by Tom Collins
“Is the bose at hame?” asked the holder briskly, turning first to Moriarty and then to me. “Losh! it’s no Tam M’Callum!”—he swung his swag to the ground, and extended his hand—“Mony’s the thocht A had o’ ye, mun. Ma certie, A kent weel we wad forgather ir lang. An’ hoo’re ye farin’ syne?”
“Excellent, i’ faith—of the chameleon’s dish,” I replied, with winning politeness, and a hearty hand-grip, though I felt like a man in the act of parrying a rifle bullet. “I have a wretched memory for faces, yet yours seems familiar; and I’m certain I’ve heard your voice before. Pardon me if I ask your name?”
“Tam Airmstrang,” replied my creditor, in an altered tone.
“Now, where have we met before?” I pondered. “Armstrong? I know several of the name in Riverina, and several in Victoria. Wait a moment—Did we meet at the Caledonian Sports, in Echuca, two years ago, past? No! Well, perhaps—yes—didn’t we have a drink together, at Ivanhoe, three or four months ago?”
“Od sink ’t,” muttered the honest fellow, in vexation; “A thocht ye was yin Tam M’Callum, frae Selkirksheer.”
“I’m a Victorian myself, and my people are Irish,” I remarked gently. “But my name’s Collins,” I continued, brightening up; “and Collins sounds something like M’Callum.”
“Ye’se no be the mon A thocht ye was,” replied Tam decidedly—and the unconscious double-meaning of his words sank into my heart—“Bit hae ye onything tae dae wi’ Rinnymede?”
“No; I’m only a caller, like yourself. Moriarty, here, is the storekeeper.”
“D’ ye want ony han’s?” continued Tam, addressing Moriarty.
“I think we do,” replied the young fellow, moving toward the barracks. “The boss was saying there was a few burrs that would have to be looked after at once. Call again in the evening, and see him.”
“Yon wad fit mysen like auld breeks,” persisted Tam; “bit A ’m takkin’ thocht o’ Andraw here. Puir body’s sicht’s nae fit fir sic wark; an’ A mauna pairt wi’ him the noo. An ye henna onythin’ firbye birr-kittin’, we maun gang fairther ava.”
He resumed his swag. I made a sign, perceptible only to Moriarty, and the latter hesitated a moment.
By virtue of a fine tradition, or unwritten law, handed down from the time of Montgomery’s father, a subaltern officer of Runnymede had power to send any decent-looking swagman—or a couple of them, for that matter—to the hut for a feed. Certain conditions, however, had formulated themselves around this prerogative: first, the stranger must of necessity be a decent-looking man; second, he must be within the precincts of the homestead at the ringing of the bell; third, the officer must walk down to the hut with him, as a testimony; fourth, no particular sub must make a trade of it. The prerogative was something like one enjoyed by abbots, and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, in the ages of faith; namely, the right to extend the jurisdiction and protection of the Church over any secular prisoner accidentally met on his way to execution—a prerogative, the existence of which depended on its not being abused. And though Moriarty was only on the Commissariat, and was therefore unmercifully sat-on by the vulgar whenever he presumed to give orders, he held this right through a series of forerunners extending back to the time when Montgomery I. had been his own storekeeper. Don’t you believe the yarns your enthusiast tells of the squatter’s free-and-easy hospitality toward the swagman. Such things were, and are; but I wouldn’t advise you to count upon the institution as a neat and easy escape from the Adamic penalty. You might fall-in. Hence Moriarty’s personal reluctance in the matter was perfectly natural. The meal at the hut, and the pannikin of dust at the store, are two widely different things. But a faithful and exhaustive inquiry into the ethics of station hospitality would fill many pages, for the question has more than one aspect.
“Go down to the hut, and have some dinner,” said Moriarty, turning back; and we preceded the two men on their way. “Can you make room for these chaps, Matt?” he asked, looking into the hut.
The cook growled assent; and the two strangers took their places at the table.
“Scotty thought he knew you,” observed Moriarty, with characteristic profundity, as we turned again toward the barracks. The remark broke a spell that was coming over me.
“And I thought I knew his mate, though I can’t manage to locate him,” I replied. “But, as I was telling Scotty, I have the worst memory in the world for faces.”
“Ay, that poor wreck wouldn’t fetch much in the yard,” remarked Moriarty, referring to Tam’s mate. “When a fellow comes to his state, he ought to be turned out for the summer in a swamp paddock, with the leeches on his legs; then you ought to sell him to Cobb and Co., to get the last kick out of him. Or else poll-axe the beggar.”
“Very good system, Moriarty. Apply it to yourself also. You’re not dead yet.”
“But I’ll never come to that state of affairs.” “Assuredly you will, sonny—just for the remark you’ve made. But I’d like to see that fellow again. Go on to the barracks; I’ll be after you in two minutes.”
Confused identity seemed to be in the air. Had I seen that weary-looking figure, and that weather-worn face, before? I couldn’t determine; and I can’t determine now—but the question has nothing to do with this record. At all events, impelled partly by a desire to have another look at the man, and partly, perhaps, by a morbid longing to flaunt myself before Tam, I grandly dipped my lofty belltopper under the doorway of the hut, and, without removing it, helped myself to a pannikin of tea from the bucket by the hearth, and sat down opposite the silent swagman. Farther along the table, Tam was already breast-deep in the stream of conversation. In answer to some question, he was replying that he had been only twelve months in the colonies.
“And what part of the Land o’ Cakes are you from?” I asked, wantonly, but civilly.
“A ’m frae Dumfriessheer—frae a spote they ca’ Ecchelfechan,” he replied complacently. “Bit, de’il tak ’t, wha’ gar ’d ye jalouse A was a Scoatsman?”
“What the (sheol) was the name o’ that (adj.) place you come from?” asked the station bullock driver, with interest.
“Ecchelfechan.”
“Nobody’s got any business to come from a place with sich a (adj.) name.”
“An’ wha’ fir no?” demanded Tam sternly. “Haud tae ye’se hae ony siccan a historic name in yir ain domd kintra. D’ ye ken wha, firbye mysen, was boarn in Ecchelfechan syne? Dinna fash yirsel’ aboot”—
“I say, Scotty,” interposed Toby; “Egglefeggan’s the place where they eat brose—ain’t it?”
“A’ll haud nae deeskission wi’ the produc’ o’ hauf-a-dizzen generations o’ slavery,” replied Tam haughtily. “A dinna attreebute ony blame tae yir ain sel’, laddie; bit ye canna owrecam the kirse o’ Canaan.”
“Cripes! do you take me for a (adj.) mulatter?” growled the descendant of a thousand kings. “Why, properly speaking, I own this here (adj.) country, as fur as the eye can reach.”
“Od, ye puir, glaikit, misleart remlet o’ a perishin’ race,” retorted Tam—“air ye no the mair unsicker? Air ye no feart ye’se aiblins see yon day gin ye’se thole waur fare nir a wamefu’ o’ gude brose? Heh!”
“Oh, speak English, you (adj.) bawbee-hunter!” muttered H.R.H. “Why, they’re a cut above brose in China—ain’t they, Sling?”
“Eatee lice in China,” replied the gardener, with national pride. “Plenty lice—good cookee—welly ni’.”
“By gummies! Hi seed the time Hi ’d ’a’ stopped yer jorrin’, Dave!” said a quavering voice, dominating some argument at the other end of the table. “Hi seed me fightin’ in a sawr-pit f’r tew hewrs an’ sebmteen minits, by the watch; an’ fetched ‘ome in a barrer. Now wot’s the hupshot? Did ’n’ Hi say, ‘Look hout! we’ll git hit to rights’?”
“But you (adv.) well thought we ’d get rain,” persisted the old man’s antagonist—an open-mouthed, fresh-faced rouseabout, who was just undergoing that colonising process so much drea
ded by mothers and deplored by the clergy.
“’Ow the (fourfold expletive) do you hundertake to know wot Hi thort? But wot war the hupshot? ‘Look hout!’ ses Hi; ‘we’ll git hit to rights!’ An’ did we, hor did we not? Straight, now, Dave?”
“You’re like Cassandra, Jack,” I observed, to fill up the pause which marked Dave’s discomfiture.
“That bloke as spoke las’, ’e’s got more hunder ’is ’at nor a six-’underd-an’-fo’ty-hacre paddick full o’ sich soojee speciments as you fellers,” said the old man impressively. “Wich o’ you knows hanythink about Cassandra? Hin ‘twenty-six hit war, an’ hit seems like las’ week. Hi druv ole Major Learm’th to them races, Hi did; an’ wen the ’osses comes hin, ’e looks roun’ an’ ses to ’is labour, a-stannin’ aside the kerridge, ‘Cassandra fust,’ ses ’e, ‘an’ the rest nowheers,’ ses ’e. Now what’s the hupshot? Collings’ll see the day. Them’s ole Jack Goldsmith’s words, an’ jis’ you mark ‘em. Collings’ll see the day! Yes, Dave,” continued the heart of the old man to the Psalmist; “Hi won ten bob on Cassandra that day; an’ ten bob war ten bob them times,” &c., &c.
All this while, I had been observing the silent swagman, who seemed to grow uneasy under my notice.
“I was remarking to a friend just now that I fancied I had seen you before,” I explained.
“Well, they ain’t actilly sore, so much as sort o’ dazzly and dim,” replied the man, in evident relief. “I been tryin’ mostly everything this last four year, but I got better hopes now nor ever I had before. A boundary man he give me a little bottle o’ stuff the other day; an’ it seems to be about the correct thing. Jist feels like a spoonful o’ red-hot ashes in your eye; an’ if a drop falls outside, it turns your skin black. That ought to cut away the sort o’ glassy phlegm off o’ the optic nerve?”
“No; you want none of these burning quack remedies; you want three months’ careful treatment”—
“I ain’t denyin’ it,” interrupted the man, sadly and sullenly. “An’ I don’t thank Tom for bein’ so fast,” he continued, raising his voice in attempted anger. “He ain’t the man I took him for—an’ I’m sayin’ it to his face.”
The general conversation dropped, and Tam, pannikin in hand, rose and advanced to his mate’s side.
“An’ wha’ is ’t ye’re sayin’ till ma face, Andraw?” he asked loudly, but with gentleness and commiseration. “Puir body’s haird o’ hearin’,” he explained to the company.
“I’m sayin’ you’d no right to go blurtin’ out about a man gittin’ a stretch for a thing o’ that sort. Seems like as if there was a job for one of us on this station, an’ you was takin’ a mean advantage to collar it. It ain’t like you”—
“Od, whisht! ye puir thrawart body!” interrupted Tam hastily.
“You might ’a’ went about it a bit more manly,” continued the other, with the querulousness of a sick child. “I don’t deny I done three months; but so help”—
“Whisht! ye daft”—
“So help me God, I never deserved it. I knowed no more about it nor the babe unborn, till I got it off o’ the bobby that nabbed me.”
“But how could you (adj.) well get three months for a thing you (adj.) well knew nothing about?” asked the catechumen rouse-about. (Henceforth, the reader will have to supply from his own imagination the clumsy and misplaced expletive which preceded each verb used by this young fellow.)
“Ye moight foine it dang aisy yeerself, Dave,” observed a middle-aged diner significantly.
“I been a misfortunate man, there’s no denyin’,” continued the swagman; “but I never done a injury to nobody in my life, so fur as I’m aware about.”
“What did he get the three months for?” asked Dave, turning to Tam.
“Gin ye speer onythin’ frae me,” replied Carlyle’s townie, after slowly surveying his questioner from head to foot, “A maun inform ye A ken naethin’ bit gude o’ Andraw; an’ A hae warkit wi’ him mair nir fowr minth.’Deed, the puir body taks owre muckle thocht fir ithers, an’ disna’ spare himsel’ ava. A ken naethin’ aboot yon three minth; yon’s atween Andraw an’s Makker; an’ A’ll nae jidge onybody, sin we maun a’ be judgit by Ane wha jidgeth iprightly. Bit as lang’s A hae a pickle siller, Andrew’ll no want.” And Tam returned to his seat.
“What would I want of burnin’ a stack?” remonstrated Andrew, blinking defiantly round the table. “Tell you how it come. Hold on a minute”—he went to the bucket, and refilled his pannikin—“It was this way: I was jist startin’ to thatch a new haystack for two ole bosses o’ mine, on the Vic. side o’ the Murray, when up comes a trooper.
“‘What’s your name?’ says he.
“‘Andrew Glover,’ says I.
“‘Well, Andrew Glover, you’re my prisoner—charged with burnin’ a stack,’ says he. ‘I must fetch you along,’ says he. So he gives me the usual warnin’, an’ walks me off to the logs.”
“And how did it go?” shouted Dave, who had shifted his pannikin and plate to Andrew’s side.
“Well, the Court day it come roun’; an’ when my case was called, the prosecutor he steps down off the bench, an’ gives evidence; an’ I foun’ him sayin’ somethin’ about not wantin’ to press the charge; an’ there was a bit of a confab; an’ then I foun’ the Bench askin’ me if I’d sooner be dealt with summary, or be kep’ for the Sessions; an’ I said summary by all means; so they give me three months.”
“What was the prosecutor’s name?” shouted Dave.
“Waterman.”
“So called because he opens the carriage-doors,” I remarked involuntarily.
“Do you know him, Collins?” persisted Dave.
“I neither know him nor do I feel any aching void in consequence,” I replied, pointedly interpolating, in two places, the quidnunc’s flowers of speech.
“How did the evidence go, mate?” asked the young fellow greedily.
“Eh?”
“How did the evidence go?”
“Oh yes! Well, I’m a bit hard o’ hearin’—I dunno if you notice it on me, but I am—an’ sometimes I’m worse nor other times; so I didn’t ketch most o’ what went on; an’ the prosecutor he was a good bit off o’ me; an’ there was a sort o’ echo. But I foun’ one o’ the magistrates sayin’, ‘Quite so, Mr. Waterman—quite so, Mr. Waterman,’ every now an’ agen; an’ I was on’y too glad to git off with three months. I’d ’a’ got twelve, if I’d bin remanded for a proper trial. The jailer told me after—he told me this Waterman come out real manly. Seems, he got the charge altered to Careless Use o’ Fire. So I can’t help giving him credit, in a manner o’ speakin’. But, so help me God, I never burned no stack.”
“Did you know this Waterman?” interrogated Dave. “Was you ever on his place?”
“Well, yes; I was on his place, askin’ him for work, as it might be this mornin’; an’ he give me rats for campin’ so near his place, as it might be las’ night. Seems, it was nex’ mornin’ his stack was burnt, jist after sunrise. But, so help me God, I never done it.”
“(Adj.) shaky sort o’ yarn,” commented the bullock driver, in grave pity. “Let it drop, Dave.”
“Divil a shaky,” interposed the hon. member for Tipperary. “Arrah, fwy wud the chap call on the Daity? Fishper—did ye iver foine justice in a coort? Be me sowl, Oi ’d take the man’s wurrd agin all the coorts in Austhrillia. An’ more betoken—divil blasht the blame Oi ’d blame him fur sthrekin a match, whin dhruv to that same.”
“Shoosteece iss (adj.) goot, mais revahnsh iss (adj.) bat,” remarked another foreigner—a contractor’s cook, who had come to the homestead for a supply of rations. “Vhere iss de (adj.) von?—vhere is de (adj.) autre? All mix—eh? De cohnseerashohn iss—I not know vat you vill call him ohn Angleesh, mais ve vill call him ohn Frahnsh, (adj.) cohnplecat.”
“Much the same in English, Theophile,” I observed.
“You vill barn de (adj.) snack,” continued Theophile, turning politely to me; “you vill
call him shoosteece; mineself, I vill call him revahnsh. Mineself, I vill not barn de (adj.) snack; I vill be too (adj.) flash. I vill go to (sheol).”
“Not for your principles, Theophile,” I replied, with a courteous inclination of my belltopper.
“Course, it’s all in a man’s lifetime,” pursued Andrew resignedly. “Same time, it seems sort a’ hard lines when a man’s shoved in the logs for the best three months in the year for a thing he never done. ’Sides, I was on for a good long job with two as decent a fellers as you’d meet in a day’s walk. I’d met one o’ them ten mile up the river, as it might be this afternoon; an’ the fire it took place as it might be to-morrow mornin’.”
“But where was you when the fire broke-out?—that’s the question,” demanded Dave, with a pleasant side-glance round the table.
“Eh?”
“You’ll be bumpin’ up agen a snag some o’ these times, young feller,” muttered the bullock driver.
“I was only askin’ him where he was when the fire broke out,” protested Somebody’s Darling; then in a louder voice he repeated his question.
“Dunno. Somewhere close handy,” replied the swagman hopelessly. “Anyhow, I never done it. Well, then, I’d jist got well started to work on Monday mornin’, when up comes the bobby, an’ grabs me. ‘S’pose you’ll have to go,’ says the missus—for the bosses was both away at another place they got. ‘S’pose so,’ says I. ‘Better take my swag with me anyhow.’ Course, by the time my three months was up, things was at the slackest; an’ I couldn’t go straight back to a decent place, an’ me fresh out o’ chokey. Fact, I can’t go back to that district no more. But as luck would have it, I runs butt agen the very man I’d ratherest meet of anybody in the country.” The swagman paused, and slowly turned toward me, in evident trouble of mind—“He didn’t tell you two blokes I was logged for stack-burnin’?” And the poor fellow’s flickering eyes sought my face appealingly.