Such Is Life (50 page)

“Well, upon my word! Do you think I'd condescend to undermine you, you storekeeper? Look out for Martin; never mind me.”

“I don't mean her,” mumbled the young fool; “I mean Mrs. Beaudesart. You're going to marry her when you get your promotion—ain't you?”

There was such evident sincerity in his tone that I maintained a stern and stony silence, whilst his eyes met mine with a doubtful, deprecating look; then he remarked doggedly,

“Well, that's what she told Mrs. Montgomery, last Sunday; and she said it seriously. Miss King was present at the time; and she told Butler, and Mooney, and me, across the gate of the flower-garden, the same evening. Mrs. Beaudesart takes it for granted, and so does everybody else. She says she accepted you some time ago.”

“You lying dog!” I remarked wearily.

“I hope I may never stir alive off this seat if I'm not telling you the exact truth. Ask Mooney or Butler.”

“If I do sleep, would all my wealth would wake me,” I murmured, half-unconsciously.

“You don't want to marry her, then, after all?”

“How long do you suppose I would last?”

“Well,
don't
marry her.”

“Does it occur to you,” I asked, with some bitterness, “that there are some things a person can do, and some things he can't do? If the head of my Department orders me to Nyngan, I can reply by letter, telling him to mind his own business, and not concern himself about me; but if Mrs. Beaudesart assumes—if she merely takes for granted—that I'm going to marry her, I must do it. to keep her in countenance. How, in the fiend's name, can I slink out of it, now that I'm accepted? Can I tell her I've examined my heart, and I find I can only love her as a sister? Now, wouldn't that sound well? No, no; I'm a done man. Of course, she had no business to accept me unawares; but as she has done so, I must help
her to keep up the grisly fraud of feminine reluctance; for, as the abbot sings, so must the sacristan respond. It is kismet. This is how all these unaccountable marriages are brought about; though, to be sure, I have the dubious satisfaction of knowing that the enterprise brings me a good many days' march nearer home.”

The expression of heavenly beatitude on Moriarty's face goaded my mind to activity. Sweeping, with one glance, the whole horizon of expediency and possibility, I caught sight of the idea glanced at in a former page, and suggested, you will remember, by my dialogue with Ida.

“By the way, Moriarty,” said I; “respecting that trifling debt of honour—there's another condition that I didn't think of. As a sort of payment on account, you must privately and insidiously circulate a very grave scandal for me.”

“Well, I won't!” exclaimed the young fellow, after a moment's pause. “I don't mind telling a lie when I'm driven to it; but a woman's a woman. Do your own dirty work!”

“Then, by Jove, I'll post you!”

If anyone had used this threat to me, I would have asked how the posting was usually done, and what results might be expected to follow; but Moriarty's lip quivered under the threat.

“Do your worst,” said he, swallowing the lump in his throat.

“You may depend on that,” I replied quietly. “However, the scandal was only about myself.”

“I don't understand.”

“I'll enlighten you. I was going to ask you to take Nelson, or Mooney, or both of them, into your confidence. Then you would arrange that Mrs. Beaudesart should overhear you discussing some horrible scandal in connection with me. And mind, she would have to believe it, or you would be a ruined man for the rest of your life—you would be a defaulting gambler, a byword, a hissing, an astonishment, with the curse of Cain upon your brow. Then she would spurn me with contumely, and I would be my own man again. I would be in sanctuary, so to speak; inviolable by reason of my disgrace. Metaphorically, you could lay the blast, and fire it at your leisure, in my absence. I would leave all details to your own judgment, only holding you responsible for quality of fuse, and quantity of powder. I'd stand the explosion.”

“I'm on!” exclaimed Moriarty, brightening up. “Gosh! I'll give you a character to rights! Mind, it'll make you look small.”

“The smaller the better. I have a small aperture to crawl through, and no other means of escape. Of course, being innocent
all the time, the scandal won't even fizz on my inner consciousness. In fact, I'll feel myself taking a rise out of everyone that believes the yarn; and I'll live it down in good time. Now lay your plans carefully, Moriarty, and make a clean job of it, for your own sake.”

This being definitely settled, I soon demonstrated to the young fellow that his case, as regarded other liabilities, was by no means desperate; and his elastic temperament asserted itself at once. I may add, in passing, that he has never broken his anti-gambling pledge; also, that my £50 remains unpaid to this day.

“Now I must go and catch my horses,” said I. “Can you come?”

“Hold on,” replied Moriarty; “here comes Toby; we'll send him.”

As the half-caste lounged out of the front door of the hut, the cook went out by the back door, and gathered an armful of firewood. Toby turned, and glided back into the hut, and, a moment later, the cook also re-entered, at the opposite side. Then the prince bounded out through the front door, with a triumphant grin on his brown face, and an enormous cockroach, of black sugar in his hand. The next moment, a piece of firewood whizzed through the open door, smote H.R.H. full on Love of Approbation, ricochetted from his gun-metal skull, and banged against the weatherboard wall of an out-house.

“Will yo ever go home, I dunno?” laughed the prince, picking up his hat, while the baffled cook recovered his stick, and. returned to the hut.

“Now what's the use of arguing that a blackfellow belongs to the human race?” queried Moriarty—the last ripple of trouble having vanished from the serene shallowness of his mind. “That welt would have laid one of us out. And did you ever notice that a blackfellow or a half-caste can always clear himself when his horse comes down? The first thing a whitefellow thinks about, when he feels his horse gone, is to get out of the way of what's coming; but it's an even wager that he's pinned. Never so with the inferior race. Now, last Boxing Day, when we had races here, we could see that the main event rested between Admiral Rodney—a big chestnut, belonging to a cove on a visit to the boss—with Toby in the saddle; and that grey of M'Murdo's, Admiral Crichton, with”—

“Repeat that last name, please?”

“Admiral Cry-ton. That slews you! Didn't I tell you you'd be cutting yourself? It's M'Murdo's own pronunciation; and if he doesn't know the proper twang, I'm dash well sure you don't; for he owns the horse. But wasn't it a curious coincidence of name— considering
that neither the owners nor the horses had ever met before? Well, Young Jack was to ride Admiral Crichton; and I had such faith in the horse, with Jack up, that I plunged thundering heavy on him. So did Nelson. But, by jingo, the more we saw of Admiral Rodney, the more frightened we got—in fact, we could see there was nothing for it but to stiffen Toby. Toby was to get a note if he won the big event, and nothing if he lost; but it paid us to give him two notes to run cronk”—

“One moment,” I interrupted—“just oblige me with the name and address of that horse's owner?”

“Shut-up. It's blown over now. But as I was telling you, the chestnut had been a few times round the course, under the owner's eye, and he knew the road; and to make matters better, you might break the reins, but you couldn't get a give out of his mouth; and he could travel like a rifle-bullet; so when Toby tried to get him inside the posts, he pulled and reefed like fury, and bolted altogether; and came flying into the straight, a dozen lengths to the good. Of course, losing the race made a difference of a note to Toby; so he caught the horse's shoulder with his spur, and turned him upside down, going at that bat. Then, to keep himself out of a row, he gammoned dead till we poured a pint of beer down his throat; and he lay groaning for two solid hours, winking now and then at Nelson and me. But that'll just tell you the difference. Neither you nor I would be game to do a thing like that; we couldn't be trained to it; simply because we belong to a superior race. I say, Toby!”—for the half-caste had seated himself near Pawsome's bench, and was there enjoying his cockroach—”off you go, like a good chap, and fetch Collins's horses.”

“Impidence ain't worth a d—n, if it ain't properly carried out,” replied the inferior creation. “Think you git a note a week jist for eatin' your (adj.) tucker an' orderin' people about? I done my day's work. Fork over that plug o' tobacker you're owin' me about the lenth o' that snake. Otherways, shut up. We ain't on equal terms while that stick o' tobacker's between us.”

“I'll straighten you some of these times,” replied Moriarty darkly. “It's coming, Toby!”

“No catchee, no havee, ole son!” laughed the prince. “The divil resave ye, Paddy! Macushla, mavourneen, tare-an'-ouns! whirroo! Bloody ind to the Pope!”

“Toby,” said Moriarty, with a calmness intended to seem ominous; “if I had a gun in my hand, I'd shoot you like a wild-dog. But I suppose I'd get into trouble for it,” he continued scornfully.

“Jist the same's for layin' out a whitefeller,” assented the prince, still rasping at his cockroach, like Ugolini at the living skull of Ruggieri, in Dante's airy conception of the place where wrongs are rectified. (That unhappy mannerism again, you see.)

“Permit me to suggest,” said Moriarty, after a pause, “that if you contemplated your own origin and antecedents, it would assist you to approximate your relative position on this station. Don't you think a trifle of subordination would be appropriate to”—

“A servile and halting imitation of Mrs. B.; and imitation is the sincerest flattery,” I commented. “I'll tell Miss K.”

“Manners, please!—Appropriate, I was saying, to a blasted varmin like you? Permit me to remind you that Mrs. Montgomery, senior, gave a blanket for you when you were little.”

“I know she did,” replied the prince, with just a suspicion of vain-glory. “Nobody would be fool enough to give a blanket for you when you was little. Soolim!”

“Come on, Moriarty,” said I, rising; “I must take a bit off the near end of my journey to-night.”

“Howld your howlt, chaps,” interposed the good-natured half-caste. “I'll run up your horses for you. I was on'y takin' a rise out o' Mr. Mori-(adj.)-arty, Esquire; jist to learn him not to be quite so suddent.” And in another minute, he was striding down the paddock, with his bridle and stockwhip.

Half an hour later, my horses were equipped; and, all the Levites being absent, four or five tribesmen slowly collected under Pawsome's shed, waiting to see what would happen. Cleopatra was not without reputation.

“Tell you what you better do,” said Moriarty to me—“better hang your socks on Nosey Alf's crook to-night. His place is fifteen-mile from here, and very little out of your way. Ill-natured, cranky beggar, Alf is—been on the pea—but there's no end of grass in his paddock. And I say—get him to give you a tune or two on his fiddle. Something splendid, I believe. He's always getting music by post from Sydney. Montgomery had heard him sing and play, some time or other; and when old Mooney was here, just before last shearing, he sent Toby to tell Alf to come to the house in the evening, and bring his fiddle; and Alf came, very much against his grain. Young Mooney was asked into the house, on account of his dad being there; and he swears he never heard anything like Alf's style; though the stubborn devil wouldn't sing a word; nothing but play. And he was just as good on the piano
as on the fiddle, though his hand must have been badly out. Mooney thinks he jibbed on singing because the women were there. Alf's a mis—mis—mis—dash it”—

“Mischief-maker?” I suggested.

“No.—Mis—mis”—

“Mysterious character ?”

“No, no.—Mis—mis”—

“Try a synonym.”

“Is that is? I think it is. Well Alf's a misasynonym—woman-hater—among other things. When he comes to the station, he dodges the women like a criminal. And the unsociable dog begged of Montgomery not to ask him to perform again. One night, Nelson was going past his place, and heard a concert going on, so he left his horse, and sneaked up to the wall; but the music suddenly stopped, and before Nelson knew, Nosey's dog had the seat out of his pants. Nosey came out and apologised for the dog, and brought Nelson in to have some supper; and Nelson stayed till about twelve; but devil a squeak of the fiddle, or a line of a song, could he get out of Alf. But, as the boss says, Alf's only mad enough to know the difference between an eagle-hawk and a saw—foolish expression, it seems to me. Best boundary man on the station, Alf is. Been in the Round Swamp Paddock five years now; and he's likely a fixture for life. Boundary riding for some years in the Bland country before he came here. Now I'll show you how you'll fetch his place”—Moriarty began drawing a diagram on the ground with a stick—“You go through the Red Gate—we'll call this the gate. The track branches there; and you follow this branch. It's the Nalrooka track; and it takes you along here—mind, you're going due east now”—

“Wait, Moriarty,” I interrupted—“don't you see that you're reversing everything? A man would have to stand on his head to understand that map. There is the north, and here is the south.”

“Don't matter a beggar which is the real north and south. I'm showing you the way you've got to go. We'll start afresh to please you. Through here—along here—and follow the same line from end to end of the pine-ridge, with the fence on your right all the way”—

“Hold on, hold on,” I again interrupted—“you're at right angles now. Don't you see that your line's north and south?—and did you ever see a pine-ridge running north and south? Begin again. Say the Red Gate is here; and I turn along here. Now go ahead.”