Such Is Life Part 60

"By-the-way, Alf," I remarked, as I pulled off my socks; "I was forgetting your problem. The solution is clear enough to me, but the inquiry opens out no end of side-issues, each of which must be followed out to its re-intersection with the main line of argument, if we wish to leave our conclusion una.s.sailable at any point. The question, then, is: Do we love a woman for her beauty, for her virtues, or for her accomplishments?

Now let us make sure of our terminology." I paused, but Alf maintained silence.

"In the first place," I continued, kicking off the garment which it is unlawful even to name, "we must inquire what the personal beauty of woman is, and wherein it consists. It consists in approximation to a given ideal; and this ideal is not absolute; it is elastic in respect of races and civilisations, though each type may be regarded as more or less rigid within its own domain. Pa.s.sing over such racial ideals as the Hottentot Venus, and waiving comparison between the Riverine ideal of fifty years ago and that of to-day, we have the typical Eve of Flanders as one ideal, and the typical Eve of Italy as another." Again I paused, but Alf remained silent.

"Moreover," I continued, settling myself down into the comfortable mattress-- "if no specimen of cla.s.sic art had survived the dark ages, I question whether we would implicitly accept as our present ideal the chiselled profile, in which physiognomists fail to find any special indications of moral or intellectual excellence. But when we based our modern civilisation on the relics of cla.s.sic Greece--directly, or through Rome--we naturally accepted the ideal of beauty then and there current. Attila or Abderrahman might have deflected the European standard of beauty into a widely different ideal, but it was not to be. And we're too p.r.o.ne to accept our cla.s.sic ideal as being identified with civilisation and refinement. We should remember that the flat features of the Coptic ideal looked out on high attainments in art and science when our h.e.l.lenic archetypes, in spite of their chiselled profiles, were drifting across from the Hindo-Koosh, in the blanket-and-tomahawk stage of civilisation. Also, the slant-eyed ideal of China has a decent record. Further still, the German is facially coa.r.s.er, and mentally higher, than the Circa.s.sian." Again I paused.

"Are n't you sleepy?" asked Alf, gently but significantly.

"I ought to be," I replied, humouring his present caprice, though grieved to withhold the solution which he had so earnestly desired an hour before.

"Just as the secondary use of the bee is to make honey, and his primary one to teach us habits of industry, so the secondary use of the hen is to lay eggs, and her primary one to teach us proper hours. But, unfortunately, we don't avail ourselves of the lessons written for us in the Book of Nature; we simply eat the honey and the eggs, allowing our capability and G.o.d-like reason to fust in us, unused. Such is life, Alf." And in thirty seconds I was asleep.

On awaking, as usual, to listen for bells, I became conscious of something between a sigh and a groan, outside the hut. This was repeated again and again, until, actuated by compa.s.sion rather than curiosity, I crept to the door, and looked out. Six or eight yards away, Alf was kneeling at the fence, his arms on one of the wires, and the poor, disfigured face, wet with tears, turned westward to the pitiless moon, now just setting.

Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd, thought I; and it then occurred to me that my own acute, philosophic temperament was one of the things I ought to be thankful for. But I couldn't feel thankful; I could only feel powerless and half-resentful in the presence of a distress which seemed proof against palliative, let alone antidote. At length the moon disappeared; then the boundary man's forehead sank on his arms, a calm came over him, and I knew that his shapeless vagaries had taken form in prayer.

So I withdrew to my possum-rug, speculating on the mysterious effect of a ray of lunar light on grey matter protected by various plies of apparently well-arranged natural armour.

When I woke again, the early sunlight was streaming through the open door, and Alf, with a short veil of c.r.a.pe concealing the middle of his face, was frying chops at the fire. The fit had pa.s.sed away, and he was perfectly sane and cheerful.

My first solicitude was for Pup, but I soon saw that he was more than merely safe. He was lying at the foot of the meat-pole, gorged like a boa-constrictor, while a pair of half-chewed feet, still attached to the loosened rope, were all that remained of the turkey. Probably he had stood on his hind-feet, scratching at the rope, till the hitch, hurriedly secured in the first place, had come undone. I was too well accustomed to such things to feel any embarra.s.sment; and as for Alf, I couldn't help thinking that the loss of his turkey enhanced the cordiality of his manner.

"Grandest dog I've seen for years," he remarked, as he set the table.

"Do you get many kangaroos with him?"

"Oh, no," I replied; "I never get one, and don't intend to. I never let him go after anything. It's quite enough, and sometimes more than enough, for him to do his regular travelling. The hot weather comes very severe on him; in fact, some days I have to give him a drink every hour, or oftener.

Then he has the hard ground to contend with; and when the rain comes, the dirt sticks between his toes, and annoys him. Windy weather is bad for him, too; and frost puts a set on him altogether. Then he's always swarming with fleas, and in addition to that, the flies have a particular fancy for him. And, seeing that one half of the population is always plotting to steal him, and the other half trying to poison him, while, for his own part, he has a confirmed habit of getting lost, you may be sure we have plenty to occupy our minds, without thinking about kangaroos. He's considerably more trouble to me than all my money, but he's worth it. As you say, he's a fine dog. I don't know what I should do without him."

"I don't know what I should do without my dog, either," replied Alf.

And he related some marvellous stories of the animal's sagacity; to which, of course, I could n't respond on Pup's behalf.

Then, whilst we saddled-up and rode off together at a walk, the conversation naturally drifted to horses, until about ten o'clock, when we stopped at a little wicket-gate in the north-east corner of Alf's ten-by-five paddock.

"You're in the Patagonia Paddock now," said he, as I pa.s.sed through the gate.

"You'll strike the track in six miles. Can I do anything for you at the station?" he added, after a pause. "Any message, or anything?"

"By-the-way, yes, Alf, if you'll be so good. When will you be going across?"

"To-day," he replied. "I'm not going round the paddock."

I drew my writing-case from Bunyip's pack; and this was the note I pencilled:--

Wallaby Track, l0/ 2/'84

Dear Jack

When you remarked, yesterday, that the saddle on my horse was very like one that a red-headed galoot had stolen from you, you displayed a creditable acuteness, combined with a still more creditable unsuspiciousness. It was your saddle once, but it is yours no longer. It is mine.

Demand not how the prize I hold; It was not given, nor lent, nor sold Rokeby.

You will find three one-pound notes in this letter.

Please accept the same as compensation for loss of the article in question. This is all you are likely to get; for though the saddle is honestly worth about twice that amount, my conscience now acquits me in the matter; moreover, my official salary is so judiciously proportioned to my frugal requirements that I can afford no more. If you duly receive this money, and at the same time feel hopelessly mystified concerning the saddle, a double purpose will be fulfilled.

Yours, in a manner of speaking,

THOMAS COLLINS.

"I'll put this into Jack's hand, if I live," said the boundary man, with amusing solemnity, as he b.u.t.toned his jumper-pocket over the letter.

"Thank you, Alf. And now," I continued, retaining for a moment the hand he extended in farewell--"take my advice, and, while you're at the station, give Montgomery notice. Let some more capable boundary man take your place.

You're not worth your damper at this work; for no man's ability is comprehensive enough to cover musical proficiency such as yours, and leave the narrowest flap available for anything else. I can see through you like gla.s.s. I could write your biography. And, believe me, you're no more fitted for this life than you are to preside over a school of Stoic Philosophy. You're a reed, shaken by the wind. Be a man, Alf.

Turn your face eastward or southward, and challenge Fortune with your violin and your voice."

He made no reply, but below the edge of the c.r.a.pe mask I saw his lips move, as he bent his head in unconscious acquiescence.

A quarter of an hour afterward, I looked back to see him and his history a shapeless speck, far away along the diminishing perspective of the line of fence. There was something impressive in the recollection that, during the whole of our companionship, he had never uttered one objectionable or uncharitable word, nor attempted any witticism respecting Mrs. Beaudesart.

CHAPTER VII

The reader, however unruly under weaker management, is by this time made aware of a power, beyond his own likes and dislikes, controlling the selection and treatment of these informal annals. That power, in the nature of things, resides napoleonically with myself, and has, I trust, been exercised toward the information and edification of the few who fall under its jurisdiction-- suggesting, as it does, Tom Hood's idea of perfect rule: An angel from heaven, and a despotism.

Encouraged by this a.s.surance, and prompted, as usual, by a refinement which some might construe into fastidiousness, I shall once more avail myself of the prerogative hitherto so profitably sustained. The routine record of March 9 is not a desirable text. It would merely call forth from fitting oblivion the lambing-down of two stalwart fencers by a pimply old shanty-keeper; and you know this sort of thing has been described ad sickenum by other pens, less proper than mine--described, in fact, till you would think that, in the back-country, drinking took the place of Conduct, as three-fourths of life; whilst the remaining fourth consisted of fighting. Whereas, outside the shearing season, you might travel a hundred miles, calling at five shanties, without seeing a man the worse for drink; and you would be still more likely to go a thousand miles, calling at fifty shanties, without seeing any indication of a fight. Of course, there are some queer tragedies, and many melancholy farces, enacted at the shanties; but speaking in a broad, statistical way, the shanty-keeper gets such a miserably small percentage of the money earned out-back that he usually lives in saint-like indigence, and dies in the odour of very inferior liquor. Here and there, the exceptional case of a shanty-keeper retiring on his Congealed Ability goes to show the fatuity of the curse--hypothesis, rounding us up on the one una.s.sailable bit of standing-ground, namely, that such is life.

It would do you no good to hear how the old Major (he was an ex-officer of the Imperial army) fawned on my officialship, and threw himself in rapport with my gentlemanship--how his haggard, handsome wife leered at me over his shoulder--how the open-hearted a.s.ses of fencers, in weary alternation, confidentially told me fragmentary and idiotic yarns--how they shook hands with me till I was tired, and wept over me till I was disgusted--how they irrelevantly and profusely apologised for anything they might have said, and abjectly besought me, if I felt anyway nasty, to take it out of their (adj.) hides--I say, it would do you no good.

So, for this and two other reasons, I shall take as my text the entry of March 28, and a portion of the following verse. This arbitrary departure in dates will give you another glimpse of Alf Jones. Also, the peculiar scythe-sweep of my style of narrative will take in a rencontre with another person, to whom, in your helpless state as a reader, you have already been introduced. And if you take it not patiently, the more is your mettle.

FRI. MARCH 28. Wilcannia shower. Jack the Sh.e.l.lback.

SAT. MARCH 29. To Runnymede. Tom Armstrong and mate.

I had spent the night of the 27th at Burke's camp, on Boottara; my horses faring decently for the season. Burke, the regular station-contractor, had been off work for a month, keeping his twenty horses and twenty-four bullocks in the Abbotsford Paddock, and watering them daily at Granger's Tank.

The Abbotsford Paddock, having gone dry in the spring, had fair gra.s.s in it, but, of course, no station stock.

In spite of all the loafing I could do, the season was telling on my horses.

Their hoofs were worn to the similitude of quoits; you could count their ribs a quarter of a mile off; and they had acquired that crease down the hip pathetically known as 'the poor man's stripe.' Cleopatra's bucking had become feeble and mechanical, and so transparently stagey that I used to be ashamed of it. Still, my aversion to lending the horse, or having him duffed, compelled me to keep his performance up to the highest standard compatible with justice to himself.

Runnymede homestead--to which that strange fatality was again driving me-- was thirty miles from Burke's camp; but, by losing a few miles in a slight detour, I could make a twenty-mile stage to Alf Jones's, and, next day, a fifteen-mile stage to the station. This rate of travelling, with frequent holidays, was fast enough for a man without official hopes, or corresponding fear of the sack. If Alf was gone, so much the better for himself; if he was still in the old spot, so much the better for me. That was the way I looked at it.

In view of the soul-destroying ignorance which saturates society, it may be well to repeat that this central point of the universe, Riverina Proper, consists of a wide promontory of open and level plain, coming in from the south-west; broken, of course, by many pine ridges, clumps of red box, patches of scrub or timber, and the inevitable red gum flats which fringe the rivers. Eastward, the plain runs out irregularly into open forests of white box, pine, and other timber. Northward--something over a couple of hundred miles from the Murray--the tortuous frontier of boundless scrub meets the plain with the abruptness of a wall. Boottara is half plain and half scrub; Runnymede is practically all plain.

When I left Burke's camp, heading south-west for Alf's paddock, there was a strong, dry, and--as it seemed to me then--useless, north-west wind tearing through the tops of the trees. I thought it might lull before I left the shelter of the scrub, but it only increased. The willowy foliage of the scattered myalls on the plain stood out horizontally to leeward; and an endless supply of lightly-bounding roley-poleys were chasing each other across the level ground. I lashed my hat on with a handkerchief, one side of the brim being turned down to keep some of the sand and dust out of my weather-ear. The horses, with ears flattened backward and muzzles slanted out to leeward, caught the storm on their polls, and, leaning sideways against the still-increasing pressure, pushed on gallantly. They remembered Alf's gra.s.s as well as I remembered his music.