by Henry Lawson
But he lives on, for it takes a lot to break a man’s heart. He holds up his head and toils on for the sake of a child that is left, and that child is—Isley.
And now the fossicker seems to see a vision of the future. He seems to be standing somewhere, an old, old man, with a younger one at his side; the younger one has Isley’s face. Horses’ feet again! Ah, God! Nemesis once more in troopers’ uniform!
The fossicker falls on his knees in the mud and clay at the bottom of the drive, and prays Heaven to take his last child ere Nemesis comes for him.
Long Bob Sawkins had been known on the diggings as “Bob the Devil”. His profile, at least from one side, certainly did recall that of the sarcastic Mephistopheles; but the other side, like his true character, was by no means a devil’s. His physiognomy had been much damaged, and one eye removed, by the premature explosion of a blast in some old Ballarat mine. The blind eye was covered with a green patch, which gave a sardonic appearance to the remaining features.
He was a stupid, heavy, good-natured Englishman. He stuttered a little, and had a peculiar habit of wedging the monosyllable “why” into his conversation at times when it served no other purpose than to fill up the pauses caused by his stuttering; but this by no means assisted him in his speech, for he often stuttered over the “why” itself.
The sun was getting low down, and its yellow rays reached far up among the saplings of Golden Gully when Bob appeared coming down by the path that ran under the western hill. He was dressed in the usual costume—cotton shirt, moleskin trousers, faded hat and waistcoat, and blucher boots. He carried a pick over his shoulder, the handle of which was run through the heft of a short shovel that hung down behind, and he had a big dish under his arm. He paused opposite the shaft with the windlass, and hailed the boy in his usual form of salutation.
“Look, see here, Isley!”
“What is it, Bob?”
“I seed a young—why—magpie up in the scrub, and yer oughter be able to catch it.”
“Can’t leave the shaft; father’s b’low.”
“How did yer father know there was any—why—wash in the old shaft?”
“Seed old Corney in town Saturday, ’n’ he said thur was enough to make it worth while bailin’ out. Bin bailin’ all the mornin’.”
Bob came over, and letting his tools down with a clatter, he hitched up the knees of his moleskins and sat down on one heel.
“What are yer—why—doin’ on the slate, Isley?” said he, taking out an old clay pipe and lighting it.
“Sums,” said Isley.
Bob puffed away at his pipe a moment.
“ ‘Tain’t no use!” he said, sitting down on the clay and drawing his knees up. “Edication’s a failyer.”
“Listen at him!” exclaimed the boy. “D’yer mean ter say it ain’t no use learnin’ readin’ and writin’ and sums?”
“Isley!”
“Right, father.”
The boy went to the windlass and let the bucket down. Bob offered to help him wind up, but Isley, proud of showing his strength to his friend, insisted on winding by himself.
“You’ll be—why—a strong man some day, Isley,” said Bob, landing the bucket.
“Oh, I could wind up a lot mor’n father puts in. Look how I greased the handles! It works like butter now,” and the boy sent the handles spinning round with a jerk to illustrate his meaning.
“Why did they call yer Isley for?” queried Bob, as they resumed their seats. “It ain’t yer real name, is it?”
“No, my name’s Harry. Adigger useter say I was a isle in the ocean to father ’n’ mother, ’n’ then I was nicknamed Isle, ’n’ then Isley.”
“You hed a—why—brother once, didn’t yer?”
“Yes, but thet was afore I was borned. He died, at least mother used ter say she didn’t know if he was dead; but father says he’s dead as fur’s he’s concerned.”
“And your father hed a brother, too. Did yer ever—why—hear of him?”
“Yes, I heard father talkin’ about it wonst to mother. I think father’s brother got into some row in a bar where a man was killed.”
“And was yer—why—father—why—fond of him?”
“I heard father say that he was wonst, but thet was all past.”
Bob smoked in silence for a while, and seemed to look at some dark clouds that were drifting along like a funeral out in the west. Presently he said half aloud something that sounded like “All, all—why—past.”
“Eh?” said Isley.
“Oh, it’s—why, why—nothin’,” answered Bob, rousing himself. “Is that a paper in yer father’s coat-pocket, Isley?”
“Yes,” said the boy, taking it out.
Bob took the paper and stared hard at it for a moment or so.
“There’s something about the new gold-fields there,” said Bob, putting his finger on a tailor’s advertisement. “I wish you’d—why—read it to me, Isley; I can’t see the small print they uses nowadays.”
“No, thet’s not it,” said the boy, taking the paper, “it’s something about——”
“Isley!”
“ ‘Old on, Bob, father wants me.”
The boy ran to the shaft, rested his hands and forehead against the bole of the windlass, and leant over to hear what his father was saying.
Without a moment’s warning the treacherous bole slipped round; a small body bounded a couple of times against the sides of the shaft and fell at Mason’s feet, where it lay motionless!
“Mason!”
“Ay?”
“Put him in the bucket and lash him to the rope with your belt!”
Afew moments, and——
“Now, Bob!”
Bob’s trembling hands would scarcely grasp the handle, but he managed to wind somehow.
Presently the form of the child appeared, motionless, and covered with clay and water. Mason was climbing up by the steps in the side of the shaft.
Bob tenderly unlashed the boy and laid him under the saplings on the grass; then he wiped some of the clay and blood away from the child’s forehead, and dashed over him some muddy water.
Presently Isley gave a gasp and opened his eyes.
“Are yer—why—hurt much, Isley?” asked Bob.
“Ba—back’s bruk, Bob!”
“Not so bad as that, old man.”
“Where’s father?”
“Coming up.”
Silence a while, and then——
“Father, father! be quick, father!”
Mason reached the surface and came and knelt by the other side of the boy.
“I’ll, I’ll—why—run fur some brandy,” said Bob.
“No use, Bob,” said Isley. “I’m all bruk up.”
“Don’t yer feel better, sonny?”
“No—I’m—goin’ to—die, Bob.”
“Don’t say it; Isley,” groaned Bob.
Ashort silence, and then the boy’s body suddenly twisted with pain. But it was soon over. He lay still awhile, and then said quietly:
“Good-bye, Bob!”
Bob made a vain attempt to speak. “Isley!” he said. “——”
The child turned and stretched out his hands to the silent, stony-faced man on the other side.
“Father—father, I’m goin’!”
Ashuddering groan broke from Mason’s lips, and then all was quiet.
Bob had taken off his hat to wipe his forehead, and his face, in spite of its disfigurement, was strangely like the face of the stone-like man opposite.
For a moment they looked at one another across the body of the child, and then Bob said quietly:
“He never knowed.”
“What does it matter?” said Mason gruffly; and, taking up the dead child, he walked towards the hut.
It was a very sad little group that gathered outside Mason’s hut next morning. Martin’s wife had been there all the morning cleaning up and doing what she could. One of the women had torn up her husband’s only white shirt for
a shroud, and they had made the little body look clean and even beautiful in the wretched little hut.
One after another the fossickers took off their hats and entered, stooping through the low door. Mason sat silently at the foot of the bunk with his head supported by his hand, and watched the men with a strange, abstracted air.
Bob had ransacked the camp in search of some boards for a coffin.
“It will be the last I’ll be able to—why—do for him,” he said.
At last he came to Mrs Martin in despair. That lady took him into the dining-room, and pointed to a large pine table, of which she was very proud.
“Knock that table to pieces,” she said.
Taking off the few things that were lying on it, Bob turned it over and began to knock the top off.
When he had finished the coffin one of the fossicker’s wives said it looked too bare, and she ripped up her black riding-skirt, and made Bob tack the cloth over the coffin.
There was only one vehicle available in the place, and that was Martin’s old dray; so about two o’clock Pat Martin attached his old horse Dublin to the shafts with sundry bits of harness and plenty of old rope, and dragged Dublin, dray and all, across to Mason’s hut.
The little coffin was carried out, and two gin-cases were placed by its side in the dray to serve as seats for Mrs Martin and Mrs Grimshaw, who mounted in tearful silence.
Pat Martin felt for his pipe, but remembered himself and mounted on the shaft. Mason fastened up the door of the hut with a padlock. Acouple of blows on one of his sharp points roused Dublin from his reverie. With a lurch to the right and another to the left he started, and presently the little funeral disappeared down the road that led to the “town” and its cemetery.
About six months afterwards Bob Sawkins went on a short journey, and returned with a tall, bearded young man. He and Bob arrived after dark, and went straight to Mason’s hut. There was a light inside, but when Bob knocked there was no answer.
“Go in; don’t be afraid,” he said to his companion.
The stranger pushed open the creaking door, and stood bareheaded just inside the doorway.
Abilly was boiling unheeded on the fire. Mason sat at the table with his face buried in his arms.
“Father!”
There was no answer, but the flickering of the firelight made the stranger think he could detect an impatient shrug in Mason’s shoulders.
For a moment the stranger paused irresolute, and then stepping up to the table, he laid his hand on Mason’s arm, and said gently:
“Father! Do you want another mate?”
But the sleeper did not—at least, not in this world.
"Some Day"
THE two travellers had yarned late in their camp, and the moon was getting low down through the mulga. Mitchell’s mate had just finished a rather racy yarn, but it seemed to fall flat on Mitchell—he was in a sentimental mood. He smoked a while, and thought, and then said:
“Ah! there was one little girl that I was properly struck on. She came to our place on a visit to my sister. I think she was the best little girl that ever lived, and about the prettiest. She was just eighteen, and didn’t come up to my shoulder; the biggest blue eyes you ever saw, and she had hair that reached down to her knees, and so thick you couldn’t span it with your two hands—brown and glossy—and her skin was like lilies and roses. Of course, I never thought she’d look at a rough, ugly, ignorant brute like me, and I used to keep out of her way and act a little stiff towards her; I didn’t want the others to think I was gone on her, because I knew they’d laugh at me, and maybe she’d laugh at me more than all. She would come and talk to me, and sit near me at table; but I thought that that was on account of her good nature, and she pitied me because I was such a rough, awkward chap. I was gone on that girl, and no joking; and I felt quite proud to think she was a countrywoman of mine. But I wouldn’t let her know that, for I felt sure she’d only laugh.
“Well, things went on till I got the offer of two or three years’ work on a station up near the border, and I had to go, for I was hard up; besides, I wanted to get away. Stopping round where she was only made me miserable.
“The night I left they were all down at the station to see me off—including the girl I was gone on. When the train was ready to start she was standing away by herself on the dark end of the platform, and my sister kept nudging me and winking, and fooling about, but I didn’t know what she was driving at. At last she said:
“ ‘Go and speak to her, you noodle; go and say good-bye to Edie.’
“So I went up to where she was, and, when the others turned their backs—
“ ‘Well, good-bye, Miss Brown,’ I said, holding out my hand; ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever see you again, for Lord knows when I’ll be back. Thank you for coming to see me off.’
“Just then she turned her face to the light, and I saw she was crying. She was trembling all over. Suddenly she said, ‘Jack! Jack!’ just like that, and held up her arms like this.”
Mitchell was speaking in a tone of voice that didn’t belong to him, and his mate looked up. Mitchell’s face was solemn, and his eyes were fixed on the fire.
“I suppose you gave her a good hug then, and a kiss?” asked the mate.
“I s’pose so,” snapped Mitchell. “There is some things a man doesn’t want to joke about…Well, I think we’ll shove on one of the billies, and have a drink of tea before we turn in.”
“I suppose,” said Mitchell’s mate, as they drank their tea, “I suppose you’ll go back and marry her some day?”
“Some day! That’s it; it looks like it, doesn’t it? We all say, ‘Some day’. I used to say it ten years ago, and look at me now. I’ve been knocking round for five years, and the last two years constant on the track, and no show of getting off it unless I go for good, and what have I got for it? I look like going home and getting married, without a penny in my pocket or a rag to my back scarcely, and no show of getting them. I swore I’d never go back home without a cheque, and, what’s more, I never will; but the cheque days are past. Look at that boot! If we were down among the settled districts we’d be called tramps and beggars; and what’s the difference? I’ve been a fool, I know, but I’ve paid for it; and now there’s nothing for it but to tramp, tramp, tramp for your tucker, and keep tramping till you get old and careless and dirty, and older, and more careless and dirtier, and you get used to the dust and sand, and heat, and flies, and mosquitoes, same as a bullock does, and lose ambition and hope, and get contented with this animal life, like a dog, and till your swag seems part of yourself, and you’d be lost and uneasy and lightshouldered without it, and you don’t care a damn if you’ll ever get work again, or live like a Christian; and you go on like this till the spirit of a bullock takes the place of the heart of a man. Who cares? If we hadn’t found the track yesterday we might have lain and rotted in that lignum, and no one been any the wiser—or sorrier—who knows? Somebody might have found us in the end, but it mightn’t have been worth his while to go out of his way and report us. Damn the world, say I!”
He smoked for a while in savage silence; then he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, felt for his tobacco with a sigh, and said:
“Well, I am a bit out of sorts to-night. I’ve been thinking…I think we’d best turn in, old man; we’ve got a long, dry stretch before us to-morrow.”
They rolled out their swags on the sand, lay down, and wrapped themselves in their blankets. Mitchell covered his head with a piece of calico, because the moonlight and wind kept him awake.
FROM WHILE THE BILLY BOILS—SECOND SERIES
The Drover’s Wife
THE two-roomed house is built of round timber, slabs, and stringy bark, and floored with split slabs. Abig bark kitchen standing at one end is larger than the house itself, verandah included.
Bush all round—bush with no horizon, for the country is flat. No ranges in the distance. The bush consists of stunted, rotten native apple trees. No undergrowth. Nothing to r
elieve the eye save the darker green of a few she-oaks which are sighing above the narrow, almost waterless creek. Nineteen miles to the nearest sign of civilisation—a shanty on the main road.
The drover, an ex-squatter, is away with sheep. His wife and children are left here alone.
Four ragged, dried-up-looking children are playing about the house. Suddenly one of them yells: “Snake! Mother, here’s a snake!”
The gaunt, sun-browned bushwoman dashes from the kitchen, snatches her baby from the ground, holds it on her left hip, and reaches for a stick.
“Where is it?”
“Here! gone into the wood-heap!” yells the eldest boy—a sharp-faced, excited urchin of eleven. “Stop there, mother! I’ll have him. Stand back! I’ll have the beggar!”
“Tommy, come here, or you’ll be bit. Come here at once when I tell you, you little wretch!”
The youngster comes reluctantly, carrying a stick bigger than himself. Then he yells, triumphantly:
“There it goes—under the house!” and darts away with club uplifted. At the same time the big, black, yellow-eyed dog-of-allbreeds, who has shown the wildest interest in the proceedings, breaks his chain and rushes after that snake. He is a moment late, however, and his nose reaches the crack in the slabs just as the end of its tail disappears. Almost at the same moment the boy’s club comes down and skins the aforesaid nose. Alligator takes small notice of this and proceeds to undermine the building; but he is subdued after a struggle and chained up. They cannot afford to lose him.
The drover’s wife makes the children stand together near the dog-house while she watches for the snake. She gets two small dishes of milk and sets them down near the wall to tempt it to come out; but an hour goes by and it does not show itself.
It is near sunset, and a thunderstorm is coming. The children must be brought inside. She will not take them into the house, for she knows the snake is there, and may at any moment come up through the cracks in the rough slab floor; so she carries several armfuls of firewood into the kitchen, and then takes the children there. The kitchen has no floor—or, rather, an earthen one, called a “ground floor” in this part of the bush. There is a large, roughly made table in the centre of the place. She brings the children in and makes them get on this table. They are two boys and two girls—mere babies. She gives them some supper, and then, before it gets dark, she goes into the house, and snatches up some pillows and bedclothes—expecting to see or lay her hand on the snake any minute. She makes a bed on the kitchen table for the children, and sits down beside it to watch all night.
