Such Is Life

by Tom Collins

  Altogether, poor Ida had very little to be thankful for. Personally, she was, without any exception, the ugliest white girl I ever saw. She measured about twice as long from the chin to Self-Esteem as from Benevolence to Amativeness; not one feature of her face was even middling; her skin was of a neutral creamy tint; and she had a straggly goatee of dirty white, with woolly side-boards of the same colour, in lieu of the short, silky moustache which is the piquant trade-mark of our country-women. Besides this, she was lame, on account of the back-sinew of one of her ankles having been cut through by a reaping-machine; and in addition to all this, the fingers of her left hand had been snipped to a uniform length, through getting into the feed of a chaff-cutter. Montgomery had picked her purposely for the barracks—so, at least, he told Mrs. Montgomery; so she told Mrs. Beaudesart, and so the latter told me. For myself, I often felt an impulse to marry the poor mortal; partly from compassion; partly from the idea that such an action would redound largely to my honour; and partly from the impression that such an unattractive woman would idolise a fellow like me.

  The daughter of an unlucky selector is not taught to spare herself; and Ida was an untiring and conscientious worker. For the rest, she was a generous, patient, self-denying girl, transparently honest in word and deed; the gentle soul shining through its homely mask, like a candle in a bottle. Upon the whole, ugly, illiterate—and, above all, ill-starred, lowly, and defenceless—as she was, she would have made an admirable butt for the flea-power of your illustrated comic journal.

  Mrs. Beaudesart abhorred Ida for her ugliness, for her vulgarity, for her simplicity, but chiefly for her name. (I can sympathise with the gentlewoman here—remembering how rancorously I once hated another boy because he came from the Isle of Wight.) Yet the two mammals’ chronic state of friction was partly chargeable on Ida, who would answer back, in her own milk-and-water way. And, to add to the aggravation, she couldn’t answer back without crying.

  Something had gone wrong, as usual, this morning; and Mrs. Beaudesart remained in the narangies’ breakfast-room, mildly glowering into Ida’s tear-stained face, and noting with polite deprecation the convulsive sobs which the sensitive girl vainly tried to repress before the young fellows. Beauty in distress is a favourite theme of your shallow romancists; but, to the philosophic mind, its pathos is nothing to that of ugliness in distress. At the best of times, poor Ida was heart-breaking; her sunniest smile wrung my soul with commiseration; and when the sympathy naturally accorded to helpless anguish was superimposed upon that which she claimed as her birthright, the pressure became intolerable. It had always been my consolation to think that she would yet be a bright and beautiful angel; and now I fell back for solace upon that thought—though how the thing was to be accomplished seemed a problem too vast for the grasp of a water-worn and partially dissolved understanding like mine.

  “Remember, Mary, I reprimand you for your own good,” murmured the lady. “Of course, brought up as you have been, you can’t be expected to have the manners we look for in the servants of a well-conducted household; so when I consider it my duty to instruct you in the decencies of life, you mustn’t take it ill. People have to suffer for their ignorance, Mary, as well as for their faults. I know how you must feel it; but parents in the position that yours were in should send their children to service before they are too old for the necessary training.”

  “My parents done the best they could to keep theyre home together,” protested the girl, in a choking voice.

  “Speak grammatically, my dear. No doubt your parents did as you say, but my point is, that they forgot their position. Instead of accepting the fair wages and abundant food which society offers to their class, they joined the hungry horde that has cut up those fine Victorian stations. Part of the retribution justly falls on their children; part, of course, on themselves. Your father, I venture to say, often envied the life of the domestic animals on the station where he had selected. But he aimed at independence—independence! A fine word, Mary, but a poor reality. This idea of independence is much too common amongst people who, however poorly they may fare, are nevertheless better fed than taught. I’m afraid you wilfully overlook the religious side of the question, Mary; the divine command to do our duty in that state of life in which it has pleased God to call us. Service is honourable”—

  Here Ida sobbed out something that sounded like a rejoinder; and there was a harder ring in the lady’s voice as she continued, without pausing:

  “Yes, my dear; if your parents had known themselves, and had cheerfully remained in the position for which their birth and education fitted them, you would have been spared many humiliations, and it would have been better for your father, both in time and in eternity.”

  “O, can’t you let him rest in his grave?” sobbed the girl.

  “I have no wish to condemn him, Mary,” replied the lady soothingly. “I assure you it is dreadful to me to realise the fate of that poor man, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. I was only wishing to show you what a tempting of Providence it is for people of the lower classes to have notions above what their Maker intends for them. And you know how prone you are to forget your place—as you did this morning. Susan has the same fault, I’m sorry to say; but I condone it to some extent in her, She has the advantage of good looks, and naturally expects to better her condition by marriage; but surely, Mary, one glance at yourself in the glass ought to show you the impropriety of counting upon any endowment of nature.”

  “Indeed, I know I’m no beauty,” blubbered Ida; and her tears rained hot and fast on the back of my neck, as she replaced my coffee-cup.

  “Of course, you didn’t make yourself,” pursued the lady blandly; “but in view of your lack of personal attractions, you should endeavour to cultivate the modest and respectful demeanour which befits a sphere of life that you are likely to occupy permanently. No doubt it was good policy to transport yourself to a locality where the males of your own class are in such large majority; but the movement is still attended by certain disadvantages. A female whose looks approach repulsiveness should, at least, have a character beyond suspicion; and for any woman to run away from the neighbourhood where her doings are known, is not the way to inspire confidence. And though it has pleased God, for your own good, to remove the snare of beauty far from you, yet—Well, we must believe what we hear on good authority. Your master, before engaging you, should have made some inquiry regarding your antecedents, and not have left these things to leak-out. I wish I could hold you guiltless, Mary. Ask your own conscience whether you were justified in obtaining entry to an establishment like this. It places me in a very difficult”—

  Here Ida turned, and, with blazing, tearless eyes, fearlessly fronted her fellow-mammal. The latter faltered, and paused. She had gone a step too far, and had trod on the lion’s tail.

  “What’s that you say, you wicked woman?” demanded Ida, in a calm voice, yet breathing heavily. “Ain’t I miserable enough without you lyin’ away my character? I’ll make you prove your words, as sure as you’re standin’ there.”

  “You’re forgetting yourself!” replied the housekeeper haughtily, though still quailing before the girl’s terrible plainness of speech and person.

  “Am I, indeed? Well, we’ll both go straight to Mrs. Montgomery—she’s your missus as well as mine, she is—an’ we’ll git her to write to a dozen people that knows me since I wasn’t as high as that windy-sill. I’ll make it hot for you, Mrs. Bodyzart, so I will.”

  “What impertinence!” ejaculated the lady, moistening her lips. “Leave the apartment, this instant, Mary; and send”—

  “How dare you call me out o’ my name?—for two pins, I’d slap your face!” replied Ida, her voice rising to a hysterical scream. “You know what my proper name is, so you do! An’ I won’t leave the apartment to please you, so I won’t! Think God made me for the likes o’ you to wipe your feet on? Think I bin behavin’ myself decent all my life, for you to put a slur on me? If I wanted
to bemean myself, couldn’t I cast up somethin’ you wouldn’t like to be minded of? Ain’t you ashamed o’ yourself, you ole she-devil?”

  “Gentlemen, I must apologise for my servant,” said the housekeeper, with quiet dignity. “She seems to have taken leave of her senses. I trust you will overlook her rudeness. She knows no better.”

  “They can’t help doin’ me justice; an’ that’s all I ask from anybody,” rejoined Ida, looking appealingly round the table. “An’ look here, Mrs. Bodyzart: I bin full up o’ your nag-nag ever since I come to this house: an’ I put up with it for the sake o’ other people; but now you’ve put a slur on my character; an’ it’s me an’ you for it. I ain’t goin’ to let this drop.”

  “I must withdraw, gentlemen,” said the lady forbearingly. “Pray forget the unhappy scene you have been forced to witness; and let me beg of you, for this poor woman’s sake, to leave all further pursuit of the matter entirely in my hands. Whilst she remains in this establishment, I must continue to shield her from the penalties to which she insists upon exposing herself. Come, Mary; dry your eyes, and attend to your duties. The time is coming when you will thank me for the discipline to which you are now subjected.” And Mrs. Beaudesart retired, greater in defeat than in victory.

  “I never expected anybody to put a slur on me,” faltered Ida apologetically, after a minute’s silence.

  “Haud yir toang, lassie, fir Gode-sak,” snarled the sheep-overseer, who was the senior of our company. “Be ma saul, an A hid ony say intil ’t, A ’d whang the de’il oot o’ ye baith wi’ a stoke-whup.”

  “By George! you better not include Mrs. Beaudesart in your goodwill,” remarked young Mooney gravely. “You’ll have Collins in your wool.”

  “Keep your temper, Collins,” murmured Nelson. “I can imagine your feelings; but M’Murdo didn’t think of you being here when he spoke.”

  “The de’il haet A care fir Collins, ony mair nir A dae fir yir ain sel’, Nelson!” replied Mac defiantly. “Od! air ye no din greetin’ the yet, lassie?” he continued, turning to Ida. “No anither pegh oot o’ yir heed, ir bagode A’ll tak’ ye in han’.”

  Ida dried her eyes, and with the more alacrity forasmuch as an approaching step crunched the gravel outside. It was Priestley, a bullock driver who had drawn up to the store on the previous evening; a decent sort of vulgarian, but altogether too industrious to get any further forward than the extreme tail-end of his profession.

  Some carriers never learn the great lesson, that to everything there is a time and a season—a time for work, and a time for repose—hence you find the industrious man’s inveterately leg-weary set of frames in hopeless competition with the judiciously lazy man’s string of daisies. The contrast is sickening. Moreover, the same rule holds fairly well throughout the whole region of industry. But the Scotch-navigator can’t see it. He is too furiously busy for eighteen hours out of the twenty-four to notice that, even in the most literal sense, loafing has a more intimate connection with bread-winning than working can possibly have. Such a man finds himself born unto trouble, as the sparks fly in all directions; but he is merely aware of undergoing a chastening process, just as the tethered calf is aware that he always turns a flying somersault when he impetuously charges in any direction away from his peg; and this simply because the man knows as much about the Order of Things as the calf knows about Euclid’s definition of a radial line. The fact is, that the Order of Things—rightly understood—is not susceptible of any coercion whatever, and must be humoured in every possible way. In the race of life, my son, you must run cunning, reserving your sprint for the tactical moment. Priestley ran bull-headed. In consequence of being always at work, he could get very little work done; and, being pursuantly in a chronic state of debt and destitution, he got only the work that intermittently slothful men wouldn’t take at the price. It is scarcely necessary to add that he had a wife and about thirteen small children, mostly girls.

  “Mornin’, chaps,” said this plebeian, standing between the wind and our nobility, with a hand on each door-post. “Hope you’re enjoyin’ yourselves. Say, Moriarty; I’m waitin’ to git that bit o’ loadin’ off.”

  “I’ll be with you in two minutes,” replied the young storekeeper. “I know you always want to get away.”

  “Say, chaps,” continued the bullock driver, advancing into the room, and glancing confidentially round the table, “think there’s any use o’ me stickin’ up the boss for leaf to take the buggy-track to Nalrookar? See, I could make the Fog-a-bolla Tank to-night; an’ there’s boun’ to be a bit o’ blue-bush, if not crows-foot, on them sandhills. Then I’d fetch Nalrookar to-morrow, easy. I got two-ton-five for there; an’ I’m thinkin’ I’ll have a job to deliver it, if I can’t git through your run. What do you think, chaps?”

  “Why didn’t you take this into consideration when you loaded?” demanded young Arblaster.

  “Well, beggars ain’t choosers,” replied the apostle of brute force and ignorance. “Fact was, Arblaster, I bethought me what a lot o’ work I’d done for Magomery, one time or another, an’ what good friends me an’ him always was; an’ I says to myself, ‘Well, I’ll chance her—make a spoon, or spoil a horn.’ That’s the way I reasoned it out. See, if I got to turn roun’, an’ foller the main track back agen to the Cane-grass Swamp, an’ take the Nalrookar track from there, I won’t fetch the station much short o’ fifty mile; an’ there ain’t a middlin’ camp the whole road. Everythin’ et right into the ground. Starve a locust. ‘Sides, I’m jubious about the Convincer sandhill, even with half a load. Bullocks too weak.”

  “Well, it’s hardly likely the boss would let you cross the run,” replied Arblaster. “He ’d be a d—d fool if he did.”

  “I’m afraid there’s no use asking him, Priestley,” added Nelson. “He won’t make a thoroughfare of the run, at any price. For instance, when Baxter and Donovan delivered that well-timber in the Quondong Paddock, the other day, they weren’t five mile from the main road—and a gate to go through—but he made them come right back by the station; thirty mile of a roundabout; and their cheques weren’t forthcoming till they did it. No, Priestley; to ask Montgomery is simply to get a refusal; and to argue with him is simply to get insulted.”

  “Well, I s’pose I must worry through, some road,” said the bullock driver resignedly, as he turned and went out.

  “Fifty miles instead of twenty-two,” remarked Mooney. “Hard enough case.”

  “And yet it’s necessary, in a sense,” replied Nelson. “Same time, anybody except the like of Montgomery would spring a bit in a season like this. I couldn’t crush a poor, decent, hard-working devil like that. I’d give him a thorough good blackguarding for calculating upon crossing the run; and then, as a matter of form, I’d send a man with him, to see him across. Well, I suppose we must go and get our mot d’ ordre, boys.”

  So we left the breakfast-room to Ida. The four narangies, with the practical M’Murdo, went to the veranda of the boss’s house for their day’s orders; Moriarty, with a ring of keys in his hand, sauntered across to the store; and I managed to drag myself out to a seat built against the south side of the barracks, whence I torpidly surveyed the scene around, whilst listening to my vitality whistling out through four million yawning pores.

  In an open shed, near the store—where two tribesmen were now assisting Priestley to unload—a travelling saddler and Salvationist, named (without a word of a lie) Joey Possum, was at work on the horse-furniture of the station; his tilted wagonette, blazoned with his name and title, JOSEPH PAWSOME, SADDLER, standing close by. Watching these lewd fellows of the baser sort at their sordid toil, my mind reverted to certain incidents of the preceding night, and so drifted into a speculation on the peculiar kind of difficulties which at certain times beset certain sojourners on the rind of this third primary orb. The incidents, of course, have nothing to do with my story.

  But as the mere mention of them may have whetted the reader’s curiosity, I suppose it is only fair to s
atisfy him.

  The night in question seemed, from an astrological point of view, to be peculiarly favourable to the ascendancy of baleful influences. The moon hung above the western horizon, in her most formidable phases—just past the semicircle, with her gibbous edge malignantly feathered. Being now in the House of Taurus, she had overborne the benignant sway of Aldebaran, and was pressing hard on Castor and Pollux (in the House of Gemini). Also, her horizontal attitude was so full of menace that Rigel and Betelgeux (in Orion) seemed to wilt under her sinister supremacy. Sirius (in Canis Major), strongest and most malevolent of the astral powers, hung southwest of the zenith, reinforcing the evil bias of the time, and thus, from his commanding position, overruling the guardianship of Canopus (in Argo), southwest of the same point. Lower still, toward the south, Achernar seemed to reserve his gracious prestige, whilst, across the invisible Pole, the beneficent constellations of Crux and Centaurus exhibited the very paralysis of hopelessness. Worst of all, Jupiter and Mars both held aloof, whilst ascendant Saturn mourned in the House of Cancer.

  Such was the wretched aspect of the heavens to my debilitated intelligence, as I slunk home from the swimming-hole, toward midnight. I was somewhat comforted to observe in Procyon a firmness which I attributed to the evident support of Regulus (in the House of Leo); but the most reassuring element in an extremely baleful horoscope was Spica (in the House of Virgo), scarcely affected by the moon’s interference, and now ascending confidently from the eastern horizon.