The Penguin Henry Lawson Short Stories

by Henry Lawson

  Next evening the jackeroo and one or two other chaps and the girls went out ’possum shooting. Mary went. I could have gone, but I didn’t. I mooched round all the evening like an orphan bandicoot on a burnt ridge, and then I went up to the pub and filled myself up with beer, and damned the world, and came home and went to bed. I think that evening was the only time I ever wrote poetry down on a piece of paper. I got so miserable that I enjoyed it.

  I felt better next morning, and reckoned I was cured. I ran against Mary accidentally, and had to say something.

  ‘How did you enjoy yourself yesterday evening, Miss Brand?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, very well, thank you, Mr Wilson,’ she said. Then she asked, ‘How did you enjoy yourself, Mr Wilson?’

  I puzzled over that afterwards, but couldn’t make anything out of it. Perhaps she only said it for the sake of saying something. But about this time my handkerchiefs and collars disappeared from the room and turned up washed and ironed, and laid tidily on my table. I used to keep an eye out, but could never catch anybody near my room. I straightened up, and kept my room a bit tidy, and when my handkerchief got too dirty, and I was ashamed of letting it go to the wash, I’d slip down to the river after dark and wash it out, and dry it next day, and rub it up to look as if it hadn’t been washed, and leave it on my table. I felt so full of hope and joy that I worked twice as hard as Jack, till one morning he remarked casually:

  ‘I see you’ve made a new mash, Joe. I saw the half-caste cook tidying up your room this morning and taking your collars and things to the wash-house.’

  I felt very much off colour all the rest of the day, and I had such a bad night of it that I made up my mind next morning to look the hopelessness square in the face and live the thing down.

  It was the evening before Anniversary Day. Jack and I had put in a good day’s work to get the job finished, and Jack was having a smoke and a yarn with the chaps before he started home. We sat on an old log along by the fence at the back of the house. There was Jimmy Nowlett the bullock-driver, and long Dave Regan the drover, and Jim Bullock the fencer, and one or two others. Mary and the station girls and one or two visitors were sitting under the old veranda. The jackeroo was there too, so I felt happy. It was the girls who used to bring the chaps hanging round. They were getting up a dance party for Anniversary night. Along in the evening another chap came riding up to the station: he was a big shearer, a dark, handsome fellow, who looked like a gipsy; it was reckoned that there was foreign blood in him. He went by the name of Romany. He was supposed to be shook after Mary too. He had the nastiest temper and the best violin in the district, and the chaps put up with him a lot because they wanted him to play at Bush dances. The moon had risen over Pine Ridge, but it was dusky where we were. We saw Romany loom up, riding in from the gate; he rode round the end of the coach-house and across towards where we were – I suppose he was going to tie up his horse at the fence; but about half-way across the grass he disappeared. It struck me that there was something peculiar about the way he got down, and I heard a sound like a horse stumbling.

  ‘What the hell’s Romany trying to do?’ said Jimmy Nowlett. ‘He couldn’t have fell off his horse – or else he’s drunk.’

  A couple of chaps got up and went to see. Then there was that waiting, mysterious silence that comes when something happens in the dark, and nobody knows what it is. I went over, and the thing dawned on me. I’d stretched a wire clothes-line across there during the day and had forgotten all about it for the moment. Romany had no idea of the line and, as he rode up, it caught him on a level with his elbows, and scraped him off his horse. He was sitting on the grass, swearing in a surprised voice, and the horse looked surprised too. Romany wasn’t hurt, but the sudden shock had spoilt his temper. He wanted to know who’d put up that bloody line. He came over and sat on the log. The chaps smoked a while.

  ‘What did you git down so sudden for, Romany?’ asked Jim Bullock, presently. ‘Did you hurt yerself on the pommel?’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask the horse to go round?’ asked Dave Regan.

  ‘I’d only like to know who put up that bleeding wire!’ growled Romany.

  ‘Well,’ said Jimmy Nowlett, ‘if we’d put up a sign to beware of the line you couldn’t have seen it in the dark.’

  ‘Unless it was a transparency with a candle behind it,’ said Dave Regan. ‘But why didn’t you get down on one end, Romany, instead of all along? It wouldn’t have jolted yer so much.’

  All this with the Bush drawl, and between the puffs of their pipes. But I didn’t take any interest in it. I was brooding over Mary and the jackeroo.

  ‘I’ve heard of men getting down over their horse’s head,’ said Dave presently, in a reflective sort of way – ‘In fact, I’ve done it myself – but I never saw a man get off backwards over his horse’s rump.’

  But they saw that Romany was getting nasty, and they wanted him to play the fiddle next night, so they dropped it.

  Mary was singing an old song. I always thought she had a sweet voice, and I’d have enjoyed it if that damned jackeroo hadn’t been listening too. We listened in silence until she’d finished.

  ‘That gal’s got a nice voice,’ said Jimmy Nowlett.

  ‘Nice voice!’ snarled Romany, who’d been waiting for a chance to be nasty. ‘Why, I’ve heard a tom-cat sing better.’

  I moved, and Jack, he was sitting next me, nudged me to keep quiet. The chaps didn’t like Romany’s talk about ’Possum at all. They were all fond of her: she wasn’t a pet or tomboy, for she wasn’t built that way, but they were fond of her in such a way that they didn’t like to hear anything said about her. They said nothing for a while, but it meant a lot. Perhaps the single men didn’t care to speak for fear that it would be said that they were gone on Mary. But presently Jimmy Nowlett gave a big puff at his pipe and spoke:

  ‘I suppose you got bit, too, in that quarter, Romany?’

  ‘Oh, she tried it on, but it didn’t go,’ said Romany. ‘I’ve met her sort before. She’s setting her cap at that jackeroo now. Some girls will run after anything with trousers on,’ and he stood up.

  Jack Barnes must have felt what was coming, for he grabbed my arm, and whispered, ‘Sit still, Joe, damn you! He’s too good for you!’ But I was on my feet and facing Romany as if a giant hand had reached down and wrenched me off the log and set me there.

  ‘You’re a damned crawler, Romany!’ I said.

  Little Jimmy Nowlett was between us, and the other fellows round us before a blow got home. ‘Hold on, you damned fools!’ they said. ‘Keep quiet till we get away from the house!’ There was a little clear flat down by the river and plenty of light there, so we decided to go down there and have it out.

  Now I never was a fighting man; I’d never learnt to use my hands. I scarcely knew how to put them up. Jack often wanted to teach me, but I wouldn’t bother about it. He’d say, ‘You’ll get into a fight some day, Joe, or out of one, and shame me’; but I hadn’t the patience to learn. He’d wanted me to take lessons at the station after work, but he used to get excited, and I didn’t want Mary to see him knocking me about. Before he was married, Jack was always getting into fights – he generally tackled a better man and got a hiding; but he didn’t seem to care so long as he made a good show – though he used to explain the thing away from a scientific point of view for weeks after. To tell the truth, I had a horror of fighting; I had a horror of being marked about the face; I think I’d sooner stand off and fight a man with revolvers than fight him with fists; and then I think I would say, last thing, ‘Don’t shoot me in the face!’ Then again I hated the idea of hitting a man. It seemed brutal to me. I was too sensitive and sentimental, and that was what the matter was. Jack seemed very serious on it as we walked down to the river, and he couldn’t help hanging out blue lights.

  ‘Why didn’t you let me teach you to use your hands?’ he said. ‘The only chance now is that Romany can’t fight after all. If you’d waited a minute I’d have been at him.�
� We were a bit behind the rest, and Jack started giving me points about lefts and rights, and ‘half-arms’, and that sort of thing. ‘He’s left-handed, and that’s the worst of it,’ said Jack. ‘You must only make as good a show as you can, and one of us will take him on afterwards.’

  But I just heard him and that was all. It was to be my first fight since I was a boy, but somehow I felt cool about it – sort of dulled. If the chaps had known all they would have set me down as a cur. I thought of that, but it didn’t make any difference with me then; I knew it was a thing they couldn’t understand. I knew I was reckoned pretty soft. But I knew one thing that they didn’t know. I knew that it was going to be a fight to a finish, one way or the other. I had more brains and imagination than the rest put together, and I suppose that that was the real cause of most of my trouble. I kept saying to myself, ‘You’ll have to go through with it now, Joe, old man! It’s the turning point of your life.’ If I won the fight, I’d set to work and win Mary; if I lost, I’d leave the district for ever. A man thinks a lot in a flash sometimes; I used to get excited over little things, because of the very paltriness of them, but I was mostly cool in a crisis – Jack was the reverse. I looked ahead: I wouldn’t be able to marry a girl who could look back and remember when her husband was beaten by another man – no matter what sort of brute the other man was.

  I never in my life felt so cool about a thing. Jack kept whispering instructions, and showing with his hands, up to the last moment, but it was all lost on me.

  Looking back, I think there was a bit of romance about it: Mary singing under the vines to amuse a jackeroo dude, and a coward going down to the river in the moonlight to fight for her.

  It was very quiet in the little moonlit flat by the river. We took off our coats and were ready. There was no swearing or barracking. It seemed an understood thing with the men that if I went out first round Jack would fight Romany; and if Jack knocked him out somebody else would fight Jack to square matters. Jim Bullock wouldn’t mind obliging for one; he was a mate of Jack’s, but he didn’t mind who he fought so long as it was for the sake of fair play – or ‘peace and quietness,’ as he said. Jim was very good-natured. He backed Romany, and of course Jack backed me.

  As far as I could see, all Romany knew about fighting was to jerk one arm up in front of his face and duck his head by way of a feint, and then rush and lunge out. But he had the weight and strength and length of reach, and my first lesson was a very short one. I went down early in the round. But it did me good; the blow and the look I’d seen in Romany’s eyes knocked all the sentiment out of me. Jack said nothing – he seemed to regard it as a hopeless job from the first. Next round I tried to remember some things Jack had told me, and made a better show, but I went down in the end.

  I felt Jack breathing quick and trembling as he lifted me up.

  ‘How are you, Joe?’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m all right,’ I said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ whispered Jack in a voice as if I was going to be hanged, but it would soon be all over. ‘He can’t use his hands much more than you can – take your time, Joe – try to remember something I told you, for God’s sake!’

  When two men fight who don’t know how to use their hands, they stand a show of knocking each other about a lot. I got some awful thumps, but mostly on the body. Jimmy Nowlett began to get excited and jump round – he was an excitable little fellow.

  ‘Fight! you –!’ he yelled. ‘Why don’t you fight? That ain’t fightin’. Fight, and don’t try to murder each other. Use your crimson hands or, by God, I’ll chip you! Fight, or I’ll blanky well bullock-whip the pair of you’; then his language got awful. They said we went like windmills, and that nearly every one of the blows we made was enough to kill a bullock if it had got home. Jimmy stopped us once, but they held him back.

  Presently I went down pretty flat, but the blow was well up on the head, and didn’t matter much – I had a good thick skull. And I had one good eye yet.

  ‘For God’s sake, hit him!’ whispered Jack – he was trembling like a leaf. ‘Don’t mind what I told you. I wish I was fighting him myself! Get a blow home, for God’s sake! Make a good show this round and I’ll stop the fight.’

  That showed how little even Jack, my old mate, understood me.

  I had the Bushman up in me now, and wasn’t going to be beaten while I could think. I was wonderfully cool, and learning to fight. There’s nothing like a fight to teach a man. I was thinking fast, and learning more in three seconds than Jack’s sparring could have taught me in three weeks. People think that blows hurt in a fight, but they don’t – not till afterwards. I fancy that a fighting man, if he isn’t altogether an animal, suffers more mentally than he does physically.

  While I was getting my wind I could hear through the moonlight and still air the sound of Mary’s voice singing up at the house. I thought hard into the future, even as I fought. The fight only seemed something that was passing.

  I was on my feet again and at it, and presently I lunged out and felt such ajar on my arm that I thought it was telescoped. I thought I’d put out my wrist and elbow. And Romany was lying on the broad of his back.

  I heard Jack draw three breaths of relief in one. He said nothing as he straightened me up, but I could feel his heart beating. He said afterwards that he didn’t speak because he thought a word might spoil it.

  I went down again, but Jack told me afterwards that he felt I was all right when he lifted me.

  Then Romany went down, then we fell together, and the chaps separated us. I got another knock-down blow in, and was beginning to enjoy the novelty of it, when Romany staggered and limped.

  ‘I’ve done,’ he said. ‘I’ve twisted my ankle.’ He’d caught his heel against a tuft of grass.

  ‘Shake hands,’ yelled Jimmy Nowlett.

  I stepped forward, but Romany took his coat, and limped to his horse.

  ‘If yer don’t shake hands with Wilson, I’ll lam yer,’ howled Jimmy; but Jack told him to let the man alone, and Romany got on his horse somehow and rode off.

  I saw Jim Bullock stoop and pick up something from the grass, and heard him swear in surprise. There was some whispering, and presently Jim said:

  ‘If I thought that, I’d kill him.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Jack.

  Jim held up a butcher’s knife. It was common for a man to carry a butcher’s knife in a sheath fastened to his belt.

  ‘Why did you let your man fight with a butcher’s knife in his belt?’ asked Jimmy Nowlett.

  But the knife could easily have fallen out when Romany fell, and we decided it that way.

  ‘Any way,’ said Jimmy Nowlett, ‘if he’d stuck Joe in hot blood before us all it wouldn’t be so bad as if he sneaked up and stuck him in the back in the dark. But you’d best keep an eye over yer shoulder for a year or two, Joe. That chap’s got Eye-talian blood in him somewhere. And now the best thing you chaps can do is to keep your mouth shut and keep all this dark from the gals.’

  Jack hurried me on ahead. He seemed to act queer, and when I glanced at him I could have sworn that there was water in his eyes. I said that Jack had no sentiment except for himself, but I forgot, and I’m sorry I said it.

  ‘What’s up, Jack?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Jack.

  ‘What’s up, you old fool?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Jack, ‘except that I’m damned proud of you, Joe, you old ass!’ and he put his arm round my shoulders and gave me a shake. ‘I didn’t know it was in you, Joe – I wouldn’t have said it before, or listened to any other man say it, but I didn’t think you had the pluck – God’s truth, I didn’t. Come along and get your face fixed up.’

  We got into my room quietly, and Jack got a dish of water, and told one of the chaps to sneak a piece of fresh beef from somewhere.

  Jack was as proud as a dog with a tin tail as he fussed round me. He fixed up my face in the best style he knew, and he knew a good many – he’d been
mended himself so often.

  While he was at work we heard a sudden hush and a scraping of feet amongst the chaps that Jack had kicked out of the room, and a girl’s voice whispered. ‘Is he hurt? Tell me. I want to know – I might be able to help.’

  It made my heart jump, I can tell you. Jack went out at once, and there was some whispering. When he came back he seemed wild.

  ‘What is it, Jack?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ he said, ‘only that damned slut of a half-caste cook overheard some of those blanky fools arguing as to how Romany’s knife got out of the sheath, and she’s put a nice yarn round amongst the girls. There’s a regular bobbery, but it’s all right now, Jimmy Nowlett’s telling ’em lies at a great rate.’

  Presently there was another hush outside, and a saucer with vinegar and brown paper was handed in.

  One of the chaps brought some beer and whisky from the pub, and we had a quiet little time in my room. Jack wanted to stay all night, but I reminded him that his little wife was waiting for him in Solong, so he said he’d be round early in the morning, and went home.

  I felt the reaction pretty bad. I didn’t feel proud of the affair at all. I thought it was a low brutal business all round. Romany was a quiet chap after all, and the chaps had no right to chyack him. Perhaps he’d had a hard life, and carried a big swag of trouble that we didn’t know anything about. He seemed a lonely man. I’d gone through enough myself to teach me not to judge men. I made up my mind to tell him how I felt about the matter next time we met. Perhaps I made my usual mistake of bothering about ‘feelings’ in another party that hadn’t any feelings at all – perhaps I didn’t; but it’s generally best to chance it on the kind side in a case like this. Altogether I felt as if I’d made another fool of myself, and been a weak coward. I drank the rest of the beer and went to sleep.

  About daylight I woke and heard Jack’s horse on the gravel. He came round the back of the buggy-shed and up to my door, and then, suddenly, a girl screamed out. I pulled on my trousers and ’lastic-side boots and hurried out. It was Mary herself, dressed, and sitting on an old stone step at the back of the kitchen with her face in her hands, and Jack was off his horse and stooping by her side with his hand on her shoulder. She kept saying, ‘I thought you were –! I thought you were –!’ I didn’t catch the name. An old single-barrel muzzle-loader shot-gun was lying in the grass at her feet. It was the gun they used to keep loaded and hanging in straps in a room off the kitchen ready for a shot at a cunning old hawk that they called ‘’Tarnal Death,’ and that used to be always after the chickens.