been "uncle," and a younger woman who +might have been "aunt;" two little boys and the baby. It was raining +heavens hard outside, and the night was as black as pitch. The uncle was +reading a report in a paper (that seemed to have come, somehow, a +long way from somewhere) about two men who were wanted for sheep- and +cattle-stealing in the district. I decidedly remember it was during the +reign of the squatters in the nearer west. There came a great gust that +shook the kitchen and caused the mother to take up the baby out of the +rough gin-case cradle. The father took his pipe from his mouth and said: +"Ah, well! poor devils." "I hope they're not out in a night like this, +poor fellows," said the mother, rocking the child in her arms. "And I +hope they'll never catch 'em," snapped her sister. "The squatters has +enough." + +"I wonder where poor Jim is?" the mother moaned, rocking the baby, and +with two of those great, silent tears starting from her haggard eyes. + +"Oh don't start about Jim again, Ellen," said her sister impatiently. +"He can take care of himself. You were always rushing off to meet +trouble half-way--time enough when they come, God knows." + +"Now, look here, Ellen," put in Uncle Abe, soothingly, "he was up in +Queensland doing well when we last heerd of him. Ain't yer never goin' +to be satisfied?" + +Jim was evidently another and a younger uncle, whose temperament from +boyhood had given his family constant cause for anxiety. + +The father sat smoking, resting his elbow on his knee, bunching up his +brush of red whiskers, and looking into the fire--and back into his own +foreign past in his own foreign land perhaps: and, it may be, thinking +in his own language. + +Silence and smoke for a while; then the mother suddenly straightened up +and lifted a finger: + +"Hush! What's that? I thought I heard someone outside." + +"Old Poley coughin'," said Uncle Abe, after they'd listened a space. +"She must be pretty bad--oughter give her a hot bran mash." (Poley was +the best milker.) + +"But I fancied I heard horses at the sliprails," said the mother. + +"Old Prince," said Uncle Abe. "Oughter let him into the shed."` + +"Hush!" said the mother, "there's someone outside." There _was_ a step, +as of someone retreating after peeping through a crack in the door, but +it was not old Poley's step; then, from farther off, a cough that was +like old Poley's cough, but had a rack in it. + +"See who it is, Peter," said the mother. Uncle Abe, who was dramatic and +an ass, slipped the old double-barrelled muzzle-loader from its leathers +on the wall and stood it in the far corner and sat down by it. The +mother, who didn't seem to realize anything, frowned at him impatiently. +The coughing fit started again. It was a man. + +"Who's there? Anyone outside there?" said the settler in a loud voice. + +"It's all right. Is the boss there? I want to speak to him," replied a +voice with no cough in it. The tone was reassuring, yet rather strained, +as if there had been an accident--or it might be a cautious policeman or +bushranger reconnoitring. + +"Better see what he wants, Peter," said his sister-in-law quietly. +"Something's the matter--it may be the police." + +Peter threw an empty bag over his shoulders, took the peg from the +door, opened it and stepped out. The racking fit of coughing burst forth +again, nearer. "That's a church-yarder!" commented Uncle Abe. + +The settler came inside and whispered to the others, who started up, +interested. The coughing started again outside. When the fit was over +the mother said: + +"Wait a minute till I get the boys out of the road and then bring them +in." The boys were bundled into the end room and told to go to bed +at once. They knelt up on the rough bed of slabs and straw mattress, +instead, and applied eyes and ears to the cracks in the partition. + +The mother called to the father, who had gone outside again. + +"Tell them to come inside, Peter." + +"Better bring the horses into the yard first and put them under the +shed," said the father to the unknown outside in the rain and darkness. +Clatter of sliprails let down and tired hoofs over them, and sliprails +put up again; then they came in. + +Wringing wet and apparently knocked up, a tall man with black curly hair +and beard, black eyes and eyebrows that made his face seem the whiter; +dressed in tweed coat, too small for him and short at the sleeves, +strapped riding-pants, leggings, and lace-up boots, all sodden. The +other a mere boy, beardless or clean shaven, figure and face of a +native, but lacking in something; dressed like his mate--like drovers +or stockmen. Arms and legs of riders, both of them; cabbage-tree hats in +left hands--as though the right ones had to be kept ready for something +(and looking like it)--pistol butts probably. The young man had a +racking cough that seemed to wrench and twist his frame as the settler +steered him to a seat on a stool by the fire. (In the intervals of +coughing he glared round like a watched and hunted sneak-thief--as if +the cough was something serious against the law, and he must try to stop +it.) + +"Take that wet coat off him at once, Peter," said the settler's wife, +"and let me dry it." Then, on second thoughts: "Take this candle and +take him into the house and get some dry things on him." + +The dark man, who was still standing in the doorway, swung aside to let +them pass as the settler steered the young man into the "house;" then +swung back again. He stood, drooping rather, with one hand on the +door-post; his big, wild, dark eyes kept glancing round and round the +room and even at the ceiling, seeming to overlook or be unconscious of +the faces after the first keen glance, but always coming back to rest on +the door in the partition of the boys' room opposite. + +"Won't you sit down by the fire and rest and dry yourself?" asked the +settler's wife, rather timidly, after watching him for a moment. + +He looked at the door again, abstractedly it seemed, or as if he had not +heard her. + +Then Uncle Abe (who, by the way, was supposed to know more than he +should have been supposed to know) spoke out. + +"Set down, man! Set down and dry yerself. There's no one there except +the boys--that's the boys' room. Would yer like to look through?" + +The man seemed to rouse himself from a reverie. He let his arm and +hand fall from the doorpost to his side like dead things. "Thank you, +missus," he said, apparently unconscious of Uncle Abe, and went and sat +down in front of the fire. + +"Hadn't you better take your wet coat off and let me dry it?" + +"Thank you." He took off his coat, and, turning the sleeve, inside +out, hung it from his knees with the lining to the fire then he leaned +forward, with his hands on his knees, and stared at the burning logs +and steam. He was unarmed, or, if not, had left his pistols in the +saddle-bag outside. + +Andy Page, general handy-man (who was there all the time, but has not +been mentioned yet, because he didn't mention anything himself which +seemed necessary to this dark picture), now remarked to the stranger, +with a wooden-face expression but a soft heart, that the rain would be +a good thing for the grass, mister, and make it grow; a safe remark +to make under the present, or, for the matter of that, under any +circumstances. + +The stranger said, "Yes; it would." + +"It will make it spring up like anything," said Andy. + +The stranger admitted that it would. + +Uncle Abe joined in, or, rather, slid in, and they talked about the +drought and the rain and the state of the country, in monosyllables +mostly, with "Jesso," and "So it is," and "You're right there," till the +settler came back with the young man dressed in rough and patched, but +dry, clothes. He took another stool by his mate's side at the fire, +and had another fit of coughing. When it was over, Uncle Abe remarked +"That's a regular church-yarder yer got, young feller." + +The young fellow, too exhausted to speak, even had he intended doing +so, turned his head in a quick, half-terrified way and gave it two short +jerky nods. + +The settler had brought a bottle out--it was gin they kept for medicine. +They gave him some hot, and he took it in his sudden, frightened, +half-animal way, like a dog that was used to ill-usage. + +"He ought to be in the hospital," said the mother. + +"He ought to be in bed right now at once," snapped the sister. "Couldn't +you stay till morning, or at least till the rain clears up?" she said +to the elder man. "No one ain't likely to come near this place in this +weather." + +"If we did he'd stand a good chance to get both hospital and a bed +pretty soon, and for a long stretch, too," said the dark man grimly. +"No, thank you all the same, miss--and missus--I'll get him fixed up all +right and safe before morning." + +The father came into the end room with a couple of small feed boxes and +both boys tumbled under the blankets. The father emptied some chaff, +from a bag in the corner, into the boxes, and then dished some corn from +another bag into the chaff and mixed it well with his hands. Then he +went out with the boxes under his arms, and the boys got up again. + +The mother had brought two chairs from the front room (I remember the +kind well: black painted hardwood that were always coming to pieces and +with apples painted on the backs). She stood them with their backs to +the fire and, taking up the young man's wet clothes, which the settler +had brought out under his arm and thrown on a stool, arranged them +over the backs of chairs and the stool to dry. He lost some of his +nervousness or seared manner under the influence of the gin, and +answered one or two questions with reference to his complaint. + +The baby was in the cradle asleep. The sister drew boiling water from +the old-fashioned fountain over one side of the fire and made coffee. +The mother laid the coarse brownish cloth and set out the camp-oven +bread, salt beef, tin plates, and pintpots. This was always called +"setting the table" in the bush. "You'd better have it by the fire," +said the bush-wife to the dark man. + +"Thank you, missus," he said, as he moved to a bench by the table, "but +it's plenty warm enough here. Come on, Jack." + +Jack, under the influence of another tot, was in a fit state to sit down +to a table something like a Christian, instead of coming to his food +like a beaten dog. + +The hum of bush common-places went on. One of the boys fell across the +bed and into deep slumber; the other watched on awhile, but must have +dozed. + +When he was next aware, he saw, through the cracks, the taller man +putting on his dried coat by the fire; then he went to a rough "sofa" at +the side of the kitchen, where the young man was sleeping--with his head +and shoulders curled in to the wall and his arm over his face, like a +possum hiding from the light--and touched him on the shoulder. + +"Come on, Jack," he said, "wake up." + +Jack sprang to his feet with a blundering rush, grappled with his mate, +and made a break for the door. + +"It's all right, Jack," said the other, gently yet firmly, holding and +shaking him. "Go in with the boss and get into your own clothes--we've +got to make a start." The other came to himself and went inside quietly +with the settler. The dark man stretched himself, crossed the kitchen +and looked down at the sleeping child; he returned to the fire without +comment. The wildness had left his eyes. The bushwoman was busy putting +some tucker in a sugar-bag. "There's tea and sugar and salt in these +mustard tins, and they won't get wet," she said, "and there's some +butter too; but I don't know how you'll manage about the bread--I've +wrapped it up, but you'll have to keep it dry as well as you can." + +"Thank you, missus, but that'll be all right. I've got a bit of +oil-cloth," he said. + +They spoke lamely for a while, against time; then the bushwoman touched +the spring, and their voices became suddenly low and earnest as they +drew together. The stranger spoke as at a funeral, but the funeral was +his own. + +"I don't care about myself so much," he said, "for I'm tired of it, +and--and--for the matter of that I'm tired of everything; but I'd like +to see poor Jack right, and I'll try to get clear myself, for his sake. +You've seen him. I can't blame myself, for I took him from a life that +was worse than jail. You know how much worse than animals some brutes +treat their children in the bush. And he was an 'adopted.' You know what +that means. He was idiotic with ill-treatment when I got hold of him. +He's sensible enough when away with me, and true as steel. He's about +the only living human thing I've got to care for, or to care for me, and +I want to win out of this hell for his sake." + +He paused, and they were all silent. He was measuring time, as his next +words proved: "Jack must be nearly ready now." Then he took a packet +from some inside pocket of his blue dungaree shirt. It was wrapped in +oil-cloth, and he opened it and laid it on the table; there was a small +Bible and a packet of letters--and portraits, maybe. + +"Now, missus," he said, "you mustn't think me soft, and I'm neither +a religious man nor a hypocrite. But that Bible was given to me by my +mother, and her hand-writing is in it, so I couldn't chuck it away. Some +of the letters are hers and some--someone else's. You can read them if +you like. Now, I want you to take care of them for me and dry them if +they are a little damp. If I get clear I'll send for them some day, and, +if I don't--well, I don't want them to be taken with me. I don't want +the police to know who I was, and what I was, and who my relatives are +and where they are. You wouldn't have known, if you do know now, only +your husband knew me on the diggings, and happened to be in the court +when I got off on that first cattle-stealing charge, and recognized me +again to-night. I can't thank you enough, but I want you to remember +that I'll never forget. Even if I'm taken and have to serve my time I'll +never forget it, and I'll live to prove it." + +"We--we don't want no thanks, an' we don't want no proofs," said the +bushwoman, her voice breaking. + +The sister, her eyes suspiciously bright, took up the packet in her +sharp, practical way, and put it in a work-box she had in the kitchen. + +The settler brought the young fellow out dressed in his own clothes. The +elder shook hands quietly all round, or, rather, they shook hands with +him. "Now, Jack!" he said. They had fastened an oilskin cape round +Jack's shoulders. + +Jack came forward and shook hands with a nervous grip that he seemed to +have trouble to take off. "I won't forget it," he said; "that's all I +can say--I won't forget it." Then they went out with the settler. The +rain had held up a little. Clatter of sliprails down and up, but the +settler didn't come back. + +"Wonder what Peter's doing?" said the wife. + +"Showin' 'em down the short cut," said Uncle Abe. + +But, presently, clatter of sliprails down again, and cattle driven over +them. + +"Wonder what he's doing with the cows," said the wife. + +They waited in wonder, and with growing anxiety, for some quarter of an +hour; then Abe and Andy, going out to see, met the settler coming back. + +"What in thunder are you doing with the cows, Peter?" asked Uncle Abe. + +"Oh, just driving them out and along a bit over those horse tracks; we +might get into trouble," said Peter. + +When the boys woke it was morning, and the mother stood by the bed. "You +needn't get up yet, and don't say anyone was here last night if you're +asked," she whispered, and went out. They were up on their knees at once +with their eyes to the cracks, and got the scare of their young lives. +Three mounted troopers were steaming their legs at the fire--their +bodies had been protected by oilskin capes. The mother was busy about +the table and the sister changing the baby. Presently the two younger +policemen sat down to bread and bacon and coffee, but their senior (the +sergeant) stood with his back to the fire, with a pint-pot of coffee in +his hand, eating nothing, but frowning suspiciously round the room. + +Said one of the young troopers to Aunt Annie, to break the lowering +silence, "You don't remember me?" + +"Oh yes, I do; you were at Brown's School at Old Pipeclay--but I was +only there a few months." + +"You look as if you didn't get much sleep," said the senior-sergeant, +bluntly, to the settler's wife, "and your sister too." + +"And so would you," said Aunt Annie, sharply, "if you were up with a +sick baby all night." + +"Sad affair that, about Brown the schoolmaster," said the younger +trooper to Aunt Annie. + +"Yes," said Aunt Annie, "it was indeed." + +The senior-sergeant stood glowering. Presently he said brutally--"The +baby don't seem to be very sick; what's the matter with it?" + +The young troopers move uneasily, and one impatiently. + +"You should have seen her" (the baby) "about twelve o'clock last night," +said Aunt Annie, "we never thought she would live till the morning." + +"Oh, didn't you?" said the senior-sergeant, in a half-and-half tone. + +The mother took the baby and held it so that its face was hidden from +the elder policeman. + +"What became of Brown's family, miss?" asked the young trooper. "Do you +remember Lucy Brown?" + +"I really don't know," answered Aunt Annie, "all I know is that they +went to Sydney. But I think I heard that Lucy was married." + +Just then Uncle Abe and Andy came in to breakfast. Andy sat down in the +corner with a wooden face, and Uncle Abe, who was a tall man, took up a +position, with his back to the fire, by the side of the senior trooper, +and seemed perfectly at home and at ease. He lifted up his coat behind, +and his face was a study in bucolic unconsciousness. The settler passed +through to the boys' room (which was harness room, feed room, tool +house, and several other things), and as he passed out with a shovel the +sergeant said, "So you haven't seen anyone along here for three days?" + +"No," said the settler. + +"Except Jimmy Marshfield that took over Barker's selection in Long +Gully," put in Aunt Annie. "He was here yesterday. Do you want him?" + +"An' them three fellers on horseback as rode past the corner of the +lower paddock the day afore yesterday," mumbled Uncle Abe, "but one of +'em was one of the Coxes' boys, I think." + +At the sound of Uncle Abe's voice both women started and paled, and +looked as if they'd like to gag him, but he was safe. + +"What were they like?" asked the constable. + +The women paled again, but Uncle Abe described them. He had imagination, +and was only slow where the truth was concerned. + +"Which way were they going?" asked the constable. "Towards Mudgee" (the +police-station township), said Uncle Abe. + +The constable gave his arm an impatient jerk and dropped Uncle Abe. + +Uncle Abe looked as if he wanted badly to wink hard at someone, but +there was no friendly eye in the line of wink that would be safe. + +"Well, it's strange," said the sergeant, "that the men we're after +didn't look up an out-of-the-way place like this for tucker, or +horse-feed, or news, or something." + +"Now, look here," said Aunt Annie, "we're neither cattle duffers nor +sympathizers; we're honest, hard-working people, and God knows we're +glad enough to see a strange face when it comes to this lonely hole; and +if you only want to insult us, you'd better stop it at once. I tell you +there's nobody been here but old Jimmy Marshfield for three days, and +we haven't seen a stranger for over a fortnight, and that's enough. My +sister's delicate and worried enough without you." She had a masculine +habit of putting her hand up on something when holding forth, and as +it happened it rested on the work-box on the shelf that contained the +cattle-stealer's mother's Bible; but if put to it, Aunt Annie would have +sworn on the Bible itself. + +"Oh well, no offence, no offence," said the constable. "Come on, men, if +you've finished, it's no use wasting time round here." + +The two young troopers thanked the mother for their breakfast, and +strange to say, the one who had spoken to her went up to Aunt Annie and +shook hands warmly with her. Then they went out, and mounting, rode back +in the direction of Mudgee. Uncle Abe winked long and hard and solemnly +at Andy Page, and Andy winked back like a mechanical wooden image. +The two women nudged and smiled and seemed quite girlish, not to +say skittish, all the morning. Something had come to break the cruel +hopeless monotony of their lives. And even the settler became foolishly +cheerful. + + +Five years later: same hut, same yard, and a not much wider clearing in +the gully, and a little more fencing--the women rather more haggard +and tired looking, the settler rather more horny-handed and silent, and +Uncle Abe rather more philosophical. The men had had to go out and work +on the stations. With the settler and his wife it was, "If we only had +a few pounds to get the farm cleared and fenced, and another good plough +horse, and a few more cows." That had been the burden of their song for +the five years and more. + +Then, one evening, the mail boy left a parcel. It was a small parcel, in +cloth-paper, carefully tied and sealed. What could it be? It couldn't be +the Christmas number of a weekly they subscribed to, for it never came +like that. Aunt Annie cut the discussion short by cutting the string +with a table knife and breaking the wax. + +And behold, a clean sugar-bag tightly folded and rolled. + +And inside a strong whitey-brown envelope. + +And on the envelope written or rather printed the words: + +"For horse-feed, stabling, and supper." + +And underneath, in smaller letters, "Send Bible and portraits to----." +(Here a name and address.) + +And inside the envelope a roll of notes. + +"Count them," said Aunt Annie. + +But the settler's horny and knotty hands trembled too much, and so did +his wife's withered ones; so Aunt Annie counted them. + +"Fifty pounds!" she said. + +"Fifty pounds!" mused the settler, scratching his head in a perplexed +way. + +"Fifty pounds!" gasped his wife. + +"Yes," said Aunt Annie sharply, "fifty pounds!" + +"Well, you'll get it settled between yer some day!" drawled Uncle Abe. + +Later, after thinking comfortably over the matter, he observed: + +"Cast yer coffee an' bread an' bacon upon the waters--" + +Uncle Abe never hurried himself or anybody else. + + + + +THE BATH + + + +The moral should be revived. Therefore, this is a story with a moral. +The lower end of Bill Street--otherwise William--overlooks Blue's Point +Road, with a vacant wedge-shaped allotment running down from a Scottish +church between Bill Street the aforesaid and the road, and a terrace +on the other side of the road. A cheap, mean-looking terrace of houses, +flush with the pavement, each with two windows upstairs and a large +one in the middle downstairs, with a slit on one side of it called a +door--looking remarkably skully in ghastly dawns, afterglows, and rainy +afternoons and evenings. The slits look as if the owners of the skulls +got it there from an upward blow of a sharp tomahawk, from a shorter +man--who was no friend of theirs--just about the time they died. The +slits open occasionally, and mothers of the nation, mostly holding +their garments together at neck or bosom, lean out--at right angles +almost--and peer up and down the road, as if they are casually curious +as to what is keeping the rent collector so late this morning. Then they +shut up till late in the day, when a boy or two comes home from +work. The terrace should be called "Jim's Terrace" if the road is not +"James's" Road, because no bills ever seem to be paid there as they are +in our street--and for other reasons. There are four houses, but seldom +more than two of them occupied at one time--often only one. Tenants +never shift in, or at least are never seen to, but they get there. The +sign is a furtive candle light behind an old table cloth, a skirt, or +any rag of dark stuff tacked across the front bedroom window, upstairs, +and a shadow suggestive of a woman making up a bed on the floor. + +If more than two of the houses are occupied there is almost certain to +be an old granny with ragged grey hair, who folded her arms tight under +her ragged old breasts, and bends her tough old body, and sticks her +ragged grey old head out of the slit called a door, and squints up and +down the road, but not in the interests of mischief-making--they are +never here long enough--only out of mild, ragged, grey-headed curiosity +regarding the health or affairs of the rent collector. + +Perhaps there are no bills to be collected in Skull Terrace because no +credit is given. No jugs are put out, because there is no place to put +them, except on the pavement, or on the narrow window ledges, where +they would be in great and constant danger from the feet or elbows of +passers-by. There are no tradesmen's entrances to the houses in Skull +Terrace. + +Tenants and sub-tenants often leave on Friday morning in the full glare +of the day. Granny throws down garments from the top window to hurry +things, and the wife below ties up much in an old allegedly green or red +table-cloth, on the pavement, at the last moment. Van of the "bottle ho" +variety. It is all done very quickly, and nobody takes any notice--they +are never there long enough. Landlord, landlady, or rent collector--or +whatever it is--calls later on; maybe, knocks in a tired, even bored, +way; makes inquiries next door, and goes away, leaving the problem to +take care of itself--all kind of casual. The business people of North +Sydney, especially removers and labourers, are very casual. Down old +Blue's Point Road the folk get so casual that they just exist, but don't +seem to do so. + +One thing I never could make out about Skull Terrace is that when one +house becomes vacant from a house agent's point of view--there is a +permanent atmosphere of vacancy about the whole terrace--the people of +another move into it. And there's not the slightest difference between +the houses. It is because the removal is such a small affair, I suppose, +and the change is, the main thing. I always do better for awhile in a +new house--but then I always did seem to get on better somewhere else. + +There are many points, or absence of points, about Skull Terrace that +fit in with Jim's casualness as against Bill's character, therefore +Blue's Point Road ought to be James's Street. + +But just now, in the heat of summer, the terrace happens to be full, +and all the blinds are decent--the two new-comers are newly come down to +Skull Terrace, and the other blinds are looked up, washed, and fixed up +by force of example or from very shame's sake. + +All of which seems to have nothing whatever to do with the story, except +that the scene is down opposite my balcony as I think and smoke, and it +is a blur on one of the most beautiful harbour views in the world. + + +I had been working hard all day, mending the fence, putting up a +fowl-house and some lattice work and wire netting, and limewashing and +painting. Labours of love. I'd rather build a fowl-house than a "pome" +or story, any day. And when finished--the fowl-house, I mean--I sit and +contemplate my handiwork with pure and unadulterated joy. And I take a +candle out several times, after dark, to look at it again. I never got +such pleasure out of rhyme, story, or first-class London Academy notice. +I find it difficult to drag myself from the fowl-house, or whatever it +is, to meals, and harder to this work, and I lie awake planning next +day's work until I fall asleep in the sleep of utter happy weariness. +And I'm up and at it, before washing, at daylight. But I was a carpenter +and housepainter first. + +Well, it had been a long, close day, and I was very dirty and tired, but +with the energy and restlessness of healthy, happy tiredness when work +is unfinished. But I was out of two-inch nails, and the shops were shut. + +Then it struck me to start up the copper and have a real warm bath after +my own heart and ideas. The bathroom is outside, next the wash-house and +copper. There were plenty of splinters and ends of softwood that were +mine by right of purchase and labour. My landlady is, and always has +been, sensitive on the subject of firewood. She'll buy anything else to +make the house comfortable and beautiful. She has been known to buy a +piano for one of her nieces and burn rubbish in the stove the same day. +I knew she was uneasy about the softwood odds and ends, but I couldn't +help that--she'd still be sentimental about them if she had a stack of +firewood as big as the house. There's at least one thing that most folk +hate to buy--mine's boot-laces or bone studs, so long as I can make pins +or inked string do. + +I put a bucket of water in the copper, started a fire under that sent +sparks out of the wash-house flue at an alarming rate, filled the copper +to the brim, and, in the absence of a lid, covered it with a piece of +flattened galvanized iron I had. + +I tacked the side edge of a strip of canvas to the matchboard wall along +over the inner edge of the bath, fastened a short piece of gas-pipe to +the outer edge, with pieces of string through holes made in it, and let +it hang down over the bath, leaving a hole at the head for my head and +shoulders. I was going to have a long, comfortable, and utterly lazy and +drowsy hot water and steam bath, you know. + +I fastened a piece of clothes-line round and over the head of the bath, +and twisted an old toilet-table cover and a towel round it where it +sagged into the bath, for a head rest-also to be soaped for where I +couldn't get at my back with my hands. + +I went up to my room for some things, and it struck me to arrange two +chairs by the bed--candle and matches and tobacco on one side, and a +pile of Jack London, Kipling, and Yankee magazines on the other, with +the last _Lone Hand_ and _Bulletin_ on top. + +Going down with pyjamas, towel, and soap, it struck me to have a kettle +and a saucepan full of water on the stove to use as the water from the +copper cooled. + +I took a roomy, hard-bottomed kitchen chair into the bathroom; on it +I placed a carefully scraped, cleared, and filled pipe, matches, more +tobacco, tooth-brush, saucer with a lump of whiting and salt, piece of +looking-glass--to see progress of the teeth--and knife for finger and +toe nails. And I knocked up a few three-inch iron nails in the wall to +hang things on. I placed a clean suit of pyjamas over the back of the +chair, and over them the towels. + +I arranged with the landlady to have a good cup of coffee made, as she +knows how to make it, ready to hand in round the edge of the door when +I should be in the bath. There's nothing in that. I've been with her for +years, and on account of the canvas it would be just the same as if I +were in bed. On second thought I asked her to hand in some toast--or +bread and butter and bloater paste--at the same time. I fed the fire +with judgment, and the copper boiled just as the last blaze died down. I +got a pail and carried the water to the bath, pouring it in through the +opening at the head. The last few pints I dipped into the pail with a +cup. I covered the opening with a towel to keep the steam and heat in +until I was ready. I got the boiling water from the kitchen into the +bucket, covered it with another towel, and stood it in a handy corner in +the bathroom. + +I made an opening, turned on the cold water, and commenced to undress. I +hung my clothes on the wall, till morning, for I intended to go straight +from the bath to bed in my pyjamas and to lie there reading. + +I turned off the cold water tap to be sure, lifted the towel off, and +put my good right foot in to feel the temperature--into about three +inches of cold water, and that was vanishing. + +I'd forgotten to put in the plug. + +I'm deaf, you know, and the landlady, hearing the water run, thought I +was flushing out the bath (we were new tenants) and wondered vaguely why +I was so long at it. + +I dressed rather hurriedly in my working clothes, went inside, and +spread myself dramatically on the old cane lounge and covered my face +with my oldest hat, to show that it was comic and I took it that way. +But my landlady was so full of sympathy, condolence, and self-reproach +(because she failed to draw my attention to the gurgling) that she let +the coffee and toast burn. + +I went up and lay on my bed, and was so tired and misty and far away +that I went to sleep without undressing, or even washing my face and +hands. + +How many, in this life, forget the plug! + +And how many, ah! how many, who passed through, and are passing through +Skull Terrace, commenced life as confidently, carefree, and clear +headed, and with such easily exercised, careful, intelligent, practised, +and methodical attention to details as I did the bath business +arrangements--and forgot to put in the plug. + +And many because they were handicapped physically. + + + + +INSTINCT GONE WRONG + + + +Old Mac used to sleep in his wagon in fine weather, when he had no load, +on his blankets spread out on the feed-bags; but one time he struck +Croydon, flush from a lucky and good back trip, and looked in at the +(say) Royal Hotel to wet his luck--as some men do with their sorrow--and +he "got there all right." Next morning he had breakfast in the +dining-room, was waited on as a star boarder, and became thoroughly +demoralized; and his mind was made up (independent of himself, as it +were) to be a gentleman for once in his life. He went over to the store +and bought the sloppiest suit of reach-me-downs of glossiest black, and +the stiffest and stickiest white shirt they had to show--also four bone +studs, two for the collar and two for the cuffs. Then he gave his +worn "larstins" to the stable-boy (with half a crown) to clean, +and--proceeded. He put the boots on during the day, one at a time +between drinks, gassing all the time, and continued. He concluded about +midnight, after a very noisy time and interviews with everyone on sight +(slightly interrupted by drinks) concerning "his room." It was show +time, you see, and all the rooms were as full as he was--he was too full +even to share the parlour or billiard room with others; but he consented +at last to a shake-down on the balcony, the barmaid volunteering to +spread the couch with her own fair hands. + +Towards daylight he woke, for one of the reasons why men do wake. It is +well known, to people who know, that old campers-out (and young men new +to it, too) will wake _once_--if in a party, each at different times--to +tend to their cattle, or listen for the hobbles of their horses, or +simply to rise on their elbows and have a look round--the last, I +suppose, from an instinct born in old dangerous times. Mac woke up, and +it was dark. He reached out and his hand fell, instinctively, on the +rail of the balcony, which was to him (instinctively--and that shows +how instinct errs) the rail of the side of his wagon, in which as I have +said, he was wont to sleep. So he drew himself up on his knees and to +his feet, with the instinctive intention of getting down to (say) put +some chaff and corn in the feed-bags stretched across the shafts for +the horses; for he intended, by instinct, to make an early start. Which +shows how instinct can never be trusted to travel with memory, but +will get ahead of it--or behind it. (Say it was instinct mixed with +or adulterated by drink.) He got a long, hairy leg over and felt +(instinctively) for the hub of the wheel; his foot found and rested on +the projecting ledge of the balcony floor outside, and that, to him, +was the hub all right. He swung his other leg over and expected to drop +lightly on to the grass or dust of the camp; but, being instinctively +rigid, he fell heavily some fifteen feet into a kerbed gutter. + +As a result of his howls lights soon flickered in windows and fanlights; +and with prompt, eager, anxious, and awed bush first-aid and assistance, +they carried a very sober, battered and blasphemous driver inside and +spread mattresses on the floor. And, some six weeks afterwards, an +image, mostly of plaster-of-Paris and bandages, reclined, much against +its will, on a be-cushioned cane lounge on the hospital veranda; and, +from the only free and workable corner of its mouth, when +the pipe was removed, came shockingly expressed opinions of +them--newfangled--two-story--! "night houses" (as it called them). +And, thereafter, when he had a load on, or the weather was too bad for +sleeping in or under his wagon, the veranda of a one-storied shanty (if +he could get to it) was good enough for MacSomething, the carrier. + + + + +THE HYPNOTIZED TOWNSHIP + + + +They said that Harry Chatswood, the mail contractor would do anything +for Cobb & Co., even to stretching fencing-wire across the road in a +likely place: but I don't believe that--Harry was too good-hearted +to risk injuring innocent passengers, and he had a fellow feeling for +drivers, being an old coach driver on rough out-back tracks himself. But +he did rig up fencing-wire for old Mac, the carrier, one night, though +not across the road. Harry, by the way, was a city-born bushman, who +had been everything for some years. Anything from six-foot-six to +six-foot-nine, fourteen stone, and a hard case. He is a very successful +coach-builder now, for he knows the wood, the roads, and the weak parts +in a coach. + +It was in the good seasons when competition was keen and men's +hearts were hard--not as it is in times of drought, when there is no +competition, and men's hearts are soft, and there is all kindness and +goodwill between them. He had had much opposition in fighting Cobb & +Co., and his coaches had won through on the outer tracks. There was +little malice in his composition, but when old Mac, the teamster, turned +his teams over to his sons and started a light van for parcels and +passengers from Cunnamulla--that place which always sounds to me +suggestive of pumpkin pies--out in seeming opposition to Harry +Chatswood, Harry was annoyed. + +Perhaps Mac only wished to end his days on the road with parcels that +were light and easy to handle (not like loads of fencing wire) and +passengers that were sociable; but he had been doing well with his +teams, and, besides, Harry thought he was after the mail contract: so +Harry was annoyed more than he was injured. Mac was mean with the money +he had not because of the money he had a chance of getting; and he +mostly slept in his van, in all weathers, when away from home which was +kept by his wife about half-way between the half-way house and the next +"township." + +One dark, gusty evening, Harry Chatswood's coach dragged, heavily though +passengerless, into Cunnamulla, and, as he turned into the yard of the +local "Royal," he saw Mac's tilted four-wheeler (which he called his +"van") drawn up opposite by the kerbing round the post office. Mac +always chose a central position--with a vague idea of advertisement +perhaps. But the nearness to the P.O. reminded Harry of the mail +contracts, and he knew that Mac had taken up a passenger or two and some +parcels in front of him (Harry) on the trip in. And something told Harry +that Mac was asleep inside his van. It was a windy night, with signs of +rain, and the curtains were drawn close. + +Old Mac was there all right, and sleeping the sleep of a tired driver +after a long drowsy day on a hard box-seat, with little or no back +railing to it. But there was a lecture on, or an exhibition of hypnotism +or mesmerism--"a blanky spirit rappin' fake," they called it, run by +"some blanker" in "the hall;" and when old Mac had seen to his horses, +he thought he might as well drop in for half an hour and see what was +going on. Being a Mac, he was, of course, theological, scientific, and +argumentative. He saw some things which woke him up, challenged the +performer to hypnotize him, was "operated" on or "fooled with" a bit, +had a "numb sorter light-headed feelin'," and was told by a voice +from the back of the hall that his "leg was being pulled, Mac," and by +another buzzin' far-away kind of "ventrillick" voice that he would make +a good subject, and that, if he only had the will power and knew how +(which he would learn from a book the professor had to sell for five +shillings) he would be able to drive his van without horses or any +thing, save the pole sticking straight out in front. These weren't the +professor's exact words--But, anyway, Mae came to himself with a sudden +jerk, left with a great Scottish snort of disgust and the sound of heavy +boots along the floor; and after a resentful whisky at the Royal, where +they laughed at his scrooging bushy eyebrows, fierce black eyes and his +deadly-in-earnest denunciation of all humbugs and imposters, he returned +to the aforesaid van, let down the flaps, buttoned the daft and "feekle" +world out, and himself in, and then retired some more and slept, as I +have said, rolled in his blankets and overcoats on a bed of cushions, +and chaff-bag. + +Harry Chatswood got down from his empty coach, and was helping the yard +boy take out the horses, when his eye fell on the remnant of a roll of +fencing wire standing by the stable wall in the light of the lantern. +Then an idea struck him unexpectedly, and his mind became luminous. He +unhooked the swinglebar, swung it up over his "leader's" rump (he was +driving only three horses that trip), and hooked it on to the horns +of the hames. Then he went inside (there was another light there) and +brought out a bridle and an old pair of spurs that were hanging on the +wall. He buckled on the spurs at the chopping block, slipped the winkers +off the leader and the bridle on, and took up the fencing-wire, and +started out the gate with the horse. The boy gaped after him once, and +then hurried to put up the other two horses. He knew Harry Chatswood, +and was in a hurry to see what he would be up to. + +There was a good crowd in town for the show, or the races, or a stock +sale, or land ballot, or something; but most of them were tired, or at +tea--or in the pubs--and the corners were deserted. Observe how fate +makes time and things fit when she wants to do a good turn--or play +a practical joke. Harry Chatswood, for instance, didn't know anything +about the hypnotic business. + +It was the corners of the main street or road and the principal short +cross street, and the van was opposite the pub stables in the main +street. Harry crossed the streets diagonally to the opposite corner, +in a line with the van. There he slipped the bar down over the horse's +rump, and fastened one end of the wire on to the ring of it. Then he +walked back to the van, carrying the wire and letting the coils go +wide, and, as noiselessly as possible, made a loop in the loose end and +slipped it over the hooks on the end of the pole. ("Unnecessary detail!" +my contemporaries will moan, "Overloaded with uninteresting details!" +But that's because they haven't got the details--and it's the details +that go.) Then Harry skipped back to his horse, jumped on, gathered up +the bridle reins, and used his spurs. There was a swish and a clang, a +scrunch and a clock-clock and rattle of wheels, and a surprised human +sound; then a bump and a shout--for there was no underground drainage, +and the gutters belonged to the Stone Age. There was a swift clocking +and rattle, more shouts, another bump, and a yell. And so on down the +longish main street. The stable-boy, who had left the horses in his +excitement, burst into the bar, shouting, "The Hypnertism's on, the +Mesmerism's on! Ole Mae's van's runnin' away with him without no horses +all right!" The crowd scuffled out into the street; there were some +unfortunate horses hanging up of course at the panel by the pub trough, +and the first to get to them jumped on and rode; the rest ran. The +hall--where they were clearing the willing professor out in favour of a +"darnce"--and the other pubs decanted their contents, and chance souls +skipped for the verandas of weather-board shanties out of which other +souls popped to see the runaway. They saw a weird horseman, or rather, +something like a camel (for Harry rode low, like Tod Sloan with his long +back humped--for effect)--apparently fleeing for its life in a veil +of dust, along the long white road, and some forty rods behind, an +unaccountable tilted coach careered in its own separate cloud of dust. +And from it came the shouts and yells. Men shouted and swore, women +screamed for their children, and kids whimpered. Some of the men turned +with an oath and stayed the panic with: + +"It's only one of them flamin' motor-cars, you fools." + +It might have been, and the yells the warning howls of a motorist who +had burst or lost his honk-kook and his head. + +"It's runnin' away!" or "The toff's mad or drunk!" shouted others. +"It'll break its crimson back over the bridge." + +"Let it!" was the verdict of some. "It's all the crimson carnal things +are good for." + +But the riders still rode and the footmen ran. There was a clatter of +hoofs on the short white bridge looming ghostly ahead, and then, at +a weird interval, the rattle and rumble of wheels, with no hoof-beats +accompanying. The yells grew fainter. Harry's leader was a good horse, +of the rather heavy coachhorse breed, with a little of the racing blood +in her, but she was tired to start with, and only excitement and fright +at the feel of the "pull" of the twisting wire kept her up to that +speed; and now she was getting winded, so half a mile or so beyond the +bridge Harry thought it had gone far enough, and he stopped and got +down. The van ran on a bit, of course, and the loop of the wire slipped +off the hooks of the pole. The wire recoiled itself roughly along the +dust nearly to the heels of Harry's horse. Harry grabbed up as much of +the wire as he could claw for, took the mare by the neck with the other +hand, and vanished through the dense fringe of scrub off the road, till +the wire caught and pulled him up; he stood still for a moment, in +the black shadow on the edge of a little clearing, to listen. Then he +fumbled with the wire until he got it untwisted, cast it off, and moved +off silently with the mare across the soft rotten ground, and left her +in a handy bush stockyard, to be brought back to the stables at a late +hour that night--or rather an early hour next morning--by a jackaroo +stable-boy who would have two half-crowns in his pocket and afterthought +instructions to look out for that wire and hide it if possible. + +Then Harry Chatswood got back quickly, by a roundabout way, and walked +into the bar of the Royal, through the back entrance from the stables, +and stared, and wanted to know where all the chaps had gone to, and what +the noise was about, and whose trap had run away, and if anybody was +hurt. + +The growing crowd gathered round the van, silent and awestruck, and some +of them threw off their hats, and lost them, in their anxiety to show +respect for the dead, or render assistance to the hurt, as men do, round +a bad accident in the bush. They got the old man out, and two of them +helped him back along the road, with great solicitude, while some walked +round the van, and swore beneath their breaths, or stared at it with +open mouths, or examined it curiously, with their eyes only, and in +breathless silence. They muttered, and agreed, in the pale moonlight +now showing, that the sounds of the horses' hoofs had only been +"spirit-rappin' sounds;" and, after some more muttering, two of the +stoutest, with subdued oaths, laid hold of the pole and drew the van to +the side of the road, where it would be out of the way of chance night +traffic. But they stretched and rubbed their arms afterwards, and then, +and on the way back, they swore to admiring acquaintances that they felt +the "blanky 'lectricity" runnin' all up their arms and "elbers" while +they were holding the pole, which, doubtless, they did--in imagination. + +They got old Mac back to the Royal, with sundry hasty whiskies on +the way. He was badly shaken, both physically, mentally, and in his +convictions, and, when he'd pulled himself together, he had little to +add to what they already knew. But he confessed that, when he got under +his possum rug in the van, he couldn't help thinking of the professor +and his creepy (it was "creepy," or "uncanny," or "awful," or "rum" with +'em now)--his blanky creepy hypnotism; and he (old Mac) had just laid on +his back comfortable, and stretched his legs out straight, and his arms +down straight by his sides, and drew long, slow breaths; and tried +to fix his mind on nothing--as the professor had told him when he was +"operatin' on him" in the hall. Then he began to feel a strange sort +of numbness coming over him, and his limbs went heavy as lead, and +he seemed to be gettin' light-headed. Then, all on a sudden, his arms +seemed to begin to lift, and just when he was goin' to pull 'em down the +van started as they had heard and seen it. After a while he got on to +his knees and managed to wrench a corner; of the front curtain clear +of the button and get his head out. And there was the van going +helter-skelter, and feeling like Tam o'Shanter's mare (the old man +said), and he on her barebacked. And there was no horses, but a cloud of +dust--or a spook--on ahead, and the bare pole steering straight for it, +just as the professor had said it would be. The old man thought he was +going to be taken clear across the Never-Never country and left to roast +on a sandhill, hundreds of miles from anywhere, for his sins, and he +said he was trying to think of a prayer or two all the time he was +yelling. They handed him more whisky from the publican's own bottle. +Hushed and cautious inquiries for the Professor (with a big P now) +elicited the hushed and cautious fact that he had gone to bed. But old +Mac caught the awesome name and glared round, so they hurriedly filled +out another for him, from the boss's bottle. Then there was a slight +commotion. The housemaid hurried scaredly in to the bar behind and +whispered to the boss. She had been startled nearly out of her wits by +the Professor suddenly appearing at his bedroom door and calling upon +her to have a stiff nobbler of whisky hot sent up to his room. The +jackaroo yard-boy, aforesaid, volunteered to take it up, and while he +was gone there were hints of hysterics from the kitchen, and the boss +whispered in his turn to the crowd over the bar. The jackaroo just +handed the tray and glass in through the partly opened door, had a +glimpse of pyjamas, and, after what seemed an interminable wait, he came +tiptoeing into the bar amongst its awe-struck haunters with an air of +great mystery, and no news whatever. + +They fixed old Mac on a shake-down in the Commercial Room, where he'd +have light and some overflow guests on the sofas for company. With a +last whisky in the bar, and a stiff whisky by his side on the floor, he +was understood to chuckle to the effect that he knew he was all right +when he'd won "the keystone o' the brig." Though how a wooden bridge +with a level plank floor could have a keystone I don't know--and they +were too much impressed by the event of the evening to inquire. And so, +with a few cases of hysterics to occupy the attention of the younger +women, some whimpering of frightened children and comforting or +chastened nagging by mothers, some unwonted prayers muttered secretly +and forgettingly, and a good deal of subdued blasphemy, Cunnamulla sank +to its troubled slumbers--some of the sleepers in the commercial and +billiard-rooms and parlours at the Royal, to start up in a cold sweat, +out of their beery and hypnotic nightmares, to find Harry Chatswood +making elaborate and fearsome passes over them with his long, gaunt arms +and hands, and a flaming red table-cloth tied round his neck. + +To be done with old Mac, for the present. He made one or two more trips, +but always by daylight, taking care to pick up a swagman or a tramp +when he had no passenger; but his "conveections" had had too much of a +shaking, so he sold his turnout (privately and at a distance, for it +was beginning to be called "the haunted van") and returned to his +teams--always keeping one of the lads with him for company. He reckoned +it would take the devil's own hypnotism to move a load of fencingwire, +or pull a wool-team of bullocks out of a bog; and before he invoked the +ungodly power, which he let them believe he could--he'd stick there and +starve till he and his bullocks died a "natural" death. (He was a bit +Irish--as all Scots are--back on one side.) + +But the strangest is to come. The Professor, next morning, proved +uncomfortably unsociable, and though he could have done a roaring +business that night--and for a week of nights after, for that +matter--and though he was approached several times, he, for some +mysterious reason known only to himself, flatly refused to give one more +performance, and said he was leaving the town that day. He couldn't get +a vehicle of any kind, for fear, love, or money, until Harry Chatswood, +who took a day off, volunteered, for a stiff consideration, to borrow +a buggy and drive him (the Professor) to the next town towards the then +railway terminus, in which town the Professor's fame was not so awesome, +and where he might get a lift to the railway. Harry ventured to remark +to the Professor once or twice during the drive that "there was a rum +business with old Mac's van last night," but he could get nothing out of +him, so gave it best, and finished the journey in contemplative silence. + +Now, the fact was that the Professor had been the most surprised and +startled man in Cunnamulla that night; and he brooded over the thing +till he came to the conclusion that hypnotism was a dangerous power +to meddle with unless a man was physically and financially strong and +carefree--which he wasn't. So he threw it up. + +He learnt the truth, some years later, from a brother of Harry +Chatswood, in a Home or Retreat for Geniuses, where "friends were +paying," and his recovery was so sudden that it surprised and +disappointed the doctor and his friend, the manager of the home. As it +was, the Professor had some difficulty in getting out of it. + + + + +THE EXCISEMAN + + + +Harry Chatswood, mail contractor (and several other things), was driving +out from, say, Georgeville to Croydon, with mails, parcels, and only one +passenger--a commercial traveller, who had shown himself unsociable, +and close in several other ways. Nearly half-way to a place that was +half-way between the halfway house and the town, Harry overhauled "Old +Jack," a local character (there are many well-known characters named +"Old Jack") and gave him a lift as a matter of course. + +"Hello! Is that you, Jack?" in the gathering dusk. + + +"Yes, Harry." + +"Then jump up here." + +Harry was good-natured and would give anybody a lift if he could. + +Old Jack climbed up on the box-seat, between Harry and the traveller, +who grew rather more stand--(or rather _sit_) offish, wrapped himself +closer in his overcoat, and buttoned his cloak of silence and general +disgust to the chin button. Old Jack got his pipe to work and grunted, +and chatted, and exchanged bush compliments with Harry comfortably. And +so on to where they saw the light of a fire outside a hut ahead. + +"Let me down here, Harry," said Old Jack uneasily, "I owe Mother Mac +fourteen shillings for drinks, and I haven't got it on me, and I've been +on the spree back yonder, and she'll know it, an' I don't want to face +her. I'll cut across through the paddock and you can pick me up on the +other side." + +Harry thought a moment. + +"Sit still, Jack," he said. "I'll fix that all right." + +He twisted and went down into his trouser-pocket, the reins in one hand, +and brought up a handful of silver. He held his hand down to the coach +lamp, separated some of the silver from the rest by a sort of sleight +of hand--or rather sleight of fingers--and handed the fourteen shillings +over to Old Jack. + +"Here y'are, Jack. Pay me some other time." + +"Thanks, Harry!" grunted Old Jack, as he twisted for his pocket. + +It was a cold night, the hint of a possible shanty thawed the traveller +a bit, and he relaxed with a couple of grunts about the weather and the +road, which were received in a brotherly spirit. Harry's horses +stopped of their own accord in front of the house, an old bark-and-slab +whitewashed humpy of the early settlers' farmhouse type, with a plank +door in the middle, one bleary-lighted window on one side, and one +forbiddingly blind one, as if death were there, on the other. It might +have been. The door opened, letting out a flood of lamp-light and +firelight which blindly showed the sides of the coach and the near pole +horse and threw the coach lamps and the rest into the outer darkness of +the opposing bush. + +"Is that you, Harry?" called a voice and tone like Mrs Warren's of the +Profession. + +"It's me." + +A stoutly aggressive woman appeared. She was rather florid, and looked, +moved and spoke as if she had been something in the city in other years, +and had been dumped down in the bush to make money in mysterious ways; +had married, mated--or got herself to be supposed to be married--for +convenience, and continued to make money by mysterious means. Anyway, +she was "Mother Mac" to the bush, but, in the bank in the "town," and +in the stores where she dealt, she was _Mrs_ Mac, and there was always a +promptly propped chair for her. She was, indeed, the missus of no other +than old Mac, the teamster of hypnotic fame, and late opposition to +Harry Chatswood. Hence, perhaps, part of Harry's hesitation to pull up, +farther back, and his generosity to Old Jack. + +Mrs or Mother Mac sold refreshments, from a rough bush dinner at +eighteenpence a head to passengers, to a fly-blown bottle of ginger-ale +or lemonade, hot in hot weather from a sunny fly-specked window. In +between there was cold corned beef, bread and butter, and tea, and (best +of all if they only knew it) a good bush billy of coffee on the coals +before the fire on cold wet nights. And outside of it all, there was +cold tea, which, when confidence was established, or they knew one of +the party, she served hushedly in cups without saucers; for which she +sometimes apologized, and which she took into her murderous bedroom +to fill, and replenish, in its darkest and most felonious corner from +homicidal-looking pots, by candle-light. You'd think you were in a cheap +place, where you shouldn't be, in the city. + +Harry and his passengers got down and stretched their legs, and while +Old Jack was guardedly answering a hurriedly whispered inquiry of the +traveller, Harry took the opportunity to nudge Mrs Mac, and whisper in +her ear: + +"Look out, Mrs Mac!--Exciseman!" + +"The devil he is!" whispered she. + +"Ye-e-es!" whispered Harry. + +"All right, Harry!" she whispered. "Never a word! I'll take care of him, +bless his soul." + +After a warm at the wide wood fire, a gulp of coffee and a bite or two +at the bread and meat, the traveller, now thoroughly thawed, stretched +himself and said: + +"Ah, well, Mrs Mac, haven't you got anything else to offer us?" + +"And what more would you be wanting?" she snapped. "Isn't the bread and +meat good enough for you?" + +"But--but--you know--" he suggested lamely. + +"Know?--I know!--What do _I_ know?" A pause, then, with startling +suddenness, "Phwat d'y' mean?" + +"No offence, Mrs Mac--no offence; but haven't you got something in the +way of--of a drink to offer us?" + +"Dhrink! Isn't the coffee good enough for ye? I paid two and six a pound +for ut, and the milk new from the cow this very evenin'--an' th' water +rain-water." + +"But--but--you know what I mean, Mrs Mac." + +"An' I doan't know what ye mean. _Phwat do ye mean_? I've asked ye that +before. What are ye dhrivin' at, man--out with it!" + +"Well, I mean a little drop of the right stuff," he said, nettled. Then +he added: "No offence--no harm done." + +"O-o-oh!" she said, illumination bursting in upon her brain. "It's the +dirrty drink ye're afther, is it? Well, I'll tell ye, first for last, +that we doan't keep a little drop of the right stuff nor a little drop +of the wrong stuff in this house. It's a honest house, an' me husband's +a honest harrd-worrkin' carrier, as he'd soon let ye know if he was at +home this cold night, poor man. No dirrty drink comes into this house, +nor goes out of it, I'd have ye know." + +"Now, now, Mrs Mac, between friends, I meant no offence; but it's a cold +night, and I thought you might keep a bottle for medicine--or in case of +accident--or snake-bite, you know--they mostly do in the bush." + +"Medicine! And phwat should we want with medicine? This isn't a +five-guinea private hospital. We're clean, healthy people, I'd have +ye know. There's a bottle of painkiller, if that's what ye want, and +a packet of salts left--maybe they'd do ye some good. An' a bottle of +eye-water, an' something to put in your ear for th' earache--maybe ye'll +want 'em both before ye go much farther." + +"But, Mrs Mac--" + +"No, no more of it!" she said. "I tell ye that if it's a nip ye're +afther, ye'll have to go on fourteen miles to the pub in the town. Ye're +coffee's gittin' cowld, an' it's eighteenpence each to passengers I +charge on a night like this; Harry Chatswood's the driver an' welcome, +an' Ould Jack's an ould friend." And she flounced round to clatter her +feelings amongst the crockery on the dresser--just as men make a great +show of filling and lighting their pipes in the middle of a barney. The +table, by the way, was set on a brown holland cloth, with the brightest +of tin plates for cold meals, and the brightest of tin pint-pots for +the coffee (the crockery was in reserve for hot meals and special local +occasions) and at one side of the wide fire-place hung an old-fashioned +fountain, while in the other stood a camp-oven; and billies and a black +kerosene-tin hung evermore over the fire from sooty chains. These, and +a big bucket-handled frying-pan and a few rusty convict-time arms on the +slab walls, were mostly to amuse jackaroos and jackarooesses, and let +them think they were getting into the Australian-dontcherknow at last. + +Harry Chatswood took the opportunity (he had a habit of taking +opportunities of this sort) to whisper to Old Jack: + +"Pay her the fourteen bob, Jack, and have done with it. She's got the +needle to-night all right, and damfiknow what for. But the sight of +your fourteen bob might bring her round." And Old Jack--as was his +way--blundered obediently and promptly right into the hole that was +shown him. + +"Well, Mrs Mae," he said, getting up from the table and slipping his +hand into his pocket. "I don't know what's come over yer to-night, but, +anyway--" Here he put the money down on the table. "There's the money I +owe yer for--for--" + +"For what?" she demanded, turning on him with surprising swiftness for +such a stout woman. + +"The--the fourteen bob I owed for them drinks when Bill Hogan and me--" + +"You don't owe me no fourteen bob for dhrinks, you dirty blaggard! Are +ye mad? You got no drink off of me. Phwat d'ye mean?" + +"Beg--beg pardin, Mrs Mac," stammered Old Jack, very much taken aback; +"but the--yer know--the fourteen bob, anyway, I owed you when--that +night when me an' Bill Hogan an' yer sister-in-law, Mary Don--" + +"What? Well, I--Git out of me house, ye low blaggard! I'm a honest, +respictable married woman, and so is me sister-in-law, Mary Donelly; and +to think!--Git out of me door!" and she caught up the billy of coffee. +"Git outside me door, or I'll let ye have it in ye'r ugly face, ye low +woolscourer--an' it's nearly bilin'." + +Old Jack stumbled dazedly out, and blind instinct got him on to the +coach as the safest place. Harry Chatswood had stood with his long, +gaunt figure hung by an elbow to the high mantelshelf, all the time, +taking alternate gulps from his pint of coffee and puffs from his pipe, +and very calmly and restfully regarding the scene. + +"An' now," she said, "if the _gentleman's_ done, I'd thank him to +pay--it's eighteenpence--an' git his overcoat on. I've had enough dirty +insults this night to last me a lifetime. To think of it--the blaggard!" +she said to the table, "an' me a woman alone in a place like this on a +night like this!" + +The traveller calmly put down a two-shilling piece, as if the whole +affair was the most ordinary thing in the world (for he was used to many +bush things) and comfortably got into his overcoat. + +"Well, Mrs Mae, I never thought Old Jack was mad before," said Harry +Chatswood. "And I hinted to him," he added in a whisper. "Anyway" (out +loudly), "you'll lend me a light, Mrs Mac, to have a look at that there +swingle-bar of mine?" + +"With pleasure, Harry," she said, "for you're a white man, anyway. I'll +bring ye a light. An' all the lights in heaven if I could, an'--an' in +the other place if they'd help ye." + +When he'd looked to the swingle-bar, and had mounted to his place and +untwisted the reins from a side-bar, she cried: + +"An' as for them two, Harry, shpill them in the first creek you come to, +an' God be good to you! It's all they're fit for, the low blaggards, to +insult an honest woman alone in the bush in a place like this." + +"All right, Mrs Mac," said Harry, cheerfully. "Good night, Mrs Mac." + +"Good night, Harry, an' God go with ye, for the creeks are risen after +last night's storm." And Harry drove on and left her to think over it. + +She thought over it in a way that would have been unexpected to Harry, +and would have made him uneasy, for he was really good-natured. She sat +down on a stool by the fire, and presently, after thinking over it a +bit, two big, lonely tears rolled down the lonely woman's fair, fat, +blonde cheeks in the firelight. + +"An' to think of Old Jack," she said. "The very last man in the world +I'd dreamed of turning on me. But--but I always thought Old Jack was +goin' a bit ratty, an' maybe I was a bit hard on him. God forgive us +all!" + +Had Harry Chatswood seen her then he would have been sorry he did it. +Swagmen and broken-hearted new chums had met worse women than Mother +Mac. + +But she pulled herself together, got up and bustled round. She put +on more wood, swept the hearth, put a parcel of fresh steak and +sausages--brought by the coach--on to a clean plate on the table, and +got some potatoes into a dish; for Chatswood had told her that her +first and longest and favourite stepson was not far behind him with +the bullock team. Before she had finished the potatoes she heard the +clock-clock of heavy wheels and the crack of the bullock whip coming +along the dark bush track. + +But the very next morning a man riding back from Croydon called, and +stuck his head under the veranda eaves with a bush greeting, and she +told him all about it. + +He straightened up, and tickled the back of his head with his little +finger, and gaped at her for a minute. + +"Why," he said, "that wasn't no excise officer. I know him well--I was +drinking with him at the Royal last night afore we went to bed, an' had +a nip with him this morning afore we started. Why! that's Bobby Howell, +Burns and Bridges' traveller, an' a good sort when he wakes up, an' +willin' with the money when he does good biz, especially when there's a +chanst of a drink on a long road on a dark night." + +"That Harry Chatswood again! The infernal villain," she cried, with a +jerk of her arm. "But I'll be even with him, the dirrty blaggard. An' +to think--I always knew Old Jack was a white man an'--to think! There's +fourteen shillin's gone that Old Jack would have paid me, an' the +traveller was good for three shillin's f'r the nips, an'--but Old Jack +will pay me next time, and I'll be even with Harry Chatswood, the dirrty +mail carter. I'll take it out of him in parcels--I'll be even with him." + +She never saw Old Jack again with fourteen shillings, but she got even +with Harry Chatswood, and--But I'll tell you about that some other time. +Time for a last smoke before we turn in. + + + + +MATESHIP IN SHAKESPEARE'S ROME + + + +How we do misquote sayings, or misunderstand them when quoted rightly! +For instance, we "wait for something to turn up, like Micawber," +careless or ignorant of the fact that Micawber worked harder than all +the rest put together for the leading characters' sakes; he was the +chief or only instrument in straightening out of the sadly mixed state +of things--and he held his tongue till the time came. Moreover--and +"_Put a pin in that spot, young man_," as Dr "Yark" used to say--when +there came a turn in the tide of the affairs of Micawber, he took it at +the flood, and it led on to fortune. He became a hardworking settler, a +pioneer--a respected early citizen and magistrate in this bright young +Commonwealth of ours, my masters! + +And, by the way, and strictly between you and me, I have a shrewd +suspicion that Uriah Heep wasn't the only cad in David Copperfield. + +Brutus, the originator of the saying, took the tide at the flood, and +it led him and his friends on to death, or--well, perhaps, under the +circumstances, it was all the same to Brutus and his old mate, Cassius. + + And this, my masters, brings me home, + Bush-born bard, to Ancient Rome. + +And there's little difference in the climate, or the men--save in the +little matter of ironmongery--and no difference at all in the women. + +We'll pass over the accident that happened to Caesar. Such accidents had +happened to great and little Caesars hundreds of times before, and have +happened many times since, and will happen until the end of time, both +in "sport" (in plays) and in earnest: + + Cassius: ....How many ages hence + Shall this our lofty scene be acted over + In states unborn and accents yet unknown? + + Brutus: How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport, + That now at Pompey's basis lies along + No worthier than the dust! + +Shakespeare hadn't Australia and George Rignold in his mind's eye when +he wrote that. + + Cassius: So oft as that shall be, + So often shall the knot of us be call'd + The men that gave their country liberty. + +Well, be that as it will, I'm with Brutus too, irrespective of the +merits of the case. Antony spoke at the funeral, with free and generous +permission, and see what he made of it. And why shouldn't I? and see +what I'll make of it. + +Antony, after sending abject and uncalled-for surrender, and grovelling +unasked in the dust to Brutus and his friends as no straight mate should +do for another, dead or alive--and after taking the blood-stained hands +of his alleged friend's murderers--got permission to speak. To speak for +his own ends or that paltry, selfish thing called "revenge," be it for +one's self or one's friend. + +"Brutus, I want a word with you," whispered Cassius. "Don't let him +speak! You don't know how he might stir up the mob with what he says." + +But Brutus had already given his word: + + Antony: That's all I seek: + And am moreover suitor that I may + Produce his body to the market place, + And in the pulpit, as becomes a friend, + Speak in the order of his funeral. + + Brutus: You shall, Mark Antony. + +And now, strong in his right, as he thinks, and trusting to the honour +of Antony, he only stipulates that he (Brutus) shall go on to the +platform first and explain things; and that Antony shall speak all the +good he can of Caesar, but not abuse Brutus and his friends. + +And Antony (mark you) agrees and promises and breaks his promise +immediately afterwards. Maybe he was only gaining time for his good +friend Octavius Caesar, but time gained by such foul means is time lost +through all eternity. Did Mark think of these things years afterwards in +Egypt when he was doubly ruined and doubly betrayed to his good friend +Octavius by that hot, jealous, selfish, shallow, shifty, strumpet, +Cleopatra, and Octavius was after his scalp with a certainty of getting +it? He did--and he spoke of it, too. + +Brutus made his speech, a straightforward, manly speech in prose, and +the gist of the matter was that he did what he did (killed Caesar), +not because he loved Caesar less, but because he loved Rome more. And I +believe he told the simple honest truth. + +Then he acts as Antony's chairman, or introducer, in a manly +straightforward manner, and then he goes off and leaves the stage to +him, which is another generous act; though it was lucky for Brutus, as +it happened afterwards, that he was out of the way. + +Mark Antony gets all the limelight and blank verse. He had the "gift of +the gab" all right. Old Cassius referred to it later on in one of those +"words-before-blows" barneys they had on the battlefield where they hurt +each other a damned sight more with their tongues than they did with +their swords afterwards. + +We've all heard of Antony's speech: + + I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. + +Which was a lie to start with. + + The evil that men do lives after them, + The good is oft interred with their bones. + +Which is not so true in these days of newspapers and magazines. And so +on. He says that Brutus and his friends are honourable men about nine +times in his short speech. Now, was Mark Antony an honourable man? + +And then the flap-doodle about dead Caesar's wounds, and their poor dumb +mouths, and the people kissing them, and dipping their handkerchiefs in +his sacred blood. All worthy of our Purves trying to pump tears out of a +jury. + +But it fetched the crowd; it always did, it always has done, it always +does, and it always will do. And the hint of Caesar's will, and the +open abuse of Brutus and Co. when he saw that he was safe, and the cheap +anti-climax of the reading of the will. Nothing in this line can be too +cheap for the crowd, as witness the melodramas of our own civilized and +enlightened times. + +Antony was a noble Purves. + +And the mob rushed off to burn houses, as it has always done, and will +always do when it gets a chance--it tried to burn mine more than once. + +The quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius is one of the best scenes +in Shakespeare. It is great from the sublime to the ridiculous--you must +read it for yourself. It seems that Brutus objected to Cassius's, or one +of his off-side friends' methods of raising the wind--he reckoned it +was one of the very things they killed Julius Caesar for; and Cassius, +loving Brutus more than a brother, is very much hurt about it. I can't +make out what the trouble really was about and I don't suppose either +Cassius or Brutus was clear as to what it was all about either. It's +generally the way when friends fall out. It seems also that Brutus +thinks that Cassius refused to lend him a few quid to pay his legions, +and, you know, it's an unpardonable crime for one mate to refuse another +a few quid when he's in a hole; but it seems that the messenger was but +a fool who brought Cassius's answer back. It is generally the messenger +who is to blame, when friends make it up after a quarrel that was all +their own fault. Messengers had an uncomfortable time in those days, as +witness the case of the base slave who had to bring Cleopatra the news +of Antony's marriage with Octavia. + +But the quarrel scene is great for its deep knowledge of the hearts of +men in matters of man to man--of man friend to man friend--and it is as +humanly simple as a barney between two old bush mates that threatens to +end in a bloody fist-fight and separation for life, but chances to end +in a beer. This quarrel threatened to end in the death of either Brutus +or Cassius or a set-to between their two armies, just at the moment +when they all should have been knit together against the forces of Mark +Antony and Octavius Caesar; but it ended in a beer, or its equivalent, a +bowl of wine. + +Earlier in the quarrel, where Brutus asks why, after striking down the +foremost man in all the world for supporting land agents and others, +should they do the same thing and contaminate their fingers with base +bribes? + + I'd rather be a dog and bay the moon, + Than such a Roman. + +Cassius says: + + Brutus, bait not me + I'll not endure it: you forget yourself, + To hedge me in; I am a soldier, I, + Older in practice, abler than yourself + To make conditions. + + Brutus: Go to, you are not, Cassius. + + Cassius: I am. + + Brutus: I say you are not. + +And so they get to it again until: + + Cassius: Is it come to this? + + Brutus: You say you are a better soldier: + Let it appear so; make your vaunting true, + And it shall please me well: for mine own part, + I shall be glad to learn of noble men. + + Cassius: You wrong me every way; you wrong me, Brutus; + I said, an elder soldier, not a better. + Did I say better? + +(What big boys they were--and what big boys we all are!) + + Brutus: If you did, I care not. + + Cassius: When Caesar lived he durst not thus have moved me. + + Brutus: Peace, peace! you durst not thus have tempted him. + + Cassius: I durst not! + + Brutus: No. + + Cassius: What! Durst not tempt him! + + Brutus: For your life you durst not. + + Cassius: Do not presume too much upon my love; + I may do that I shall be sorry for. + + Brutus: You have done that you should be sorry for. + + +And so on till he gets to the matter of the refused quids, which is +cleared up at the expense of the messenger. + + Cassius: .... Brutus hath rived my heart + A friend should bear his friend's infirmities, + But Brutus makes mine greater than they are. + + Brutus: I do not, till you practise them on me. + + Cassius: You love me not. + + Brutus: I do not like your faults. + + Cassius: A friendly eye could never see such faults. + + Brutus: A flatterer's would not, though they do appear + As huge as high Olympus. + +Then Cassius lets himself go. He calls on Antony and young Octavius and +all the rest of 'em to come and be revenged on him alone, for he's tired +of the world ("Cassius is aweary of the world," he says). He's hated +by one he loves (that's Brutus). He's braved by his "brother" (Brutus), +checked like a bondman, and Brutus keeps an eye on all his faults and +puts 'em down in a note-book, and learns 'em over and gets 'em off by +memory to cast in his teeth. He offers Brutus his dagger and bare breast +and wants Brutus to take out his heart, which, he says, is richer than +all the quids--or rather gold--which Brutus said he wouldn't lend him. +He wants Brutus to strike him as he did Caesar, for he reckons that when +Brutus hated Caesar worst he loved him far better than ever he loved +Cassius. + +Remember these men were Southerners, like ourselves, not cold-blooded +Northerners--and, in spite of the seemingly effeminate Italian +temperament, as brave as our men were at Elands River. The reason of +Brutus's seeming coldness and hardness during the quarrel is set forth +in a startling manner later on, as only the greatest poet in this world +could do it. + +Brutus tells him kindly to put up his pig-sticker (and button his shirt) +and he could be just as mad or good-tempered as he liked, and do what he +liked, Brutus wouldn't mind him: + + .... Dishonour shall be humour. + O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb + That carries anger as the flint bears fire, + Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark + And straight is cold again. + +Whereupon Cassius weeps because he thinks Brutus is laughing at him. + + Hath Cassius lived + To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus, + When grief and blood ill-temper'd vexeth him. + + Brutus: When I spoke that, I was ill-temper'd too. + + Cassius: Do you confess so much? Give me your hand. + + Brutus: And my heart too. + +Then Cassius explains that he got his temper from his mother (as I did +mine). + + Cassius: O Brutus! + + Brutus: What's the matter? [Shakespeare should have added `now.'] + + Cassius: Have not you love enough to bear with me, + When that rash humour which my mother gave me + Makes me forgetful? + + Brutus: Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth, + When you are over-earnest with your Brutus, + He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so. + +And all this on the brink of disaster and death. + +But here comes a rare touch, and we might as well quote it in full. + +Mind you, I am following Shakespeare, and not history, which is mostly +lies. + +A great poet's instinct might be nearer the truth; after all. Of course +scholars know that Macbeth (or Macbethad) reigned for upwards of twenty +years in Scotland a wise and a generous king--so much so that he was +called "Macbathad the Liberal," and it was Duncan who found his way to +the throne by way of murder; but it didn't fit in with Shakespeare's +plans, and--anyway that's only a little matter between the ghosts of +Bill and Mac which was doubtless fixed up long ago. More likely they +thought it such a one-millionth part of a trifle that they never dreamed +of thinking of mentioning it. + + (Noise within.) + + Poet (within): Let me go in to see the generals; There is some + grudge between 'em--'tis not meet + They be alone. + + Lucilius (within): You shall not come to them. + + Poet (within): Nothing but death shall stay me. + +("Within" in this case is, of course, without--outside the tent where +Lucilius and Titinius are on guard.) + + Enter POET. + + Cassius: How now! What's the matter? + + Poet: For shame, you generals! What do you mean? + Love, and be friends, as two such men should be: + For I have seen more years, I'm sure, than ye. + + Cassius: Ha, ha! how vilely doth this cynic rhyme! + + Brutus: Get you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow, hence! + + Cassius: Bear with him, Brutus; 'tis his fashion. + + Brutus: I'll know his humour when he knows his time: + What should the wars do with these jingling fools? + Companion, hence! + + Cassius: Away, away, be gone! + + (Exit POET.) + + +Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit a black eye +(_Lawson_). Shakespeare was ever rough on poets--but stay! Consider that +this great world of Rome and all the men and women in it were created by +a "jingling fool" and a master of bad--not to say execrable--rhymes, and +his name was William Shakespeare. You need to sit down and think awhile +after that. + +Brutus sends Lucilius and Titinius to bid the commanders lodge their +companies for the night, and then all come to him. Then he gives Cassius +a shock and strikes him to the heart for his share in the quarrel. It is +almost directly after the row, when they have kicked out the "jingling +fool" of a poet. Cassius does not know that Brutus has to-day received +news of the death, in Rome, of his good and true wife Portia, who, +during a fit of insanity, brought on by her grief and anxiety for +Brutus, and in the absence of her attendant, has poisoned herself--or +"swallowed fire," as Shakespeare has it. + + Brutus (to Lucius, his servant): Lucius, a bowl of wine! + Cassius: I did not think you could have been so angry. + Brutus: O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs. + + Cassius: Of your philosophy you make no use, + If you give place to accidental evils. + + Brutus: No man bears sorrow better:--Portia is dead. + + Cassius: Ha! Portia! + + Brutus: She is dead. + + Cassius: How 'scaped I killing when I cross'd you so! + O insupportable and touching loss! + Upon what sickness? + + Brutus: Impatient of my absence, + And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony + Have made themselves so strong: for with her death + That tidings came; with this she fell distract, + And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire. + + Cassius: And died so? + + Brutus: Even so. + + Cassius: O, ye immortal gods! + +(Enter Lucius, with a jar of wine, a goblet, and a taper.) + + Brutus: Speak no more of her. Give me a bowl of wine: + In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius. + (Drinks.) + + Cassius: My heart is thirsty for that noble pledge. + Fill, Lucius, till the wine o'erswell the cup; + I cannot drink too much of Brutus' love. + (Drinks.) + +You ought to read that scene carefully. It will do no one any harm. It +did me a lot of good one time, when I was about to quarrel with a friend +whose heart was sick with many griefs that I knew nothing of at the +time. You never know what's behind. + +Titinius and Messala come in, and proceed to discuss the situation. + + Brutus: Come in, Titinius!! Welcome, good Messala. + Now sit we close about this taper here, + And call in question our necessities. + + Cassius (on whom the wine seems to have taken some effect): + Portia, art thou gone? + + Brutus: No more, I pray you. + Messala, I have here received letters, + That young Octavius and Mark Antony + Come down upon us with a mighty power, + Bending their expedition towards Philippi. + +Messala has also letters to the same purpose, and they have likewise +news of the murder, or execution, of upwards of a hundred senators in +Rome. + + Cassius: Cicero one! + Messala: Cicero is dead. + +Poor Brutus! His heart had cause to be sick of many griefs that day. +Messala thinks he has news to break, and Brutus draws him out. How many +and many a man and woman, with a lump in the throat, have broken sad and +bad news since that day, and started out to do it in the same old gentle +way: + + Messala: Had you your letters from your wife, my lord? + + Brutus: No, Messala. + + Messala: Nor nothing in your letters writ of her? + + Brutus: Nothing, Messala. + + Messala: That, methinks, is strange. + + Brutus: Why ask you? Hear you aught of her in yours? + +Maybe it strikes Messala like a flash that Brutus is in no need of any +more bad news just now, and it had better be postponed till after the +battle: + + Messala: No, my lord. + + Brutus: Now, as you are a Roman, tell me true. + + Messala: Then like a Roman bear the truth I tell: + For certain she is dead, and by strange manner. + + Brutus: Why, farewell, Portia. We must die, Messala: + With meditating that she must die once + I have the patience to endure it now. + +Poor Messala comes to the scratch again rather lamely with a little weak +flattery: "Even so great men great losses should endure;" and Cassius +says, rather mixedly--it might have been the wine--that he has as much +strength in bearing trouble as Brutus has, and yet he couldn't bear it +so. + + I have as much of this in art as you, + But yet my nature could not bear it so. + + Brutus: Well, to our work alive. What do you think + Of marching on Philippi presently? + +Brutus was a strong man. Portia's spirit must bide a while. They discuss +a plan of campaign. Cassius is for waiting for the enemy to seek them +and so get through his tucker and knock his men up, while they rest in +a good position; but Brutus argues that the enemy will gather up the +country people between Philippi and their camp and come on refreshed +with added numbers and courage, and it would be better for them to +meet him at Philippi with these people at their back. The politics or +inclination of the said country people didn't matter in those days. +"There is a tide in the affairs of men"--and so they decide to take it +at the flood and float high on to the rocks at Philippi. Ah well, it led +on to immortality, if it didn't to fortune. + +Well, there's no more to say. Brutus thinks that the main thing now is +a little rest--in which you'll agree with him; and he sends for his +night-shirt. + + Good night, Titinius: noble, noble Cassius, + Good night, and good repose! + +That old fool of a Cassius--remorseful old smooth-bore--is still a bit +maudlin--maybe he had another swig at the wine when Shakespeare wasn't +looking. + + Cassius: O my dear brother! + This was an ill beginning of the night + Never come such division 'tween our souls! + Let it not, Brutus. + + Brutus: Everything is well. + + Cassius: Good night, my lord. + + Brutus: Good sight, good brother. + +Titinius and Messala: Good night, Lord Brutus. + + Brutus: Farewell, every one. + +And Cassius is the man whom Caesar denounced as having a lean and hungry +look: "Let me have men about me that are fat... such men are dangerous." +(Mr Archibald held with that--and he had a lean, if not a hungry, look +too.) When Antony put in a word for Cassius, Caesar said that he wished +he was fatter anyhow. "He thinks too much," Caesar said to Antony. He +read a lot; he could look through men; he never went to the theatre, and +heard no music; he never smiled except as if grinning sarcastically at +himself for "being moved to smile at anything." Caesar said that such +men were never at heart's ease while they could see a bigger man than +themselves, and therefore such men were dangerous. "Come on my right +hand, for this ear is deaf, and tell me truly what thou think'st of +him." (That's a touch, for deafness in people affected that way is +usually greater in the left ear.) + +When Lucilius returned from taking a message from Brutus to Cassius _re_ +the loan of the fivers aforementioned and other matters--and before +the arrival of Cassius with his horse and foot, and the quarrel--Brutus +asked Lucilius what sort of a reception he had, and being told "With +courtesy and respect enough," he remarked, "Thou hast described a hot +friend cooling," and so on. But Cassius will cool no more until death +cools him to-morrow at Philippi. + +The rare gentleness of Brutus's character--and of the characters of +thousands of other bosses in trouble--is splendidly, and ah! so softly, +pictured in the tent with his servants after the departure of the +others. It is a purely domestic scene without a hint of home, women, or +children--save that they themselves are big children. The scene now has +the atmosphere of a soft, sad nightfall, after a long, long, hot and +weary day full of toil and struggle and trouble--though it is really +well on towards morning. + +Lucius comes in with the gown. Brutus says, "Give me the gown," and asks +where his (Lucius's) musical instrument is, and Lucius replies that it's +here in the tent. Brutus notices that he speaks drowsily. "Poor knave, +I blame thee not, thou are o'er-watched." He tells him to call Claudius +and some other of his men: "I'd have them sleep on cushions in my tent." +They come. He tells them he might have to send them on business by and +by to his "brother" Cassius, and bids them lie down and sleep, calling +them sirs. They say they'll stand and watch his pleasure. "I will not +have it so; lie down, good sirs." He finds, in the pocket of his gown, a +book he'd been hunting high and low for--and had evidently given Lucius +a warm time about--and he draws Lucius's attention to the fact: + + Look, Lucius, here's the book I sought for so: + I put it in the pocket of my gown. + + Lucius: I was sure your lordship did not give it to me. + + Brutus: Bear with me, good boy, I am much forgetful, etc. + +He asks Lucius if he can hold up his heavy eyes and touch his instrument +a strain or two. But better give it all--it's not long: + + Lucius: Ay, my lord, an't please you. + + Brutus: It does, my boy: + I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing. + + Lucius: It is my duty, sir. + + Brutus: I should not urge thy duty past thy might; + I know young bloods look for a time of rest. + + Lucius: I have slept, my lord, already. + + Brutus: It was well done; and thou shalt sleep again; + I will not hold thee long: if I do live, + I will be good to thee. (Music, and a song.) + This is a sleepy tune. O murderous slumber, + Lay'st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy + That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good-night; + I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee: + If thou dost nod, thou break'st thy instrument; + I'll take it from thee; and, good boy, good-night. + Let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turn'd down + Where I left reading? Here it is, I think. + (He sits down.) + +A man for all time! How natural it all reads! You must remember that he +is a tired man after a long, strenuous day such as none of us ever know. +The fate of Rome and his--a much smaller matter--are hanging on +the balance, and tomorrow will decide; but he is so mind-dulled and +shoulder-weary under the tremendous burden of great things and of many +griefs that he is almost apathetic; and over all is the cloud of a loss +that he has not yet had time to realize. He is self-hypnotized, so +to speak, and his mind mercifully dulled for the moment on the Sea of +Fatalism. + + Enter GHOST of CAESAR + + Brutus: How ill this taper burns! Ha! who comes here? + I think it is the weakness of mine eyes + That shapes this monstrous apparition. + It comes upon me. Art thou any thing? + Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil + That makest my blood cold, and my hair to stare? + Speak to me what thou art! + +His very "scare," or rather his cold blood and staring hair are as +things apart, to be analysed and explained quickly and put aside. + + Ghost: Thy evil spirit, Brutus. + +That was frank enough, anyway. + + Brutus: Why comest thou? + + Ghost: To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi. + + Brutus: Well; then I shall see thee again? + + Ghost: Ay, at Philippi. + (Vanishes.) + +That was very satisfactory, so far. But Brutus, having taken heart, +as he says, would hold more talk with the "ill spirit." A ghost always +needs to be taken quietly--it's no use getting excited and threshing +round. But Caesar's, being a new-chum ghost and bashful, was doubtless +embarrassed by his cool, matter-of-fact reception, and left. It didn't +matter much. They were to meet soon, above Philippi, on more level +terms. + +But I cannot get away from the idea that Caesar's ghost's visit was made +in a friendly spirit. Who knows? Perhaps Portia's spirit had sent it to +comfort Brutus: her own being prevented from going for some reason only +known to the immortal gods. + +Then Brutus wakes them all. + + Lucius: The strings, my lord, are false. + + Brutus: He thinks he is still at his instrument. + Lucius, awake! + +And after questioning them as to whether they cried out in their sleep, +or saw anything, he bids the boy sleep again (it is easy for tired boys +to sleep at will in camp) and sends two of the others to Cassius to bid +him get his forces on the way early and he would follow. + + Brutus: Go and commend me to my brother Cassius; + Bid him set on his powers betimes before, + And we will follow. + + Varro and Claudius: It shall be done, my lord. + +For, being a wise soldier, as well as a brave and gentle one, he +reckoned, no doubt, that it would be best to have a strong man in the +rear until the field was actually reached, for the benefit of would-be +deserters, and unconsidered trifles of country people-and maybe for +another reason not totally disconnected with his erratic friend Cassius. + +Just one more scene, and a very different one, before we hurry on to the +end, as they have done to Philippi. It's the only scene in which those +two unlucky Romans, Cassius and Brutus, seem to score. + +It is during the barney, or as Shakespeare calls it, the "parley" before +the battle. Those parleys never seemed to do any good--except to make +matters worse, if I might put it like that: it's the same, under similar +circumstances, right up to to-day. Enter on one side Octavius Caesar, +Mark Antony, and their pals and army; and, on the other, Brutus and +Cassius and the friends and followers of their falling fortunes. + + Brutus: Words before blows: is it so, countrymen? + + Octavius: Not that we love words better, as you do. + +You see, Octavius starts it. + +Brutus lays himself open: + + Brutus: Good words are better than bad strokes, Octavius. + Antony: In your bad strokes, Brutus, you give good words: + Witness the hole you made in Caesar's heart, + Crying, "Long live! hail, Caesar!" + +This is one for Brutus, though it contains a lie. But Cassius comes to +the rescue: + + Cassius: Antony, + The posture of your blows are yet unknown, + But, for your words, they rob the Hybla bees + And leave them honeyless. + + Antony: Not stingless too. + + Brutus: O, yes, and soundless too; + For you have stol'n their buzzing, Antony, + And very wisely threat before you sting. + +That was one for Antony, and he gets mad. "Villains!" he yells, and he +abuses them about their vile daggers hacking one another in the sides +of Caesar (a little matter that ought to be worn threadbare by now), +and calls them apes and hounds and bondmen and curs, and O, flatterers +(which seems to be worst of all in his opinion--for he isn't one, you +know), and damns 'em generally. + +Old Cassius remarks, "Flatterers!" + +Then Octavius breaks loose, and draws his Roman chopper and waves +it round, and spreads himself out over Caesar's three-and-thirty +wounds--which ought to be given a rest by this time, but only seem to +be growing in number--and swears that he won't put up said chopper till +said wounds are avenged, + + Or till another Caesar + Have added slaughter to the sword of traitors. + +Brutus says quietly that he cannot die by traitors unless he brings 'em +with him. (He sent one to Egypt later on.) Octavius says he hopes he +wasn't born to die on Brutus's sword; and Brutus says, in effect, that +even if he was any good he couldn't die more honourably. + + Brutus: O, if thou wert the noblest of thy strain, + Young man, thou couldst not die more honourable. + + Cassius: A peevish schoolboy, worthless of such honour, + Join'd with a masker and a reveller! + +Octavius calls off his dogs, and tells them to come on to-day if they +dare, or if not, when they have stomachs. + + Cassius: Why, now, blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark! + The storm is up, and all is on the hazard. + +Yes, I reckon old Cassius ("old" in an affectionate sense) and Brutus +came out top dogs from that scrap anyway. And, yes, Antony _was_ good +at orating. He was great at orating over dead men--especially dead +"friends" (as he called his rivals) and dead enemies. Brutus was "the +noblest Roman of them all" when Antony came across him stiff later on. +Now when I die-- + +Octavius, by the way, orated over Antony and his dusky hussy later on +in Egypt, and they were the most "famous pair" in the world. I wonder +whether the grim humour of it struck Octavius _then_: but then that +young man seemed to have but little brains and less humour. + +But now they go to see about settling the matter with ironmongery. You +can imagine the fight; the heat and the dust, for it was spring in a +climate like ours. The bullocking, sweating, grunting, slaughter, the +crack and clash and rattle as of fire-irons in a fender. The bad Latin +language; the running away and chasing _en masse_ and by individuals. +The mutual pauses, the truces or spells--"smoke-ho's" we'd call +'em--between masses and individuals. The battered-in, lost, discarded or +stolen helmets; the blood-stained, dinted, and loosened armour with bits +missing, and the bloody and grotesque bandages. The confusion amongst +the soldiers, as it is to-day--the ignorance of one wing as to the +fate of the other, of one party as to the fate of the other, of one +individual as to the fate of another: + + Brutus: Ride, ride, Messala, ride, and give these bills [directions + to officers] + Unto the legions on the other side: + +Poor Cassius, routed and in danger of being surrounded, and thinking +Brutus is in the same plight, or a prisoner or dead--and that Titinius +is taken or killed--gets his bondman, whose life he once saved, to kill +him in return for his freedom. + + Stand not to answer: here, take thou the hilts; + And when my face is cover 'd, as 'tis now, + Guide thou the sword. + Caesar, thou art revenged, + Even with the sword that kill'd thee. + +Good-bye, Cassius, old chap! + +Titinius and Messala, coming too late, find Cassius dead; and Titinius, +being left alone while Messala takes the news to Brutus, kills himself +with Cassius's sword. Titinius, farewell! + +Come Brutus and those that are left. + + Brutus: Where, where, Messala, doth his body lie? + + Messala: Lo, yonder, and Titinius mourning it. + + Brutus: Titinius' face is upward. + + Cato: He is slain. + +Grim mates in a grim day in a grim hour. Then the cry of Brutus: + + O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet! + +But if he were, perhaps he only gathered old Cassius and Titinius to +be sure of their company with him and Brutus amongst the gods a little +later. + + Brutus: Friends, I owe more tears + To this dead man than you shall see me pay. + I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time. + +And, after making arrangements for the removal of Cassius's body, they +go to try their fortunes in a second fight. Young Cato is killed and +good Lucilius taken. Comes Brutus beaten, with Dardanius his last +friend, and his three servants, Clitus, Strato, and Volumnius. + + Brutus: Come, poor remains of friends, rest on this rock. + +Strato, exhausted, goes to sleep, as man can sleep during a battle; and +Brutus whispers the others, one after another, to kill him; but they are +shocked and refuse: "I'll rather kill myself," "I do such a deed?" etc. +He begs Volumnius, his old schoolmate, to hold his sword-hilt while he +runs on it, for their love of old. + + Volumnius: That's not the office for a friend, my lord. + +There are alarums, and they urge him to fly, for it's no use stopping +there. + + Brutus: Farewell to you; and you; and you, Volumnius. + Strato, thou hast been all this while asleep; + Farewell to thee too, Strato! Countrymen, + My heart doth joy that yet in all my life + I found so man but he was true to me. + +Ye gods! but it's grand. I wish to our God that I could say as much--or +that man or woman [n]ever found me untrue. Could Antony say as much, +afterwards, in Egypt--or Octavius! with Antony then on his mind? Even +Antony's last man and servant failed him in the end, killing himself +rather than kill his master. But Strato-- + +There are more alarums and voices calling to them to run. They urge +Brutus again, and he tells them to go and he'll follow. They all run +except Strato, who hesitates. + + Brutus: I prithee, Strato, stay thou by thy lord: + Thou art a fellow of a good respect; + Thy life hath had some snatch of honour in it + Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face, + While I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato? + + Strato: Give me your hand first: fare you well, my lord. + + Brutus: Farewell, good Strato. Caesar, now be still: + I kill'd not thee with half so good a will. + +Brutus, good night! + +I like Shakespeare's servants. They seem to show that he sprang from +servants or common people rather than from lords and masters, for he +deals with them very gently. It must be understood that servants, bond +and free, were born unto the same house and served it for generations; +and so down to modern England, where the old nurse and the tottering old +gardener often nursed and played with "Master Will," when his father, +the dead and gone old squire, was a young man. + +See where Timon's servants stand in the only patch of sunlight in that +black and bitter story: + + Enter Flavius, with two or three SERVANTS. + + 1 Serv.: Hear you, master steward, where's our master? + Are we undone? cast off? nothing remaining? + + Flav.: Alack, my fellows, what should I say to you? + Let me be recorded by the righteous gods, + I am as poor as you. + + 1 Serv.: Such a house broke! + So noble a master fall'n! All gone! and not + One friend to take his fortune by the arm, + And go along with him! + + 2 Serv.: As we do turn our backs + From our companion thrown into his grave, + So his familiars to his buried fortunes + Slink all away; leave their false vows with him, + Like empty purses pick'd; and his poor self, + A dedicated beggar to the air, + With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty, + Walks, like contempt, alone. More of our fellows. + + Enter other Servants + + Flav.: All broken implements of a ruin'd house. + + 3 Serv.: Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery; + That see I by our faces; we are fellows still, + Serving alike in sorrow: leak'd is our bark, + And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck, + Hearing the surges threat; we must all part + Into this sea of air. + + Flav.: Good fellows all, + The latest of my wealth I'll share amongst you. + Wherever we shall meet, for Timon's sake + Let's yet be fellows; let's shake our heads, and say, + As 'twere a knell unto our master's fortunes, + "We have seen better days." Let each take some. + (Giving them money.) + Nay, put out all your hands. Not one word more: + Thus part we rich in sorrow, parting poor. + + + +Notes on Australianisms. Based on my own speech over the years, with +some checking in the dictionaries. Not all of these are peculiar to +Australian slang, but are important in Lawson's stories, and carry +overtones. + + barrackers: people who cheer for a sporting team, etc. + boko: crazy. + bushman/bushwoman: someone who lives an isolated existence, far from + cities, "in the bush", "outback". (today: "bushy". In New + Zealand it is a timber getter. Lawson was sacked from a forestry + job in New Zealand, "because he wasn't a bushman":-) + bushranger: an Australian ``highwayman'', who lived in the `bush'-- + scrub--and attacked and robbed, especially gold carrying coaches + and banks. Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures-- + cf. Ned Kelly--but usually very violent. + US use was very different (more = explorer), though some + lexicographers think the word (along with "bush" in this sense) + was borrowed from the US... + churchyarder: Sounding as if dying--ready for the churchyard = cemetery + cobber: mate, friend. Used to be derived from Hebrew chaver via + Yiddish. General opinion now seems to be that it entered the + language too early for that--and an English etymology is preferred. + fiver: a five pound (sterling) note (or "bill") + fossick: pick out gold, in a fairly desultory fashion. In old + "mullock" heaps or crvices in rocks. + jackaroo: (Jack + kangaroo; sometimes jackeroo)--someone, in early + days a new immigrant from England, learning to work on a + sheep/cattle station (U.S. "ranch".) + kiddy: young child. "kid" plus ubiquitous Australia "-y" or "-ie" + nobbler: a drink, esp. of spirits + overlanding: driving (or, "droving", cattle from pasture to market + or railhead.) + pannikin: a metal mug. + Pipeclay: or Eurunderee, Where Lawson spent much of his early life + (including his three years of school... + Poley: name for s hornless (or dehorned) cow. + skillion(-room): A "lean-to", a room built up against the back of + some other building, with separate roof. + sliprails: portion of a fence where the rails are lossely fitted + so that they may be removed from one side and animal let through. + smoke-ho: a short break from, esp., heavy physical work, and those who + wish to can smoke. + sov.: sovereign, gold coin worth one pound sterling + splosh: money + Sqinny: nickname for someone with a squint. + Stousher: nickname for someone often in a fight (or "stoush") + swagman (swaggy): Generally, anyone who is walking in the "outback" + with a swag. (See "The Romance of the Swag".) Lawson also + restricts it at times to those whom he considers to be tramps, + not looking for work but for "handouts" (i.e., "bums" in US. In view + of the Great Depression, 1890->, perhaps unfairly. In 1892 it was + reckoned 1/3 men were out of work) + +GJC + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rising of the Court, by Henry Lawson + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISING OF THE COURT *** + +***** This file should be named 7447.txt or 7447.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/7/4/4/7447/ + +Produced by Geoffrey Cowling + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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