Such Is Life

by Tom Collins

  “Ha-a-a-a-a-a-ay!”

  Rest, rest, perturbed spirit. By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, now wherefore stop ’st thou me?—For Maud Beaudesart comes o’er my memory as doth the raven o’er the infected house. Get thee to a nunnery, Jim. The chalk-mark is on my door; for Mrs. B. has no less than three consecutive husbands in heaven—so potently has her woman-soul proved its capacity for leading people upward and on. Methinks I perceive a new and sinister meaning in the Shakespearean love-song:—

  Come away, come away, death;

  And in sad cypress let me be laid.

  Fly away, fly away, breath;

  I am slain by a fair, cruel maid.

  Nicely put, no doubt; but the importance of a departure depends very much on the—

  “Ha-a-a-a-a-a-a-ay!”

  No appearance, your worship. Call for Enobarbus; he will not hear thee, or, from Caesar’s camp, say ‘I am none of thine.’— On the value of the departed. For instance, when a man of property departs, he leaves his possessions behind—a fact noticed by many poets—and the man himself is replaced without cost. When a well-salaried official departs—such as a Royal Falconer, or a Master of the Buckhounds, or an Assistant-Sub-Inspector—he perforce leaves his billet behind; and we wish him bon voyage to whichever port he may be bound. But when a philosopher departs in this untimely fashion, he leaves nothing—

  “Ha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ay!”

  And echo answers, ‘Ha-a-a-a-ay!’ Authority melts from you, apparently.—Leaves nothing but a few rudimentary theories, of no use to anyone except the owner, inasmuch as no one else can develop them properly; just a few evanescent footprints on the sands of Time, which would require only a certain combination of age and facilities for cohesion to mature into Mammoth-tracks on the sandstone of Progress. All on the debit side of Civilization’s ledger, you observe. Consequently, he doesn’t long to leave these fading scenes, that glide so quickly by. And when the poet holds it truth that men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things, he is simply talking when he ought to be sleeping it off in seclusion. I understand how a man may rise on the stepping-stone of his defunct superior officer to higher things; but his dead self—it won’t do, Alfred; it won’t do. But hark! that heavy sound breaks in once more, as if the clouds its echo would repeat.—

  “Ha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ay!”

  Who is he whose grief bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow makes the very lignum quiver in sympathy? It may not be amiss to look round and see.

  So I turned my head, and saw, on the opposite side of the river, about eighty yards away, a man on a grey horse. I rose, and advanced toward the bank.

  “Why, Mosey,” said I, “is that you? How does your honour for this many a day? Where are you camped?”

  “Across here. Tell Warrigal Alf his carrion’s on the road for Yoongoolee yards, horse an’ all; an’ from there they’ll go to Booligal pound if he ain’t smart. I met them just now.”

  “Where shall I find Alf?”

  “Ain’t his wagon bitin’ you—there in the clear? You ain’t a bad hand at sleepin’—no, I’m beggared if you are. I bin bellerin’ at you for two hours, dash near.”

  “Who has got the bullocks, Mosey?”

  “Ole Sollicker.”

  “Couldn’t you get them from him yourself?”

  “I didn’t try. I was glad to see them goin’; on’y I begun to think after, thinks I, it’s a pity o’ the poor misforchunate carrion walkin’ all that way, free gracious for nothin’; an’ p’r’aps a trip to Booligal pound on top of it; an’ them none too fat. But I’m glad for Alf. I hate that beggar. I wouldn’t len’ him my knife to cut up a pipe o’ tobacker, not if his tongue was stickin’ out as long as yer arm. I wasn’t goin’ to demean myself to tell him about his carrion, nyther; on’y I knowed your horses when I seen them; an’ by-’n’-by I spotted you where you was layin’ down, sleepin’ fit to break yer neck; an’ I bin hollerin’ at you till I’m black in the face. I begun to think you was drunk, or dead, or somethin’—bust you.” And with this address, which I give in bowdlerised form, the young fellow turned his horse, and disappeared through a belt of lignum.

  I walked across to the bullock-wagon. The camp had a strangely desolate and deserted appearance. Three yokes lay around, with the bows and keys scattered about; and there was no sign of a camp-fire. Under the wagon lay a saddle and bridle, and beside them the swollen and distorted body of Alf’s black cattle-dog—probably the only thing on earth that had loved the gloomy misanthrope. I lifted the edge of the hot, greasy tarpaulin, and looked on the flooring of the wagon, partly covered with heavy coils of wool-rope, and the spare yokes and chains.

  “A drink of water, for God’s sake!” said a scarcely intelligible whisper, from the suffocating gloom of the almost air-tight tent.

  I threw the tarpaulin back off the end of the wagon, and ran to the river for a billy of water. Then, vaulting on the platform, I saw Alf lying on his blankets, apparently helpless, and breathing heavily, his face drawn and haggard with pain. I raised his head, and held the billy to his lips; but, being in too great a hurry, I let his head slip off my hand, and most of the water spilled over his throat and chest. He shrank and shivered as the cool deluge seemed to fizz on his burning skin, but drank what was left, to the last drop.

  “Now turn me over on the other side, or I’ll go mad,” he whispered.

  He shuddered and groaned as I touched him, but, with one hand under his shoulders, and the other under his bent and rigid knees, I slowly turned him on the other side.

  “Wouldn’t you like to lie on your back for a change?” I asked.

  “No, no,” he whispered excitedly; “my heels might slip, and straighten my knees. Another drink of water, please.”

  I brought a second billy of water, but he turned from it with disgust.

  “If you could make a sort of an effort, Alf,” I suggested.

  He treated me to a half-angry, half-reproachful look, and turned away his face, I rose to my feet, and rolled back the tarpaulin half-way along the jigger, for the heat was still suffocating.

  “Is there anything more I can do for you just now, Alf?” I asked presently.

  “More water.” I gave him a drink out of a pannikin; and, as I laid his head down again, he continued, in the same painful whisper, and with frequent pauses, “Have you any idea where my bullocks are?—I was trying to keep them here—in this corner of Mondunbarra—and they’re reasonably safe unless—unless the Chinaman knows the state I’m in—but if they cross the boundary into Avondale—Tommy will hunt them over the river, and—Sollicker will get them.”

  It must be remembered that Alf was camped at the junction of three runs: Yoongoolee lay along the opposite side of the river, whilst on our side, Mondunbarra and Avondale were separated by a boundary fence which ran into the water a few yards beyond where the wagon stood. The fence, much damaged by floods, was repaired merely to the sheep-proof standard. The wagon was in Mondunbarra.

  “They’re across the river now, Alf. Mosey Price told me so, not twenty minutes ago.”

  “Across the river!” hissed Alf, half-rising and then falling heavily back, whilst a low moan mingled with the furious grinding of his teeth. “They ’ve got into Avondale, and Tommy has hunted them across! May the holy”—&c., &c. “Never mind. Let them go. I ’ve had enough of it. If other people are satisfied, I’m sure I am.”

  “Who is she?” I thought; and I was just lapsing into my Hamlet-mood—

  “Collins!”

  “Yes, Alf.”

  “Would you be kind enough to lift my dog into the wagon? I haven’t been able to call him lately, but he won’t be far off.”

  “Bad news for you, Alf. The poor fellow got a bait somewhere, and came home to die. He’s lying under the wagon, beside your saddle.”

  The outlaw turned away his face. ‘Short of being Swift,’ says Taine; ‘one must love something.’ (Ay, and short of being too morally slow to catch grubs,
one must hate something. See, then, that you hate prayerfully and judiciously.)

  While I was thinking that every minute’s delay would make my journey after the bullocks a little longer, Alf suddenly looked round.

  “You needn’t stay here,” said he sharply—thin blades of articulation shooting here and there through his laboured whisper, as the water he had drunk took effect on his swollen tongue. “If you would come again in an hour, and give me another turn-over, you would be doing more for me than I would do for you. What day is this?”

  “Sunday, December the ninth.”

  He pondered awhile. “I’ve lost count of the days. What time is it?”

  “Between one and two, I should think. My watch is at the bottom of the Murray.”

  “Afternoon, of course. I think I ought to be dead by this time to-morrow. What’s keeping you here? I want to be alone.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Alf. I’ll pull you through, if I can only hit the complaint. Have you any symptoms?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I was gradually getting worse and worse for a week, or more; but still able to yoke up a few quiet bullocks to shift the wagon every day; till at last, one night, I just managed to climb in here, to get away from the mosquitos. I don’t know what night it was, or how the time has passed since then. Just look at my arms, if you have any curiosity; but don’t dare to prescribe for me. I had enough of your doctoring at the Yellow Tank—blast you!”

  Without heeding his reminiscence, which has no connection with the present memoir, I untied an old boot-lace which fastened one of his wrist-bands, and drew up the sleeve. The long, sinewy arm, now wet and clammy from the effect of the water he had drunk, was helpless and shapeless, round and rigid; the elbow-joint set at a right-angle, and extremely sensitive to pain.

  “There,” said he, with a quivering groan; “the other arm is just the same, and so are my knees and ankles; and my head’s fit to burst; and I’m one mass of pains all over. It’s all up with me, Collins. Now I only ask one favour of you—and that is to get out of my sight.”

  “I’ll be back in two or three hours, Alf,” said I, rising. “Keep your mind as easy as possible, and see if you can doze off to sleep.”

  So I returned to my own camp, and, with all speed, caught and equipped Cleopatra. Then, after chaining Pup in a shady place, I stowed some smoking-tackle in the crown of the soft hat I wore; then shed apparel till I was like the photo. of some champion athlete; finally, I stuck the spare clothes, with the rest of my riches, among the branches of a coolibah, out of the way of the wild pigs. The next moment, I was in the saddle, and Cleopatra, after perfunctorily illustrating Demosthenes’s three rules of oratory:—the first, Action; the second, ditto; the third, ibid.—turned obediently toward the river, and was soon breasting the cool current, while, with one arm across the saddle, I steered him for the most promising landing-place on the opposite bank.

  (Let me remark here, that the man who knows no better than to remain in the saddle after his horse has lost bottom, ought never to go out of sight of a bridge. He is the sort of adventurer that is brought to light, a week afterward, per medium of a grappling-hook in the hollow of his eye. Perhaps the best plan of all—though no hero of romance could do such a thing—is to hang on to the horse’s tail. Also, never wait for an emergency to make sure that your mount can swim. Many a man has lost his life through the helpless floundering of a horse bewildered by first and sudden experience of deep water.)

  My landing-place happened to be none of the best. After clearing the water, it required all Cleopatra’s strength and activity to climb the bank. Having slipped into the saddle as he regained footing, I was lying flat against the side of his neck, to help his centre of gravity and give him a hold with his front feet, when he brushed under a low coolibah, and the spur of a broken branch or something started at the neck of the under-garment which I cannot bring myself to name, and ripped it to the very tail, nearly dragging me off the saddle. When we reached level ground, the vestment alluded to was hanging, wet and sticky, on my arms, like a child’s pinny unfastened behind, or, to use a more elegant simile, like the front half of a herald’s tabard. What I should have done was to have reversed the thing, and put it on like a jacket; but, being in a desperate hurry, and slightly annoyed by the accident, and not feeling the sun after just leaving the water, I whipped the rag off altogether, and threw it aside. In two seconds more, Cleopatra was stretching away, with his long, eager, untiring stride, towards Yoongoolee home-station, distant about sixteen miles.

  Slackening speed now and then to cross creeks and rough places. I found myself following a pad, and noticed the fresh tracks of the bullocks, mile after mile. At last I heard across the lignum the jangle of a brass bell, and the ‘plock, plock’ of an iron frog, and presently my quarry appeared in sight a couple of hundred yards ahead.

  To do the boundary-rider justice, he was driving the cattle quietly and considerately. He looked round on hearing the clatter of horse’s feet, but my Mazeppa aspect seemed neither to surprise nor disconcert him. He wasn’t altogether a stranger to me. For several years I had known him by sight as a solid, phlegmatic man, on a solid, phlegmatic cob; and I suppose he had his own crude estimate of me, though we had never had occasion to exchange civilities.

  But now, after a five miles’ chase, the sight of the man acted on my moral nature as vinegar is erroneously supposed to act on nitre. I reined-up beside him. The Irresistible was about to encounter the Immovable; and, even in the excitement of the time, I awaited the result with scientific interest. When a collision of this kind takes place, it sometimes happens that the Irresistible bounces off in a more or less damaged state; at other times, the Immovable is scattered to the four winds of heaven in the form of scrap, while the Irresistible, slightly checked, perhaps, in speed, sails on its way. But you can never tell.

  “Where are you taking these bullocks?” I demanded in a tone which, I am sorry to say, reflected as little credit on my politeness as on my philosophy.

  “Steation yaads,” he replied indifferently, and with a strong English accent.

  “Did you take them off purchased land?” I asked, eyeing him keenly.

  “Oi teuk ’e (animals) horf of ’e run,” he remarked, rather than replied, without condescending to look at me.

  “Do you know what day this is?” I inquired magisterially.

  “Zabbath,” he replied kindly.

  “And do you know there’s a new act passed—Tarkes’s Act,’ they call it—that makes the removing of working-bullocks from pastoral leasehold, on Sundays, a misdemeanour, punishable by a term of imprisonment not exceeding twelve months, with or without hard labour?”

  “Granny!” he remarked.

  Driven back in disorder, I hurried up my second line.—

  “Do you know who these bullocks belong to?” I inquired ominously.

  Something akin to a smile flickered round the shaven lips of the descendant of Hengist as, contemplating the lop ears of his horse, he observedly contentedly,

  “Ees, shure; an’ ’hat’s f’r w’y Oi be a-teakin’ of ’em.”

  “Well, Alf’s laid-up; not able to look after them”—

  “Oi’ve ’eard ’at yaan afoor.”

  —“so I ’ve come to take them back, and leave them at his camp on Mondunbarra.”

  “Horrite. Oi wants wun-an’-twenty bob horf o’ you afoor ’em (bullocks) tehns reaoun’.”

  “Will you have it now, or wait till you get it?” I asked, betrayed by the annoyance of the moment into a species of vulgarity unbecoming an officer and gentleman. “I don’t mind paying you the money, provided it clears the bullocks for the future—not otherwise. In the meantime I’m going to take them back—pay or no pay.”

  “Be ’e a-gwean to resky ’em?” he inquired, slightly reining his hippopotamus, and looking me frankly in the face, whilst an almost merry twinkle animated his small blue eyes.

  “By no means,” I replied suavely; and we rode t
ogether for a few minutes in silence.

  I had wakened the wrong man. The Immovable had scored. simply because he was a person of one idea, and that idea panoplied in impenetrable ignorance. A compound idea, by the way: namely, that Alf’s bullocks were going to the station yards, and that he, Fitz-Hengist, was taking them there. All this was apparent to me as I regarded him out of the corner of my eye.

  “Foak bean’t a-gwean ter walk on hutheh foak,” he remarked calmly.

  “A gentleman against the world for bull-headedness,” I sneered, aiming, in desperation, at the heel by which mother Nature had held him during his baptism in the thick, slab bath of undiluted oxy-obstinacy (scientific symbol, Jn Bl).

  “Hordehs is hordehs,” he argued, as the good arrow-point penetrated his epidermis, fair in the vulnerable spot.

  I laughed contemptuously. “Fat lot you care for orders! A man in your position talking about orders! Get out!”

  “Wot’s a (person) to diew?” The point was forcing its way through the sensitive second-skin, or cutis.

  “Do!” I repeated, with increasing scorn. “Strikes me, you can do pretty well as you like on this station.”

  “Bean’t Oi a-diewin’ my diewty?” he asked in wavering expostulation—the point now settling in the vascular tissues.

  “It’s in the blood, right enough,” I retorted, with insolent frankness, and still regarding him out of the corner of my eye. “I believe you’re Viscount Canterbury’s brother, on the wrong side of the blanket.”

  “Keep ’e tempeh; keep ’e tempeh,” said he deprecatingly, as the poison filtered through his system. “Zpeak ’e moind feear atwixt man an’ man. Bean’t Oi a-diewin’ wot Oi be a-peead f’r diewin’? Coomh!”

  “Well, you are a rum character,” I remarked, judiciously assisting the action of the virus. “I’m surprised at a gentleman in your position making excuses like that. Do you know”—and my tones became soft and confidential—“something struck me that you were an Englishman.” (Even this wasn’t too strong.) “I wish you were, both for my sake and your own. However, that can’t be helped. Now, for the future, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you had your own way, and that you walked a man’s bullocks off to the yard while he was helpless. Yes, sir; I’m glad you’re not an Englishman. But the sun’s too hot for my bare skin, so I must be getting back; and if I’ve said anything to offend you, I’m sorry for it, and I beg your pardon.” Then, still regarding him out of the corner of my eye, I turned Cleopatra slowly round.