Such Is Life (21 page)

“Wouldn't it suit you better to look out for some steady work on a farm?”

“Very carm. Sort o' carm heat. I think there's a thunderstorm hangin' about. We'll have rain before this moon goes out, for a certainty. She come in on her back—I dunno whether you noticed?”

“I didn't notice. Don't you find this kind of weather making your eyes worse?”

“My word, you're right. Not much chance of a man makin' a
rise the way things is now. Dunno what the country's comin' to. I don't blame people for not givin' work when they got no work to give, but they might be civil”—he paused, and went on with his repast in silence for a minute. It required no great prescience to read his thought. Man must be subject to sale by auction, or be a wearer of Imperial uniform, before the susceptibility to insult perishes in his soul. “I been carryin' a swag close on twenty year,” he resumed; “but I never got sich a divil of a blaggardin' as I got this mornin'. Course, I'm wrong to swear about it, but that's a thing I ain't in the habit o' doin'. It was at a place eight or ten mile down the river, on the Vic. side. I wasn't cadging, nyther. I jist merely ast for work—not bavin' heard about the H—s till after—an' I thought the bloke was goin' to jump down my throat I didn't ketch the most o' what he said, but I foun' him givin' me rats for campin' about as fur off of his place as from here to the other side o' the river; an' a lagoon betwixt; an' not a particle o' grass for the fire to run on. Fact, I'm a man that's careful about fire. Mind you, I did set fire to a bit of a dead log on the reserve, but a man has to get a whiff o' smoke these nights, on account o' the muskeeters; an' there was no more danger nor there is with this fire o' yours. Called me everything but a gentleman.”

“Possess your soul in patience. You have no remedy and no appeal till we gather at the river.”

“O, I was in luck there. Jist after I heard about this saw-mill—bein' then on the Vic. side—I foun' a couple o' swells goin' to a picnic in a boat; an' I told them I wanted to git across, an' they carted me over, an' no compliment. Difference in people.”

“I know the H—s,” I shouted. “When did you hear about them starting this saw-mill?”

“O! this forenoon. I must ast you to speak loud. I got the misfortune to be a bit hard o' hearin'. Most people notices it on me, but I was thinkin' p'r'aps you didn't remark it. It come through a cold I got in the head, about six year ago, spud-diggin' among the Bungaree savages.”

“I'm sorry for you.”

“Well, it was this way. After the feller hunted me off of his place this mornin', who should I meet but a young chap an' his girl, goin' to this picnic, with a white horse in the buggy. Now, that's one o' these civil, good-hearted sort o' chaps you'll sometimes git among the farmers. Name o' Archie M—. I dunno whether you mightn't know him; he's superintender o' the E— Sunday School. Fact, I'd bin roun' with the H—'s thresher at
his ole man's place four years runnin'; so when he seen me this mornin', it was, ‘Hello, Andy!—lookin' for work?' An' the next word was, ‘Well, I'm sorry we ain't got no work for you'—or words to that effect—‘but,' says he, ‘there's the H—s startin' a saw-mill fifteen or twenty mile up the river, on the other side. They won't see you beat,' says he; ‘but if you don't git on with them,' says he, ‘come straight back to our place, an' we'll see about something,' says he. So I'm makin' my way to the saw-mill.”

“Well, I hope you'll get on there, mate.”

“You're right. It's half the battle. Wust of it is, you can't stick to a mate when you got him. I was workin' mates with a raw new-chum feller las' winter, ringin' on the Yanko. Grand feller he was—name o' Tom—but, as it happened, we was workin' sub-contract for a feller name o' Joe Collins; an' we was on for savin', so we on'y drawed tucker-money; an' beggar me if this Joe Collins didn't git paid up on the sly, an' travelled. So we fell in. Can't be too careful when you're workin' for a workin' man. But I wouldn't like to be in Mr. Joe Collins's boots when Tom ketches him. Scotch chap, Tom is. Well, after bin had like this, we went out on the Lachlan, clean fly-blowed; an' Tom got a job boundary ridin', through another feller goin' to Mount Brown diggin's; an' there was no work for me, so we had to shake hands. I'd part my last sprat to that feller.”

“I believe you would. But I'm thinking of Joe Collins. To a student of nominology, this is a most unhappy combination. Joseph denotes sneaking hypocrisy, whilst Collins is a guarantee of probity. Fancy the Broad Arrow and the Cross of the Legion of Honour woven into a monogram!”

“Rakin' style o' dog you got there. I dunno when I seen the like of him. Well, I think I'll be pushin' on. I on'y got a sort o' rough idear where this mill is; an' there ain't many people this side o' the river to inquire off of; an' my eyes is none o' the best. I'll be biddin' you good day.”

“Are you a smoker?” I asked, replenishing my own sagacious meerschaum. “Because you might try a plug of this tobacco.”

Now that man's deafness was genuine, and I spoke in my ordinary tone, yet the magic word vibrated accurately and unmistakably on the paralysed tympanum. Let your so-called scientists account for that.

“If you can spare it,” replied the swagman, with animation. “Smokin's about the on'y pleasure a man's got in this world; an' I jist used up the dust out o' my pockets this mornin'; so this'll
go high. My word! Well, good day. I might be able to do the same for you some time.”

“Thou speakest wiser than thou art 'ware of,” I soliloquised as I watched his retreating figure, whilst lighting my pipe. “As the other philosopher, Tycho Brahe, found inspiration in the gibberish of his idiot companion, so do I find food for reflection in thy casual courtesy, my friend. Possibly I have reached the highest point of all my greatness, and from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting. From a Deputy-Assistant-Sub-Inspector—with the mortuary reversion of the Assistant-Sub-Inspectorship itself—to a swagman, bluey on shoulder and billy in hand, is as easy as falling off a playful moke. Such is life.”

The longer I smoked, the more charmed I was with the rounded symmetry and steady lustre of that pearl of truth which the swagman had brought forth out of his treasury. For philosophy is no warrant against destitution, as biography amply vouches. Neither is tireless industry, nor mechanical skill, nor artistic culture—if unaccompanied by that business aptitude which tends to the survival of the shrewdest; and not even then, if a person's
mana
is off. Neither is the saintliest piety any safeguard. If the author of the Thirty-seventh Psalm lived at the present time, he would see the righteous well represented among the unemployed, and his seed in the Industrial Schools. For correction of the Psalmist's misleading experience, one need go no further down the very restricted stream of Sacred History than the date of the typical Lazarus. Continually impending calamities menace with utter destitution any given man, though he may bury his foolish head in the sand, and think himself safe. There lives no one on earth to-day who holds even the flimsiest gossamer of security against a pauper's death, and a pauper's grave. If he be as rich as Croesus, let him remember Solon's warning, with its fulfilment—and the change since 550
B.C
. has by no means been in the direction of fixity of tenure. Where are one-half of the fortunes of twenty years ago?—and where will the other half be in twenty years more? Though I am, like Sir John, old only in judgment and understanding, I have again and again seen the wealthy emir of yesterday sitting on the ash-heap to-day, scraping himself with a bit of crockery, but happily too broken to find an inhuman sneer for the vagrants whom, in former days, he would have disdained to set with the dogs of his flock. I could write you a column of these emirs' names. And if there is one impudent interpolation in the Bible, it is to be found in the last chapter of that ancient Book of Job. The original writer conceived
a tragedy? anticipating the grandeur of the
Oedipus at Colonos
, or
Lear
—and here eight supplementary verses have anti-climaxed this masterpiece to the level of a boys' novel. ‘Also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before,' &c., &c. Tut-tut! Job's human nature had sustained a laceration that nothing but death could heal.

Is there any rich man who cannot imagine a combination of circumstances that would have given him lodgings under the bridge?—that may still do so, say, within twelve months? Setting my knighthood and my soldiership aside, I can imagine a combination that would have quartered me in that airy colonnade—nay, that may do so before this day week; and my view of the matter is, that if I become not the bridge as well as another, a plague of my bringing up! We are all walking along the shelving edge of a precipice; any one of us may go at any moment, or be dragged down by another.

And this is as it ought to be. Justice is done, and the sky does not fall. For, from a higher point of view, the Sabians and Chaldeans of the present day don't dislocate society; they only alter the incidence of existing dislocation; and all this works steadily towards a restoration—if not of some old Saturnian or Jahvistic Paradise-idyll, at least of a Divine intention and human ideal. Vicissitude of fortune is the very hand of ‘the Eternal, not ourselves, that maketh for righteousness,' the manifestation of the Power behind moral evolution; and we may safely trust the harmony of Universal legislation for this antidote to a grievous disease; we may rest confident that whilst this best of all possible worlds remains under the worst of all possible managements, the solemn threat of thirty-three centuries ago shall not lack fulfilment—the poor shall never cease out of the land. And no man knows when his own turn may come. But all this is strictly conditional.

Collective humanity holds the key to that kingdom of God on earth, which clear-sighted prophets of all ages have pictured in colours that never fade. The kingdom of God is within us; our all-embracing duty is to give it form and effect, a local habitation and a name. In the meantime, our reluctance to submit to the terms of citizenship has no more effect on the iron law of citizen reciprocity than our disapproval has on the process of the seasons; for see how, in the great human family, the innocent suffer for the guilty; and not only are the sins of the fathers visited upon the children, but my sins are visited upon your children, and your sins upon some one else's children; so that, if we decline a brotherhood
of mutual blessing and honour, we alternatively accept one of mutual injury and ignominy. Eternal justice is in no hurry for recognition, but flesh and blood will assuredly tire before that principle tires. It is precisely in relation to the palingenesis of Humanity that, to the unseen Will, one day is said to be as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. A Divine Idea points the way, clearly apparent to any vision not warped by interest or prejudice, nor darkened by ignorance; but the work is man's alone, and its period rests with man.

My reason for indulging in this reverie was merely to banish the thought of my late guest. (Of course, my object in recording it here is simply to kill time; for, to speak like a true man, I linger shivering on the brink of the disclosures to which I am pledged. I feel something like the doomed Nero, when he stood holding the dagger near his throat, trying meanwhile to screw his courage to the sticking-place by the recitation of heroic poetry. Trust me to go on with the narrative as soon as I choose.)

I didn't want to think of Andy personally. Intuition whispered to me that the swagman, who would have parted his last sprat to a former mate, hadn't that humble coin in his pocket; whilst purse-pride hinted that I had four sovereigns and some loose silver in mine—not to speak of £8 6s. 8d. waiting for me in Hay. If I had allowed my mind to dwell on these two intrusive intimations, they would have seemed to fit each other like tenon and mortice; though when the opportunity of making the joint had existed, a sort of moral laziness, together with our artificial, yet not unpraiseworthy, repugnance to offering a money gift, had brought me out rather a Levite than a Samaritan. In mere self-defence, I would have been constrained to keep up a series of general and impersonal reflections till the swagman lost his individuality—say, five or six hours—but I was rescued from this tyranny by the faint rattle of a buggy on the other side of the river. Idly turning my glass on the two occupants of the vehicle, I recognised one of them as a familiar and valued friend—a farmer, residing five or six miles down the river, on the Victorian side. I rose and walked to the brink as the buggy came opposite.

“Hello! Mr. B—,” I shouted.

“Hello! Collins. I thought you were way back. When did you come down? Why didn't you give us a call?”

“Couldn't get across the river without sacrifice of dignity and comfort.”

“Yes, you can; easy enough. You can start off now. I'm going
across here with Mr. G—, to see some sheep, but I'll be back toward sundown. I'll tell you how you'll manage: Follow straight down the road till you come to the old horse-paddock, nearly opposite our place; then turn to your left, down along the fence—”

“No use, Mr. B—. I want to get away to-morrow; and you know when we get together—”

“Yes; I know all about that. But you must come, Collins. There's a dozen things I want your opinion about.”

“Indeed I appreciate your sensible valuation of me as a referee, Mr. B—, but I must still decline. I wish I had gone this morning; it's too late now.”

“Well, I'll feel disappointed. So will Dick. By-the-by, Dick L— has turned up again. He's at our place now. He's off next week—to Fiji, I suspect.”