Selected Stories (52 page)

Ross’s family had the doctor out to him, and persuaded him to come to church this Sunday. The old man sat on the front seat,
stooping forward, with his elbow resting on the desk and his chin on his hand, bunching up his beard over his mouth with his fingers and staring gloomily at Peter with dark, piercing eyes from under bushy eyebrows, just as I’ve since seen a Scotchman stare at Max O’Rell all through a humorous lecture called “A Nicht wi’ Sandy”.

Ross’s right hand resting on the desk was very eloquent: horny, scarred and knotted at every joint, with broken, twisted nails, and nearly closed, as though fitted to the handle of an axe or a spade. Ross was an educated man (he had a regular library of books at home), and perhaps that’s why he suffered so much.

Peter preached as if he were speaking quietly to one person only, but every word was plain and every sentence went straight to someone. I believe he looked every soul in the eyes before he had done. Once he said something and caught my eye, and I felt a sudden lump in my throat. There was a boy there, a pale, thin, sensitive boy who was eating his heart out because of things he didn’t understand. He was ambitious and longed for something different from this life; he’d written a story or two and some rhymes for the local paper; his companions considered him a “bit ratty” and the grown-up people thought him a “bit wrong in his head”, idiotic, or at least “queer”. And during his sermon Peter spoke of “unsatisfied longings”, of the hope of something better, and said that one had to suffer much and for long years before he could preach or write; and then he looked at that boy. I knew the boy very well; he has risen in the world since then.

Peter spoke of the life we lived, of the things we knew, and used names and terms that we used. “I don’t know whether it was a blanky sermon or a blanky lecture,” said long swanky Jim Bullock afterwards, “but it was straight and hit some of us hard. It hit me once or twice, I can tell yer.” Peter spoke of our lives: “And there is beauty—even in this life and in this place,” he said. “Nothing is wasted—nothing is without reason. There is beauty even in this place——”

I noticed something like a hint of a hard smile on Ross’s face; he moved the hand on the desk and tightened it.

“Yes,” said Peter, as if in answer to Ross’s expression and the movement of his hand, “there is beauty in this life here. After a good season, and when the bush is tall and dry, when the bush fires threaten a man’s crop of ripened wheat, there are tired men who run and ride from miles round to help that man, and who fight the fire all night to save his wheat—and some of them may have been wrangling with him for years. And in the morning, when the wheat is saved and the danger is past, when the fire is beaten out or turned, there are blackened, grimy hands that come together and grip—hands that have not joined for many a long day.”

Old Palmer, Ross’s neighbour, moved uneasily. He had once helped Ross to put a fire out, but they had quarrelled again since. Ross still sat in the same position, looking the hard man he was. Peter glanced at Ross, looked down and thought a while, and then went on again:

“There is beauty even in this life and in this place. When a man loses his farm, or his stock, or his crop, through no fault of his own, there are poor men who put their hands into their pockets to help him.”

Old Kurtz, over the ridge, had had his stacked crop of wheat in sheaf burned—some scoundrel had put a match to it at night—and the farmers round had collected nearly fifty pounds for him.

“There is beauty even in this life and in this place. In the blazing drought, when the cattle lie down and cannot rise from weakness, neighbours help neighbours to lift them. When one man has hay or chaff and no stock, he gives it or sells it cheaply to the poor man who has starving cattle and no fodder.”

I only knew one or two instances of this kind; but Peter was preaching of what men should do as well as what they did.

“When a man meets with an accident, or dies, there are young men who go with their ploughs and horses and plough the ground for him or his widow and put in the crop.”

Jim Bullock and one or two other young men squirmed. They had ploughed old Leonard’s land for him when he met with an accident in the shape of a broken leg got by a kick from a horse. They had also ploughed the ground for Mrs Phipps when her
husband died, working, by the way, all Saturday afternoon and Sunday, for they were very busy at home at that time.

“There is beauty even in this life and in this place. There are women who were friends in girlhood and who quarrelled bitterly over a careless word, an idle tale, or some paltry thing, who live within a mile of each other and have not spoken for years; yet let one fall ill, or lose husband or child, and the other will hurry across to her place and take off her bonnet and tuck up her sleeves, and set to work to help straighten things, and they will kiss, and cry in each other’s arms, and be sisters again.”

I saw tears in the eyes of two hard and hard-faced women I knew; but they were smiling to each other through their tears.

“And now,” said Peter, “I want to talk to you about some other things. I am not preaching as a man who has been taught to preach comfortably, but as a man who has learned in the world’s school. I know what trouble is. Men,” he said, still speaking quietly, “and women too! I have been through trouble as deep as any of yours—perhaps deeper. I know how you toil and suffer, I know what battles you fight,
I
know. I too fought a battle, perhaps as hard as any you fight. I carry a load and am fighting a battle still.” His eyes were very haggard just then. “But this is not what I wanted to talk to you about. I have nothing to say against a young man going away from this place to better himself, but there are young men who go out back shearing or droving, young men who are good-hearted but careless, who make cheques, and spend their money gambling or drinking and never think of the old folk at home until it is too late. They never think of the old people, alone, perhaps, in a desolate hut on a worked-out farm in the scrub.”

Jim Bullock squirmed again. He had gone out back last season and made a cheque, and lost most of it on horse-racing and cards.

“They never think—they cannot think how, perhaps, long years agone in the old days, the old father, as a young man, and his brave young wife, came out here and buried themselves in the lonely Bush and toiled for many years, trying—it does not matter whether they failed or not—trying to make homes for their
children; toiled till the young man was bowed and grey, and the young wife brown and wrinkled and worn out. Exiles they were in the early days—boy-husbands and girl-wives some of them, who left their native lands, who left all that was dear, that seemed beautiful, that seemed to make life worth living, and sacrificed their young lives in drought and utter loneliness to make homes for their children. I want you young men to think of this. Some of them came from England, Ireland, Bonnie Scotland.” (Ross straightened up and let his hands fall loosely on his knees.) “Some from Europe—your foreign fathers—some from across the Rhine in Germany.” (We looked at old Kurtz. He seemed affected.)

Then Peter paused for a moment and blinked thoughtfully at Ross, then he took a drink of water. I can see now that the whole thing was a battle between Peter M’Laughlan and Robert Ross—Scot met Scot. “It seemed to me,” Jim Bullock said afterwards, “that Peter was only tryin’ to make some on us blanky well blubber.”

“And there are men,” Peter went on, “who have struggled and suffered and failed, and who have fought and failed again till their tempers are spoiled, until they grow bitter. They go in for self-pity, and self-pity leads to moping and brooding and madness; self-pity is the most selfish and useless thing on the face of God’s earth. It is cruel, it is deadly, both to the man and to those who love him, and whom he ought to love. His load grows heavier daily in his imagination, and he sinks down until it is in him to curse God and die. He ceases to care for or to think of his children who are working to help him.” (Ross’s sons were good, steady, hard-working boys.) “Or the brave wife who has been so true to him for many hard years, who left home and friends and country for his sake. Who bears up in the blackest of times, and persists in looking at the bright side of things for his sake; who has suffered more than he if he only knew it, and suffers now, through him and because of him, but who is patient and bright and cheerful while her heart is breaking. He thinks she does not suffer, that she cannot suffer as a man does. My God! he doesn’t know. He has forgotten in her the bright, fresh-faced, loving lassie he loved and won long years agone—long years agone——”

There was a sob, like the sob of an over-ridden horse as it sinks down broken-hearted, and Ross’s arms went out on the desk in front of him, and his head went down on them. He was beaten.

He was steered out gently with his wife on one side of him and his eldest son on the other.

“Don’t be alarmed, my friends,” said Peter, standing by the water-bag with one hand on the tap and the pannikin in the other. “Mr Ross has not been well lately, and the heat has been too much for him.” And he went out after Ross. They took him round under the bush shed behind the hut, where it was cooler.

When Peter came back to his place he seemed to have changed his whole manner and tone. “Our friend, Mr Ross, is much better,” he said. “We will now sing”—he glanced at Clara Southwick at the harmonium—“we will now sing ‘Shall We Gather at the River?’” We all knew that hymn; it was an old favourite round there, and Clara Southwick played it well in spite of the harmonium.

And Peter sang—the first and last time I ever heard him sing. I never had an ear for music; but I never before nor since heard a man’s voice that stirred me as Peter M’Laughlan’s. We stood like emus, listening to him all through one verse, then we pulled ourselves together.

Shall we gather at the River, Where bright angels’ feet have trod—

The only “rivers” round there were barren creeks, the best of them only strings of muddy waterholes, and across the ridge, on the sheep runs, the creeks were dry gutters, with baked banks and beds, and perhaps a mudhole every mile or so, and dead beasts rotting and stinking every few yards.

Gather with the saints at the River, That flows by the throne of God.

Peter’s voice trembled and broke. He caught his breath, and his eyes filled. But he smiled then—he stood smiling at us through his tears.

The beautiful, the beautiful River, That flows by the throne of God.

Outside I saw women kiss each other who had been at daggers drawn ever since I could remember, and men shake hands silently who had hated each other for years. Every family wanted Peter to come home to tea, but he went across to Ross’s, and afterwards down to Kurtz’s place, and bled and inoculated six cows or so in a new way, and after tea he rode off over the gap to see his friend.

Now this is the creed from the Book of the Bush—Should be simple and plain to a dunce: “If a man’s in a hole you must pass round the hat—“Were he jail-bird or gentleman once.”

“IS it any harm to wake yer?”

It was about nine o’clock in the morning, and, though it was Sunday morning, it was no harm to wake me; but the shearer had mistaken me for a deaf jackeroo, who was staying at the shanty and was something like me, and had good-naturedly shouted almost at the top of his voice, and he woke the whole shanty. Anyway he woke three or four others who were sleeping on beds and stretchers, and one on a shake-down on the floor, in the same room. It had been a wet night, and the shanty was full of shearers from Big Billabong Shed which had cut out the day before. My room-mates had been drinking and gambling overnight, and they swore luridly at the intruder for disturbing them.

He was six-foot-three or thereabout. He was loosely built, bony, sandy-complexioned and grey-eyed. He wore a good-humoured grin at most times, as I noticed later on; he was of a type of Bushman that I always liked—the sort that seem to get more good-natured the longer they grow, yet are hard-knuckled and would accommodate a man who wanted to fight, or thrash a bully in a good-natured way. The sort that like to carry somebody’s baby round, and cut wood, carry water and do little things for overworked married Bushwomen. He wore a saddle-tweed sac suit two sizes too small for him, and his face, neck, great hands and bony wrists were covered with sun blotches and freckles.

“I hope I ain’t disturbing yer,” he shouted, as he bent over my bunk, “but there’s a cove—”

“You needn’t shout!” I interrupted, “I’m not deaf.”

“Oh—I beg your pardon!” he shouted. “I didn’t know I was yellin’. I thought you was the deaf feller.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” I said. “What’s the trouble?”

“Wait till them other chaps is done’ swearin’ and I’ll tell yer,” he said. He spoke with a quiet, good-natured drawl, with something of the nasal twang, but tone and drawl distinctly Australian—altogether apart from that of the Americans.

“Oh, spit it out for Christ’s sake, Long-’un!” yelled One-eyed Bogan, who had been the worst swearer in a rough shed, and he fell back on his bunk as if his previous remarks had exhausted him.

“It’s that there sick jackeroo that was pickin’-up at Big Billabong,” said the Giraffe. “He had to knock off the first week, an’ he’s been here ever since. They’re sendin’ him away to the hospital in Sydney by the speeshall train. They’re just goin’ to take him up in the waggonette to the railway station, an’ I thought I might as well go round with the hat an’ get him a few bob. He’s got a missus and kids in Sydney.”

“Yer always goin’ round with yer gory hat!” growled Bogan. “Yer’d blanky well take it round in hell!”

“That’s what he’s doing, Bogan,” muttered “Gentleman Once”, on the shake-down, with his face to the wall.

The hat was a genuine “cabbage-tree”, one of the sort that “last a lifetime”; it was well coloured, almost black in fact with weather and age, and it had a new strap round the base of the crown. I looked into it and saw a dirty pound note and some silver. I dropped in half-a-crown, which was more than I could spare, for I had only been a green-hand at Big Billabong.

“Thank yer!” he said. “Now then, you fellers!”

“I wish you’d keep your hat on your head, and your money in your pockets and your sympathy somewhere else,” growled Jack Moonlight as he raised himself painfully on his elbow and felt under his pillow for two half-crowns. “Here,” he said, “here’s two half-casers. Chuck ’em in and let me sleep for God’s sake!”

Gentleman Once, the gambler, rolled round on his shake-down, bringing his good-looking, dissipated face from the wall. He had turned in in his clothes, and with considerable exertion he shoved his hand down into the pocket of his trousers, which were a tight fit. He brought up a roll of pound notes and could find no silver.

“Here,” he said to the Giraffe, “I might as well lay a quid. I’ll chance it anyhow. Chuck it in.”

“You’ve got rats this mornin’, Gentleman Once,” growled the Bogan. “It ain’t a blanky horse race.”

“P’r’aps I have,” said Gentleman Once, and he turned to the wall again with his head on his arm.

“Now, Bogan, yer might as well chuck in somethin’,” said the Giraffe.

“What’s the matter with the——jackeroo?” asked the Bogan, tugging his trousers from under the mattress.

Moonlight said something in a low tone.

“The——he has!” said Bogan. “Well, I pity the——! Here, I’ll chuck in half a——quid!” and he dropped half-a-sovereign into the hat.

The fourth man, who was known to his face as “Barcoo-Rot”, and behind his back as “the Mean Man”, had been drinking all night, and not even Bogan’s stump-splitting adjectives could rouse him. So Bogan got out of bed, and calling on us (as blanky female cattle) to witness what he was about to do, he rolled the drunkard over, prospected his pockets till he made up five shillings (or a “caser” in Bush language), and “chucked” them into the hat.

And Barcoo-Rot is probably unconscious to this day that he was ever connected with an act of charity.

The Giraffe struck the deaf jackeroo in the next room. I heard the chaps, cursing “Long-’un” for waking them, and “Deaf-’un” for being, as they thought at first, the indirect cause of the disturbance. I heard the Giraffe and his hat being condemned in other rooms and cursed along the verandah where more shearers were sleeping; and after a while I turned out.

The Giraffe was carefully fixing a mattress and pillows on the floor of a waggonette, and presently a man, who looked like a corpse, was carried out and lifted into the trap.

As the waggonnette started, the shanty-keeper—a fat, soulless-looking man—put his hand in his pocket and dropped a quid into the hat which was still going round, in the hands of the Giraffe’s mate, little Teddy Thompson, who was as far below medium height as the Giraffe was above it.

The Giraffe took the horse’s head and led him along on the most level parts of the road towards the railway station, and two or three chaps went along to help get the sick man into the train.

The shearing season was over in that district, but I got a job of house-painting, which was my trade, at the Great Western Hotel (a two-storey brick place), and I stayed in Bourke for a couple of months.

The Giraffe was a Victorian native from Bendigo. He was well known in Bourke and to many shearers who came through the great dry scrubs from hundreds of miles round. He was stakeholder, drunkard’s banker, peacemaker where possible, referee or second to oblige the chaps when a fight was on, big brother or uncle to most of the children in town, final court of appeal when the youngsters had a dispute over a footrace at the school picnic, referee at their fights, and he was the stranger’s friend.

“The feller as knows can battle around for himself,” he’d say. “But I always like to do what I can for a hard-up stranger cove. I was a green-hand jackeroo once meself, and I know what it is.”

“You’re always bothering about other people, Giraffe,” said Tom Hall, the Shearers’ Union Secretary, who was only a couple of inches shorter than the Giraffe. “There’s nothing in it, you can take it from me—I ought to know.”

“Well, what’s a feller to do?” said the Giraffe. “I’m only hangin’ round here till shearin’ starts agen, an’ a cove might as well be doin’ something. Besides, it ain’t as if I was like a cove that had old people or a wife an’ kids to look after. I ain’t got no responsibilities. Afeller can’t be doin’ nothin’. Besides, I like to lend a helpin’ hand when I can.”

“Well, all I’ve got to say,” said Tom, most of whose screw went in borrowed quids, etc.; “all I’ve got to say is that you’ll get no thanks, and you might blanky well starve in the end.”

“There ain’t no fear of me starvin’ so long as I’ve got me hands about me; an’ I ain’t a cove as wants thanks,” said the Giraffe.

He was always helping someone or something. Now it was a bit of a “darnce” that we was gettin’ up for the girls; again it was Mrs Smith, the woman whose husban’ was drowned in the flood in the Bogan River lars’ Crismas, or that there poor woman down by the billabong—her husban’ cleared out and left her with a lot o’ kids. Or Bill Something, the bullocky, who was run over by his own waggon, while he was drunk, and got his leg broke.

Towards the end of his spree One-eyed Bogan broke loose and smashed nearly all the windows of the Carriers’ Arms, and next morning he was fined heavily at the police court. About dinner-time I encountered the Giraffe and his hat, with two half-crowns in it for a start.

“I’m sorry to trouble yer,” he said, “but One-eyed Bogan carn’t pay his fine, an’ I thought we might fix it up for him. He ain’t half a bad sort of feller when he ain’t drinkin’. It’s only when he gets too much booze in him.”

After shearing, the hat usually started round with the Giraffe’s own dirty crumpled pound note in the bottom of it as a send-off, later on it was half-a-sovereign, and so on down to half-a-crown and a shilling, as he got short of stuff; till in the end he would borrow a “few bob”—which he always repaid after next shearing—“just to start the thing goin’.”

There were several yarns about him and his hat. ’Twas said that the hat had belonged to his father, whom he resembled in every respect, and it had been going round for so many years that the crown was worn as thin as paper by the quids, half-quids, casers, half-casers, bobs and tanners or sprats—to say nothing of the scrums—that had been chucked into it in its time and shaken up.

They say that when a new Governor visited Bourke the Giraffe happened to be standing on the platform close to the exit, grinning good-humouredly, and the local toady nudged him urgently and said in an awful whisper, “Take off your hat! Why don’t you take off your hat?”

“Why?” drawled the Giraffe, “he ain’t hard up, is he?”

And they fondly cherish an anecdote to the effect that, when the One-Man-One-Vote Bill was passed (or Payment of Members, or when the first Labour Party went in—I forget on
which occasion they said it was), the Giraffe was carried away by the general enthusiasm, got a few beers in him, “chucked” a quid into his hat, and sent it round. The boys contributed by force of habit, and contributed largely, because of the victory and the beer. And when the hat came back to the Giraffe, he stood holding it in front of him with both hands and stared blankly into it for a while. Then it dawned on him.

“Blowed if I haven’t bin an’ gone an’ took up a bloomin’ collection for meself!” he said.

He was almost a teetotaller, but he stood his shout in reason. He mostly drank ginger-beer.

“I ain’t a feller that boozes, but I ain’t got nothin’ agen chaps enjoyin’ themselves, so long as they don’t go too far.”

It was common for a man on the spree to say to him:

“Here! here’s five quid. Look after it for me, Giraffe, will yer, till I get off the booze.”

His real name was Bob Brothers, and his Bush names “Long’un”, “The Giraffe”, “Send-round-the-hat”, “Chuck-in-a-bob”, and “Ginger-ale”.

Some years before, camels and Afghan drivers had been imported to the Bourke district; the camels did very well in the dry country; they went right across country and carried everything from sardines to flooring boards. And the teamsters loved the Afghans nearly as much as Sydney furniture-makers love the cheap Chinese in the same line. They loved ’em even as union shearers on strike love blacklegs brought up-country to take their places.

Now the Giraffe was a good, straight unionist, but in cases of sickness or trouble he was as apt to forget his unionism as all Bushmen are at all times (and for all time), to forget their creed. So, one evening, the Giraffe blundered into the Carriers’ Arms—of all places in the world—when it was full of teamsters; he had his hat in his hand and some small silver and coppers in it.

“I say, you fellers, there’s a poor, sick Afghan in the camp down there along the—”

Abig, brawny bullock-driver took him firmly by the shoulders, or, rather, by the elbows, and ran him out before any
damage was done. The Giraffe took it as he took most things, good-humouredly; but, about dusk, he was seen slipping down towards the Afghan camp with a billy of soup.

“I believe,” remarked Tom Hall, “that when the Giraffe goes to Heaven—and he’s the only one of us, as far as I can see, that has a ghost of a show—I believe that when he goes to Heaven, the first thing he’ll do will be to take his infernal hat round amongst the angels—getting up a collection for this damned world that he left behind.”

“Well, I don’t think there’s so much to his credit, after all,” said Jack Mitchell, shearer. “You see, the Giraffe is ambitious; he likes public life, and that accounts for him shoving himself forward with his collections. As for bothering about people in trouble, that’s only common curiosity; he’s one of those chaps that are always shoving their noses into other people’s troubles. And, as for looking after sick men—why! there’s nothing the Giraffe likes better than pottering round a sick man, and watching him and studying him. He’s awfully interested in sick men, and they’re pretty scarce out here. I tell you there’s nothing he likes better—except, maybe, it’s pottering round a corpse. I believe he’d ride forty miles to help and sympathise and potter round a funeral. The fact of the matter is that the Giraffe is only enjoying himself with other people’s troubles—that’s all it is. It’s only vulgar curiosity and selfishness. I set it down to his ignorance; the way he was brought up.”

Afew days after the Afghan incident the Giraffe and his hat had a run of luck. AGerman, one of a party who were building a new wooden bridge over the Big Billabong, was helping unload some girders from a truck at the railway station, when a big log slipped on the skids and his leg was smashed badly. They carried him to the Carriers’ Arms, which was the nearest hotel, and into a bedroom behind the bar, and sent for the doctor. The Giraffe was in evidence as usual.

“It vas not that at all,” said German Charlie, when they asked him if he was in much pain. “It vas not that at all. I don’t cares a damn for der bain; but dis is der ’tird year—und I vas going home dis year—after der gontract—und der gontract yoost commence!”