Such Is Life

by Tom Collins

  “But this has nothing to do with it,” interrupted Alf. “I was asking your opinion as to which of the four acted rightly?—or did any of them?”

  “Yes, Alf; I’m coming to that. I was going to remark that, though the temperamental conditions of Posthumus and Troilus are apparently so similar—apparently, mind—and their position as betrayed husbands so identical, we find them acting in directly opposite ways. Troilus entertains no thought of revenge upon his faithless wife; he gives his whole attention to the co-respondent. Now let us glance at Othello. Here is a man who, allowing for his maturer age, is much like the Briton and the Trojan in temperament even to the extent of being more liberally endowed with muscle than”—

  “But you’re not answering my question,” moaned Alf. “Which of the four acted right?”

  “Well,” I replied; “I’m afraid my conclusions won’t have the rounded completeness we value so much in moral inferences unless I’m allowed to empanel Leontes, in the Winter’s Tale, as well as Othello, and thus work from a solid foundation. But we’ll see. I’ll put my answer in this way: A casual thinker might pronounce it impossible to lay down any hard-and-fast rule of conduct here, on account of necessary diversity in condition. He would, perhaps, argue that, though abstract Right is absolute and unchangeable, the alternative Wrong, though never shading down into Right, varies immeasurably in degree of turpitude; so that the action which is intrinsically wrong may be more excusable in one man than in another, or under certain conditions than under others. Now, I’m not going to deny that it lies within our province, as rational beings, to classify wrongs, provided we do so from a purely objective stand-point I shall endeavour to deal with that issue by-and-by. I merely notice”—

  “Stop! stop!” interrupted Alf, rolling his head from side to side. “Answer my question!”

  “Well, if you must have it like a half-raw potato, I give my vote in favour of Potiphar the Fourth, the saw-mill man. I don’t see what better he could have done. It wasn’t the most romantic course, perhaps; but I’m not a romantic person—rather the reverse—and it meets my approval.”

  “And your deliberate conviction is that he acted rightly—rightly, mind?”

  “Assuredly he did. That is what I was driving at; but now you have to take my conclusion as an ipse dixit, rather than as a theorem. The misanthropy of the gentleman’s after-life is another question, and one which would lead us into a different, and much wider, region of philosophy. But I think we’ll find it interesting to trace, step by step, from its genesis to its culmination, the involuntary process of thought which led each of your Potiphars, separately, to his independent action. We can’t embark on this inquiry just now, Alf, for we shall have to grapple with the most minute and subtle shades of psychical distinction, and we shall have to deal largely in postulates; for though”—

  “I want to tell you something, Collins,” interrupted Alf, in a tone now free from all trace of the distraction and constraint which made it painful to listen to him. “Like poor Cross, I feel impelled to place my tragedy on record, but in one man’s memory only. I trust entirely to your discretion. Did you know I was a married man?”

  “No; I certainly didn’t,” I replied, recalling myself; for I had been half-listening to a sound in the lignum. But as he spoke there flashed across my mental vision the picture of his wife—a tawny-haired tigress, with slumbrous dark eyes; a Circe, whose glorious voice had been silent in death for ten years, and lost to him for three years longer. Hence, by some sequence worth tracing, the voluntary exile, the Ishmaelite occupation; the morbid, malevolent interest in the Messalinas at large; and the generally pervading smell of husks. This, let me tell you, is what comes of meddling with tawny-haired tigresses, who harass a man out of individuality, and then die or abscond, leaving him like the last cactus of summer.

  “No young fellow could have started in life with a fairer prospect than I had,” continued Alf, in a grave, composed tone. “But I was guilty of one deliberately fiendish and heartless action, and following upon that action, I made a mistake that nothing but death can absolve. I married a woman, who, I believe, was divinely assigned to me as a punishment. I’ll tell you the whole story”—

  “Wait, Alf,” said I hastily. “I must leave you for a few minutes. Do you want anything before I go?”

  “Nothing, thank you. Don’t stay long.”

  “You may be sure I won’t. Try if you can go to sleep.”

  I jumped off the wagon. There was no time to lose. During the last few minutes, a peculiar cadence in the sound of Alf’s bells had told me, just as surely as words could have done, that the bullocks were mustered, and travelling away. My horses were not far off; and, to save time, I took Alf’s saddle and bridle from under his wagon. As I did so, I heard his voice, low and monotonous. I paused involuntarily.—

  “O Molly! Molly, my girl!—my poor love!—my darling!”

  I hurried away, and put the saddle and bridle on Bunyip. Body o’ me! I thought—can a tawny-haired tigress be called Molly? This must be seen into when I have time.

  In a couple of minutes Bunyip had settled down to that flying trot which would have been an independence to anyone except myself. After clearing the lignum, I got a back elevation of the bullocks, half-a-mile out on the plain; and, rapidly overhauling them, I perceived that I should have to pit myself against the Chinese boundary rider this time. Consequently I felt, like Cassius, fresh of spirit and resolved to meet all perils very constantly.

  “Our of my way, you Manchurian leper, or I’ll run over you!” I shouted gaily, as I swung round the cattle, turning them back.

  “Muck-a-hi-lo! sen-ling, ay-ya; ilo-ilo!” remonstrated the unbeliever, drawing his horse aside to let them pass.

  “You savvy, John,” said I, suiting my language to his comprehension, while from my eye the Gladiator broke—“bale you snavel-um that peller bullock. Me fetch-um you ole-man lick under butt of um lug; me gib-it you big one dressum down. Compranny pah, John?” The Chinaman had turned back with me, and, as if he had been hired for the work, was stolidly assisting to return the cattle to the spot whence he had taken them.

  “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” I asked, thanklessly quoting from the familiar hexameter, and lighting my pipe as I spoke.

  “Eulopean dam logue,” responded the heathen in his blindness.

  “In contradistinction to the Asiatic and the Australian, who are scrupulously honest,” I observed pleasantly. “You savvy who own-um that peller bullock, John?”

  “Walligal Alp,” replied the pagan promptly. “Me collal him bullock two-tlee time to-molla, all li; two-tlee time nex day, all li.”

  “All li, John—you collar-um that peller bullock one more time, me manhandle you; pull-um off you dud; tie-um you on ant-bed, allee same spread-eagle; cut-um off you eye-lid; likee do long-a China; bimeby sun jump up, roast-um you eye two-tlee day; bulldog ant comballee, eat-um you meat, pick-um you bone; bimeby you tumble-down-die; go like-it dibil-dibil; budgeree fire long-a that peller. You savvy, John?”

  “Me tellee Missa Smyte you lescue,” replied John doggedly. “All li; you name Collin; you b’long-a Gullamen Clown; all li; you killee me bimeby; all li.” With this the discomfited Mongol turned his horse in the direction of Mondunbarra homestead, and, like a driver starting an engine when there is danger of the belt flying off, gradually worked up his pace to a canter, leaving me in possession of the field.

  But in cases of this kind, there is only one thing worse than victory. I was fairly in a fix with Alf’s bullocks. You must understand that these beasts had no legal right to be anywhere except travelling along the track, or floating down the river. If they scattered off the track—not being attended by some capable person—their owner would, there and then, and as often as this occurred, be liable for trespass; twenty times a day, if you like, and a shilling per head each time. If I wished to remove them across a five or ten-mile paddock, the only way I could legally do so would be by means of a balloon
. The thousands of homeless bullocks and horses which carry on the land-transport trade had to live and work, or starve and work, on squatters’ grass, year after year. So the right to live, being in the nature of a boon or benefaction, went largely by favour—like the slobbery salute imagined by poets—and poor Alf was no favourite with anyone.

  The managers of all these three stations were out of reach; and besides, there was no great hope in appealing to any of them.

  Yoongoolee homestead, across the river, was about sixteen miles distant; and Hungry M’Intyre, from what I knew of him, was little likely to make concessions to any member of the guild whose representatives had selected within sight of his wool-shed. Yoongoolee was avoided by all the floating population of the country, and particularly by those who couldn’t afford to be independent, forasmuch as there was nothing there but Highland pride, and Highland eczema and hunger. Most squatters have titles; M’Intyre had two, which were used indifferently; one of these was derived from the hunger, the other from the eczema.

  And, of all Alf’s enemies, perhaps the most inveterate was the Chinaman’s boss, Mr. Smythe, managing partner of Mondunbarra. This gentleman, whose exclusiveness took the very usual form of excluding all considerations not tending to his own profit, and whose refinement manifested itself to the vulgar eye chiefly in cutting things fine about the station, had, a couple of years previously, taken Alf in the very act of running one of his own bullocks out of the station cattle. An altercation had ensued, followed by a summons; and Alf had been mulcted in five shillings trespass, with six guineas costs, besides having to travel severity or eighty miles to Court, and the same distance back to his wagon. This was trying enough to a man of Alf’s avaricious and irascible bent. It had caused him to speak a word in private to Mr. Smythe; and, from that time forward, the squatter hated the bullock driver considerably more than he hated sin, and feared him more than he feared his reputed Maker.

  Poor Smythe! the remembrance of him wings my soul with pity, even now. He was parsimonious, cunning, pusillanimous, fastidious, and hysterically excitable. He was cruelly sat-on by his inexorable partner, M’Gregor; contemned by his social equals; hated by his inferiors, and popularly known as the Marquis of Canton. His only friend was his brother Bert, a quiet youth, who attended him with Montholon-fidelity; and his appreciation of the cheap and reliable Asiatic was passively recognised by a station staff of Joss-devotees.

  There was no use in my appealing to this gentleman, for, though most men in his place would have accepted the opportunity of laying Alf under an obligation, I knew his unhappy moral organisation well enough to be certain that neither policy nor magnanimity could intervene on behalf of a prostrate enemy. And to make matters more hopeless, Confucius would be just ahead of me, with his story of forcible rescue, coupled with personal threats of the gravest character.

  Avondale remained. This station belonged to that grand old colonist. Captain Royce, who governed the seigneury from his Toorak mansion, like Von Moltke commanding an army from his telegraph-office. The large-hearted patriarchal traditions of early days were still current on the station; but that property had to pay, and pay well, at the manager’s peril. To illustrate this: Captain Royce, in responding to ‘Our Pastoral Interests,’ never failed to remark that no working beast had ever been impounded from Avondale. This, of course, conveyed the impression that it was a run flowing with grass and water for distressed teams; but the unhappy manager, watched and reported always by at least one narangy, and ground, as you see, between the upper mill-stone of Royce the munificent and the nether and much harder one of Royce the business-man, had to transmute every blade of grass, or twig of cotton-bush, into a filament of wool, or let somebody else have a try. Consequently, the boundary riders of Avondale had strict orders to hunt all strays and trespassers across the frontiers of stations that did impound; so the fine old squatter-king got there just the same—also the carriers’ teams and the drovers’ horses.

  One characteristic of Avondale was that the rank and file of the station were always treated with fatherly benevolence, and were never discharged. They gradually got useless by reason of mere antiquity, and, without actually dying, slowly mummified, and were duly interred in the cemetery at the homestead.

  In view of the rigorous usages specified, it was no marvel that a deficiency in the Avondale clip of ’83 had led to the resignation of Mr. Angus Cameron, and the installation of a new manager, a few weeks before the date of these incidents. But the appointment of a strange boundary rider to the paddock adjoining Alf’s camp—an event which had taken place three or four months before the same date—seemed like a sudden angle and break in the corridor of Time.

  Avondale home-station was nine miles distant. I had never met the new manager; but his name was Wentworth St. John Ffrench; and, by all accounts, he acted up to it. Popular rumour likened him to the man with the whole pound of tobacco, who had sworn against borrowing or lending. Mr. Ffrench could afford to be independent of such men as Alf, but couldn’t afford to establish a precedent for invalided carriers loafing on the run. Of course, you wouldn’t look at the thing in that light; but then, your name is not Wentworth St. John Ffrench, and you wouldn’t do for a manager of Avondale, You would have the run swarming with a most tenacious type of trespassers before you knew what you were doing. Moreover, the moral responsibility (if any) of the matter rested on Mondunbarra, not on Avondale.

  Neither had I ever seen the new Avondale boundary man; but I was prejudiced against him also. It required no deep dive into the mysteries of Nomenology to augur ill from the nickname of ‘Terrible Tommy.’ The title was, of course, satirical; the man an imbecile and fickle windbag. Still, this name was better than the manager’s.

  Evidently, my only chance was to deal directly with some one of the boundary men. I had already failed to melt the musing Briton’s eyes; and though I had, in a sense, prevailed over the Mongol, I could make no use of him; so I found myself hanging, as you might say, by one strand, that strand being Terrible Tommy.

  I must enlist this man, I mentally concluded, as a willing accomplice; and, by my faith, I’ll do so before I leave him. I care not an he be the devil; give me faith, say I.

  By this time, the sun was just setting. I left the bullocks near the boundary fence, turned Bunyip adrift, and placed the saddle and bridle where I could find them again. Then crossing into Avondale, I picked my way through a belt of tall lignum, sloppy with warm water, and alive with mosquitos; then on through scattered timber until, a mile from the fence, appeared the one-roomed abode of the man I wanted. I knew where to find the place, having stayed there one night when Bendigo Bill was in charge of the paddock. But now, nearing the house, how I wished I had that frank, good-hearted old Eureka rebel to deal with instead of the hard-featured, sandy-complexioned man whom I saw carrying home a couple of buckets of water on a wooden hoop. Our old friends, the Irresistible and the Immovable were about to encounter once more.

  “Evening, sir,” I cooed, with an urbanity born of the conditions already set down.

  “Gude evenin’ (Squire Western’s expression!) Ye maun gang fairther, ye ken; fir fient haet o’ sipper ye’se hae frae me the nicht. De’il tak’ ye, ye lang-leggit, lazy loun, flichterin’ roun’ wi’ yir ‘Gude evenin’ sir!’ an’ a’ sic’ clishmaclaver. Awa’ wi ye! dinna come fleechin’ tae me! The kintra’s l—sy wi’ sic’ haverils, comin’ sundoonin’ on puir folk ’at henna mickle mair nir eneugh fir thir ain sel’s. Tak’ aff yir coat an’ wark, ye glaikit—De’il tak’ ye; wha’ fir ye girnin’ at?”

  “Gude save ‘s!” I snarled; “wha’ gar ye mak’ sic’ a splore? Hoo daur ye tak’ on ye till misca’ a body sae sair’s ye dae, ye bletherin’ coof? Hae ye gat oot the wrang side yir bed the morn?—ir d’ ye tak’ me fir a rief-randy?—ir wha’ the de’il fashes ye the noo? Ye ken, A was compit doon ayont the boondary, an’ A thocht A wad dauner owre an’ hae a wee bit crack wi’ ye the nicht. A wantit tae ken wha’ like mon yir new maunager micht
be, an’ tae speer twa-three three things firbye; bit sin’ yir sae skrunty, ye maun tak’ yir domd sipper till yir ain bethankit ava, an’ A’ll gang awa’ bock till me ain comp. Heh!” And I turned away with unconcealed resentment and contempt.

  “Haud a wee,” said the boundary rider, setting down his buckets, and slapping the back of his neck. “Ye ken, A ’m sae owrecam wi’ thir awfu’ mustikies that whiles A canna—Bit cam awa’ tae the biggin; cam awa’ tae the biggin, an’ rest yirsel’.” The Irresistible had scored this time. Such is life.

  I helped Tommy out of his embarrassment by an occasional ‘Ay, mun,’ interjected into his apologetic and cordial monologue; and so we reached the hut, where, after directing me to a seat, he filled a billy with some of the water he had brought, and hung it on the crook.

  “An’ wha’ dae they ca’ ye?” he asked, turning his back to the fire, and surveying me with a kindly interest which made me feel as uneasy as if I had been sleeping in a fowl-house.

  “Tam Collins,” I replied readily, though interrupted by a fit of coughing as I pronounced my surname.

  “Ye’ll no be yin o’ the M’Callums o’ Auchtermauchtie?” he inquired eagerly. “A kent them weel.”

  I shook my head. “An’ wha’ dae they ca’ yirsel’?” I asked.

  “Tam Airmstrang—anither Tam, ye ken. An’ whaur ye frae? Wha’ pairt o’ the kintra was ye born in syne?” A boggy-looking place for a man to carry his integrity safely across; however, I replied,

  “Ye’se aiblins be acquent wi’ yon auld sang:—

  Braw, braw lads on Yarrow braes,

  That wander through the bloomin’ heather.

  Aweel, A was born on the braes o’ Yarra. Ye ken, the time’s gane lang wi’ me sin’ A rin aboot the braes, an’ pu’d the gowans fine. Ay, mun!”

  “A-y-y, mun!” rejoined my companion, echoing my home-sick sigh. “D’ye ken—A wadna’ thocht ye was a Selkirksheer mon. A wad hae thocht ye was frae Lanarksheer, ir aiblins frae”—