Selected Stories By Henry Lawson Part 4

"Before the alarm goes off!"

He was talking in his sleep.

She rose gently and put the alarm on two hours. "He can rest now," she whispered to herself.

Presently Arvie sat bolt upright, and said quickly, "Mother! I thought the alarm went off!" Then, without waiting for an answer, he lay down as suddenly and slept.

The rain had cleared away, and a bright, starry dome was over sea and city; over slum and villa alike; but little of it could be seen from the hovel in Jones's Alley, save a glimpse of the Southern Cross and a few stars round it. It was what ladies call a "lovely night", as seen from the house of Grinder-"Grinderville"-with its moonlit terraces and garden sloping gently to the water, and its windows lit up for an Easter ball, and its reception rooms thronged by its own exclusive set, and one of its charming and accomplished daughters melting a select party to tears by her pathetic recitation about a little crossing sweeper.

There was something wrong with the alarm clock, or else Mrs Aspinall had made a mistake, for the gong sounded startlingly in the dead of night. She woke with a painful start, and lay still, expecting to hear Arvie get up; but he made no sign. She turned a white, frightened face towards the sofa where he lay-the light from the alley's solitary lamp on the pavement above shone down through the window, and she saw that he had not moved.

Why didn't the clock wake him? He was such a light sleeper! "Arvie!" she called; no answer. "Arvie!" she called again, with a strange ring of remonstrance mingling with the terror in her voice. Arvie never answered.

"Oh! my G.o.d!" she moaned.

She rose and stood by the sofa. Arvie lay on his back with his arms folded-a favourite sleeping position of his; but his eyes were wide open and staring upwards as though they would stare through ceiling and roof to the place where G.o.d ought to be.

He was dead.

"My G.o.d! My G.o.d!" she cried.

The Union Buries Its Dead.

WHILE out boating one Sunday afternoon on a billabong across the river, we saw a young man on horseback driving some horses along the bank. He said it was a fine day, and asked if the water was deep there. The joker of our party said it was deep enough to drown him, and he laughed and rode farther up. We didn't take much notice of him.

Next day a funeral gathered at a corner pub and asked each other in to have a drink while waiting for the hea.r.s.e. They pa.s.sed away some of the time dancing jigs to a piano in the bar parlour. They pa.s.sed away the rest of the time skylarking and fighting.

The defunct was a young union labourer, about twenty-five, who had been drowned the previous day while trying to swim some horses across a billabong of the Darling.

He was almost a stranger in town, and the fact of his having been a union man accounted for the funeral. The police found some union papers in his swag, and called at the General Labourers' Union Office for information about him. That's how we knew. The secretary had very little information to give. The departed was a "Roman", and the majority of the town were otherwise-but unionism is stronger than creed. Drink, however, is stronger than unionism; and, when the hea.r.s.e presently arrived, more than two-thirds of the funeral were unable to follow. They were too drunk.

The procession numbered fifteen, fourteen souls following the broken sh.e.l.l of a soul. Perhaps not one of the fourteen possessed a soul any more than the corpse did-but that doesn't matter.

Four or five of the funeral, who were boarders at the pub, borrowed a trap which the landlord used to carry pa.s.sengers to and from the railway station. They were strangers to us who were on foot, and we to them. We were all strangers to the corpse.

Ahorseman, who looked like a drover just returned from a big trip, dropped into our dusty wake and followed us a few hundred yards, dragging his packhorse behind him, but a friend made wild and demonstrative signals from a hotel verandah-hooking at the air in front with his right hand and jobbing his left thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the bar-so the drover hauled off and didn't catch up to us any more. He was a stranger to the entire show.

We walked in twos. There were three twos. It was very hot and dusty; the heat rushed in fierce dazzling rays across every iron roof and light-coloured wall that was turned to the sun. One or two pubs closed respectfully until we got past. They closed their bar doors and the patrons went in and out through some side or back entrance for a few minutes. Bushmen seldom grumble at an inconvenience of this sort, when it is caused by a funeral. They have too much respect for the dead.

On the way to the cemetery we pa.s.sed three shearers sitting on the shady side of a fence. One was drunk-very drunk. The other two covered their right ears with their hats, out of respect for the departed-whoever he might have been-and one of them kicked the drunk and muttered something to him.

He straightened himself up, stared, and reached helplessly for his hat, which he shoved half off and then on again. Then he made a great effort to pull himself together-and succeeded. He stood up, braced his back against the fence, knocked off his hat, and remorsefully placed his foot on it-to keep it off his head till the funeral pa.s.sed.

A tall, sentimental drover, who walked by my side, cynically quoted Byronic verses suitable to the occasion-to death-and asked with pathetic humour whether we thought the dead man's ticket would be recognised "over yonder". It was a G.L.U. ticket, and the general opinion was that it would be recognised.

Presently my friend said: "You remember when we were in the boat yesterday, we saw a man driving some horses along the bank?"

"Yes."

He nodded at the hea.r.s.e and said: "Well, that's him."

I thought awhile.

"I didn't take any particular notice of him," I said. "He said something, didn't he?"

"Yes; said it was a fine day. You'd have taken more notice if you'd known that he was doomed to die in the hour, and that those were the last words he would say to any man in this world."

"To be sure," said a full voice from the rear. "If ye'd known that, ye'd have prolonged the conversation."

We plodded on across the railway line and along the hot, dusty road which ran to the cemetery, some of us talking about the accident, and lying about the narrow escapes we had had ourselves. Presently someone said: "There's the Devil."

I looked up and saw a priest standing in the shade of the tree by the cemetery gate.

The hea.r.s.e was drawn up and the tail-boards were opened. The funeral extinguished its right ear with its hat as four men lifted the coffin out and laid it over the grave. The priest-a pale, quiet young fellow-stood under the shade of a sapling which grew at the head of the grave. He took off his hat, dropped it carelessly on the ground, and proceeded to business. I noticed that one or two heathens winced slightly when the holy water was sprinkled on the coffin. The drops quickly evaporated, and the little round black spots they left were soon dusted over; but the spots showed, by contrast, the cheapness and shabbiness of the cloth with which the coffin was covered. It seemed black before; now it looked a dusky grey.

Just here man's ignorance and vanity made a farce of the funeral. Abig, bull-necked publican, with heavy, blotchy features and a supremely ignorant expression, picked up the priest's straw hat and held it about two inches over the head of his reverence during the whole of the service. The father, be it remembered, was standing in the shade. Afew shoved their hats on and off uneasily, struggling between their disgust for the living and their respect for the dead. The hat had a conical crown and a brim sloping down all round like a sunshade, and the publican held it with his great red claw spread over the crown. To do the priest justice, perhaps he didn't notice the incident. Astage priest or parson in the same position might have said: "Put the hat down, my friend; is not the memory of our departed brother worth more than my complexion?" Awattlebark layman might have expressed himself in stronger language, none the less to the point. But my priest seemed unconscious of what was going on. Besides, the publican was a great and important pillar of the Church. He couldn't, as an ignorant and conceited a.s.s, lose such a good opportunity of a.s.serting his faithfulness and importance to his Church.

The grave looked very narrow under the coffin, and I drew a breath of relief when the box slid easily down. I saw a coffin get stuck once, at Rookwood, and it had to be yanked out with difficulty, and laid on the sods at the feet of the heart-broken relations, who howled dismally while the grave-diggers widened the hole. But they don't cut contracts so fine in the West. Our grave-digger was not altogether bowelless, and, out of respect for that human quality described as "feelin's", he sc.r.a.ped up some light and dusty soil and threw it down to deaden the fall of the clay lumps on the coffin. He also tried to steer the first few shovelfuls gently down against the end of the grave with the back of the shovel turned outwards, but the hard, dry Darling River clods rebounded and knocked all the same. It didn't matter much-nothing does. The fall of lumps of clay on a stranger's coffin doesn't sound any different from the fall of the same things on an ordinary wooden box-at least I didn't notice anything awesome or unusual in the sound; but, perhaps, one of us-the most sensitive-might have been impressed by being reminded of a burial of long ago, when the thump of every sod jolted his heart.

I have left out the wattle-because it wasn't there. I have also neglected to mention the heart-broken old mate, with his grizzled head bowed and great pearly drops streaming down his rugged cheeks. He was absent-he was probably "Out Back". For similar reasons I have omitted reference to the suspicious moisture in the eyes of a bearded bush ruffian named Bill. Bill failed to turn up; and the only moisture was that which was induced by the heat. I have left out the "sad Australian sunset" because the sun was not going down at the time. The burial took place exactly at mid-day.

The dead bushman's name was Jim, apparently; but they found no portraits, nor locks of hair, nor any love letters, nor anything of that kind in his swag-not even a reference to his mother; only some papers relating to union matters. Most of us didn't know the name till we saw it on the coffin; we knew him as "that poor chap that got drowned yesterday".

"So his name's James Tyson," said my drover acquaintance, looking at the plate.

"Why! Didn't you know that before?" I asked.

"No; but I knew he was a union man."

It turned out, afterwards, that J.T. wasn't his real name-only "the name he went by".

Anyhow he was buried by it, and most of the "Great Australian Dailies" have mentioned in their brevity columns that a young man named James John Tyson was drowned in a billabong of the Darling last Sunday.

We did hear, later on, what his real name was; but if we ever chance to read it in the "Missing Friends Column", we shall not be able to give any information to heart-broken Mother or Sister or Wife, nor to anyone who could let him hear something to his advantage-for we have already forgotten the name.

On the Edge of a Plain.

"I'D been away from home for eight years," said Mitch.e.l.l to his mate, as they dropped their swags in the mulga shade and sat down. "I hadn't written a letter-kept putting it off, and a blundering fool of a fellow that got down the day before me told the old folks that he'd heard I was dead."

Here he took a pull at his water-bag.

"When I got home they were all in mourning for me. It was night, and the girl that opened the door screamed and fainted away like a shot."

He lit his pipe.

"Mother was upstairs howling and moaning in a chair, with all the girls boo-hooing round her for company. The old man was sitting in the back kitchen crying to himself."

He put his hat down on the ground, dinted in the crown, and poured some water into the hollow for his cattle-pup.

"The girls came rushing down. Mother was so pumped out that she couldn't get up. They thought at first I was a ghost, and then they all tried to get hold of me at once-nearly smothered me. Look at that pup! You want to carry a tank of water on a dry stretch when you've got a pup that drinks as much as two men."

He poured a drop more water into the top of his hat.

"Well, mother screamed and nearly fainted when she saw me. Such a picnic you never saw. They kept it up all night. I thought the old cove was gone off his chump. The old woman wouldn't let go my hand for three mortal hours. Have you got the knife?"

He cut up some more tobacco.

"All next day the house was full of neighbours, and the first to come was an old sweetheart of mine; I never thought she cared for me till then. Mother and the girls made me swear never to go away any more; and they kept watching me, and hardly let me go outside for fear I'd--"

"Get drunk?"

"No,-you're smart-for fear I'd clear. At last I swore on the Bible that I'd never leave home while the old folks were alive; and then mother seemed easier in her mind."

He rolled the pup over and examined its feet. "I expect I'll have to carry him a bit-his feet are very sore. Well, he's done pretty well this morning, and anyway he won't drink so much when he's carried."

"You broke your promise about leaving home," said his mate.

Mitch.e.l.l stood up, stretched himself, and looked dolefully from his heavy swag to the wide, hot, shadeless cotton-bush plain ahead.

"Oh, yes," he yawned, "I stopped at home for a week, and then they began to growl because I couldn't get any work to do."

The mate guffawed and Mitch.e.l.l grinned. They shouldered the swags, with the pup on top of Mitch.e.l.l's, took up their billies and water-bags, turned their unshaven faces to the wide, hazy distance, and left the timber behind them.

In A Dry Season.

DRAW a wire fence and a few ragged gums, and add some scattered sheep running away from the train. Then you'll have the bush all along the New South Wales Western line from Bathurst on.

The railway towns consist of a public house and a general store, with a square tank and a schoolhouse on piles in the nearer distance. The tank stands at the end of the school and is not many times smaller than the building itself. It is safe to call the pub "The Railway Hotel", and the store "The Railway Stores", with an "s". Acouple of patient, ungroomed hacks are probably standing outside the pub while their masters are inside having a drink-several drinks. Also it's safe to draw a sundowner sitting listlessly on a bench on the verandah, reading the Bulletin.

The Railway Stores seems to exist only in the shadow of the pub, and it is impossible to conceive either as being independent of the other. There is sometimes a small, oblong weatherboard building-unpainted, and generally leaning in one of the eight possible directions and perhaps with a twist in another-which, from its half-obliterated sign, seems to have started as a rival to the Railway Stores; but the shutters are up and the place empty.

The only town I saw that differed much from the above consisted of a box-bark humpy with a clay chimney, and a woman standing at the door throwing out the wash-up water.

By way of variety, the artist might make a water-colour sketch of a fettler's tent on the line, with a billy hanging over the fire in front, and three fettlers standing round, filling their pipes.

Slop sac suits, red faces, and old-fashioned, flat-brimmed hats, with wire round the brims, begin to drop into the train on the other side of Bathurst; and here and there a hat with three inches of c.r.a.pe round the crown, which perhaps signifies death in the family at some remote date, and perhaps doesn't. Sometimes, I believe, it only means grease under the band. I notice that when a bushman puts c.r.a.pe round his hat he generally leaves it there till the hat wears out, or another friend dies. In the latter case, he buys a new piece of c.r.a.pe. This outward sign of bereavement usually has a jolly, red face beneath it. Death is about the only cheerful thing in the bush.

We crossed the Macquarie-a narrow, muddy gutter with a dog swimming across, and three goats interested.

Alittle further on we saw the first sundowner. He carried a Royal Alfred, and had a billy in one hand and a stick in the other. He was dressed in a tail-coat turned yellow, a print shirt, and a pair of moleskin trousers, with big square calico patches on the knees; and his old straw hat was covered with calico. Suddenly he slipped his swag, dropped his billy, and ran forward, boldly flourishing the stick. I thought that he was mad, and was about to attack the train, but he wasn't; he was only killing a snake. I didn't have time to see whether he cooked the snake or not-perhaps he only thought of Adam.

Somebody told me that the country was very dry on the other side of Nevertire. It is. I wouldn't like to sit down on it anywhere. The least horrible spot in the bush, in a dry season, is where the bush isn't-where it has been cleared away and a green crop is trying to grow. They talk of settling people on the land! Better settle in it. I'd rather settle on the water; at least, until some gigantic system of irrigation is perfected in the West.

Along about Byrock we saw the first shearers. They dress like the unemployed, but differ from that body in their looks of independence. They sat on trucks and wool-bales and the fence, watching the train, and hailed Bill, and Jim, and Tom, and asked how those individuals were getting on.

Here we came across soft felt hats with straps round the crowns and full-bearded faces under them. Also a splendid-looking blacktracker in a masher uniform and a pair of Wellington boots.

One or two square-cuts and stand-up collars struggle dismally through to the bitter end. Often a member of the unemployed starts cheerfully out, with a letter from the Government Labour Bureau in his pocket, and nothing else. He has an idea that the station where he has the job will be within easy walking distance of Bourke. Perhaps he thinks there'll be a cart or a buggy waiting for him. He travels for a night and day without a bite to eat, and, on arrival, he finds that the station is eighty or a hundred miles away. Then he has to explain matters to a publican and a coach-driver. G.o.d bless the publican and the coach-driver! G.o.d forgive our social system!

Native industry was represented at one place along the line by three tiles, a chimney-pot, and a length of piping on a slab.

Somebody said to me, "Yer wanter go out back, young man, if yer wanter see the country. Yer wanter get away from the line." I don't wanter; I've been there.

You could go to the brink of eternity so far as Australia is concerned and yet meet an animated mummy of a swagman who will talk of going "out back". Out upon the out-back fiend!

About Byrock we met the bush liar in all his glory. He was dressed like-like a bush larrikin. His name was Jim. He had been to a ball where some blank had "touched" his blanky overcoat. The overcoat had a cheque for ten "quid" in the pocket. He didn't seem to feel the loss much. "Wot's ten quid?" He'd been everywhere, including the Gulf country. He still had three or four sheds to go to. He had telegrams in his pocket from half-a-dozen squatters and supers offering him pens on any terms. He didn't give a blank whether he took them or no. He thought at first he had the telegrams on him, but found that he had left them in the pocket of the overcoat aforesaid. He had learned butchering in a day. He was a bit of a sc.r.a.pper himself and talked a lot about the ring. At the last station where he sh.o.r.e he gave the super the father of a hiding. The super was a big chap, about six-foot-three, and had knocked out Paddy Somebody in one round. He worked with a man who sh.o.r.e four hundred sheep in nine hours.

Here a quiet-looking bushman in a corner of the carriage grew restless, and presently he opened his mouth and took the liar down in about three minutes.

At 5.30 we saw a long line of camels moving out across the sunset. There's something snaky about camels. They remind me of turtles and goannas.

Somebody said, "Here's Bourke."

Another of Mitch.e.l.l's Plans for the Future.

"I'LL get down among the c.o.c.kies along the Lachlan or some of those rivers," said Mitch.e.l.l, throwing down his swag beneath a big tree. "Aman stands a better show down there. It's a mistake to come out back. I knocked around a good deal down there among the farms. Could always get plenty of tucker, and a job if I wanted it. One c.o.c.ky I worked for wanted me to stay with him for good. Sorry I didn't. I'd have been better off now. I was treated more like one of the family, and there was a couple of good-looking daughters. One of them was clean gone on me. There are some grand girls down that way. I always got on well with girls, because I could play the fiddle and sing a bit. They'll be glad to see me when I get back there again, I know. I'll be all right-no more bother about tucker. I'll just let things slide as soon as I spot the house. I'll bet my boots the kettle will be boiling, and everything in the house will be on the table before I'm there twenty minutes. And the girls will be running to meet the old c.o.c.ky when he comes riding home at night, and they'll let down the slip-rails, and ask him to guess 'who's up at our place?' Yes, I'll find a job with some old c.o.c.ky, with a good-looking daughter or two. I'll get on ploughing if I can; that's the sort of work I like; best graft about a farm.

"By-and-by the c.o.c.ky'll have a few sheep he wants shorn, and one day he'll say to me, 'Jack, if you hear of a shearer knockin' round let me know-I've got a few sheep I want sh.o.r.e.'

" 'How many have you got?' I'll say.

" 'Oh, about fifteen hundred.'

" 'And what d'you think of giving?'