Australia Felix/Part IV/Chapter III

It had struck two before the party began to break up. The first move made, however, the guests left in batches, escorting one another to their respective house-doors. The Henry Ococks' buggy had been in waiting for some time, and Mrs. Henry's pretty head was drooping with fatigue before Henry, who was in the vein, could tear himself from the card-table. Mahony went to the front gate with them; then strolled with the Longs to the corner of the road.

He was in no hurry to retrace his steps. The air was balmy, after that of the overcrowded rooms, and it was a fabulously beautiful night. The earth lay steeped in moonshine, as in the light of a silver sun. Trees and shrubs were patterned to their last leaf on the ground before them. What odd mental twist made mortals choose rather to huddle indoors, by puny candle-light, than to be abroad laving themselves in a splendour such as this?

Leaning his arms on the top rail of a fence, he looked across the slope at the Flat, now hushed and still as the encampment of a sleeping army. Beyond, the bush shimmered palely grey--in his younger years he had been used, on a night like this when the moon sailed full and free, to take his gun and go opossuming. Those two old woody gods, Warrenheip and Buninyong, stood out more imposingly than by day; but the ranges seemed to have retreated. The light lay upon them like a visible burden, flattening their contours, filling up clefts and fissures with a milky haze.

"Good evening, doctor!"

Spoken in his very ear, the words made him jump. He had been lost in contemplation; and the address had a ghostly suddenness. But it was no ghost that stood beside him--nor indeed was it a night for those presences to be abroad whose element is the dark.

Ill-pleased at the intrusion, he returned but a stiff nod: then, since he could not in decency greet and leave-take in a breath, feigned to go on for a minute with his study of the landscape. After which he said: "Well, I must be moving. Good night to you."

"So you're off your sleep, too, are you?" As often happens, the impulse to speak was a joint one. The words collided.

Instinctively Mahony shrank into himself; this familiar bracketing of his person with another's was distasteful to him. Besides, the man who had sprung up at his elbow bore a reputation that was none of the best. The owner of a small chemist's shop on the Flat, he contrived to give offence in sundry ways: he was irreligious--an infidel, his neighbours had it--and of a Sabbath would scour his premises or hoe potatoes rather than attend church or chapel. Though not a confirmed drunkard, he had been seen to stagger in the street, and be unable to answer when spoken to. Also, the woman with whom he lived was not generally believed to be his lawful wife. Hence the public fought shy of his nostrums; and it was a standing riddle how he managed to avoid putting up his shutters. More nefarious practices no doubt, said the relentless VOX POPULI.--Seen near at hand, he was a tall, haggard-looking fellow of some forty years of age, the muscles on his neck standing out like those of a skinny old horse.

Here, his gratuitous assumption of a common bond drew a cold: "Pray, what reason have you to think that?" from Mahony. And without waiting for a reply he again said good night and turned to go.

The man accepted the rebuff with a meekness that was painful to see. "Thought, comin' on you like this, you were a case like my own. No offence, I'm sure," he said humbly. It was evident he was well used to getting the cold shoulder. Mahony stayed his steps. "What's the matter with you?" he asked. "Aren't you well? There's a remedy to be found for most ills under the sun."

"Not for mine! The doctor isn't born or the drug discovered that could cure me."

The tone of bragging bitterness grated anew. Himself given to the vice of overstatement, Mahony had small mercy on it in others. "Tut, tut!" he deprecated.

There was a brief silence before the speaker went on more quietly: "You're a young man, doctor, I'm an old one." And he looked old as he spoke; Mahony saw that he had erred in putting him down as merely elderly. He was old and grey and down-at-heel--fifty, if a day--and his clothes hung loose on his bony frame. "You'll excuse me if I say I know better'n you. When a man's done, he's done. And that's me. Yes,"-- he grew inflated again in reciting his woes--"I'm one o' your hopeless cases, just as surely as if I was being eaten up by a cancer or a consumption. To mend me, you doctors 'ud need to start me afresh--from the mother-egg."

"You exaggerate, I'm sure."

"It's that--knowin' one's played out, with by rights still a good third of one's life to run--that's what puts the sleep away. In the daylight it's none so hard to keep the black thoughts under; themselves they're not so daresome; and there's one's pipe, and the haver o' the young fry. But night's the time! Then they come tramplin' along, a whole army of 'em, carryin' banners with letters a dozen feet high, so's you shan't miss rememberin' what you'd give your soul to forget. And so it'll go on, et cetera and ad lib., till it pleases the old Joker who sits grinnin' up aloft to put His heel down--as you or me would squash a bull-ant or a scorpion."

"You speak bitterly, Mr. Tangye. Does a night like this not bring you calmer, clearer thoughts?" and Mahony waved his arm in a large, loose gesture at the sky.

His words passed unheeded. The man he addressed spun round and faced him, with a rusty laugh. "Hark at that!" he cried. "Just hark at it! Why, in all the years I've been in this God-forsaken place--long as I've been here--I've never yet heard my own name properly spoken. You're the first, doctor. You shall have the medal."

"But, man alive, you surely don't let that worry you? Why, I've the same thing to put up with every day of my life. I smile at it." And Mahony believed what he said, forgetting, in the antagonism such spleen roused in him, the annoyance the false stressing of his own name could sometimes cause him.

"So did I, once," said Tangye, and wagged his head. "But the day came when it seemed the last straw; a bit o' mean spite on the part o' this hell of a country itself."

"You dislike the colony, it appears, intensely?"

"You like it?" The counter question came tip for tap.

"I can be fair to it, I hope, and appreciate its good sides." As always, the mere hint of an injustice made Mahony passionately just.

"Came 'ere of your own free will, did you? Weren't crowded out at home? Or bamboozled by a pack o' lying tales?" Tangye's voice was husky with eagerness.

"That I won't say either. But it is entirely my own choice that I remain here."

"Well, I say to you, think twice of it! If you have the chance of gettin' away, take it. It's no place this, doctor, for the likes of you and me. Haven't you never turned and asked yourself what the devil you were doin' here? And that reminds me. . . . There was a line we used to have drummed into us at school--it's often come back to me since. COELUM, NON ANIMUM, MUTANT, QUI TRANS MARE CURRUNT. In our green days we gabbled that off by rote; then, it seemed just one more o' the eel-sleek phrases the classics are full of. Now, I take off my hat to the man who wrote it. He knew what he was talkin' about--by the Lord Harry, he did!"

The Latin had come out tentatively, with an odd, unused intonation. Mahony's retort: "How on earth do you know what suits me and what doesn't?" died on his lips. He was surprised into silence. There had been nothing in the other's speech to show that he was a man of any education--rather the reverse.

Meanwhile Tangye went on: "I grant you it's an antiquated point o' view; but doesn't that go to prove what I've been sayin'; that you and me are old-fashioned, too--out-o'-place here, out-o'-date? The modern sort, the sort that gets on in this country, is a prime hand at cuttin' his coat to suit his cloth; for all that the stop-at-homes, like the writer o' that line and other ancients, prate about the Ethiopian's hide or the leopard and his spots. They didn't buy their experience dear, like we did; didn't guess that if a man DON'T learn to fit himself in, when he gets set down in such a land as this, he's a goner; any more'n they knew that most o' those who hold out here--all of 'em at any rate who've climbed the ladder, nabbed the plunder--have found no more difficulty in changin' their spots than they have their trousers. Yes, doctor, there's only one breed that flourishes, and you don't need me to tell you which it is. Here they lie"--and he nodded to right and left of him --"dreamin' o' their money-bags, and their dividends, and their profits, and how they'll diddle and swindle one another afresh, soon as the sun gets up to-morrow. Harder 'n nails they are, and sharp as needles. You ask me why I do my walkin' out in the night-time? It's so's to avoid the sight o' their mean little eyes, and their greedy, graspin' faces."

Mahony's murmured disclaimer fell on deaf ears. Like one who had been bottled up for months, Tangye flowed on. "What a life! What a set! What a place to end one's days in! Remember, if you can, the yarns that were spun round it for our benefit, from twenty thousand safe miles away. It was the Land o' Promise and Plenty, topful o' gold, strewn over with nuggets that only waited for hands to pick 'em up.--Lies!--lies from beginnin' to end! I say to you this is the hardest and cruellest country ever created, and a man like me's no more good here than the muck--the parin's and stale fishguts and other leavin's--that knocks about a harbour and washes against the walls. I'll tell you the only use I'll have been here, doctor, when my end comes: I'll dung some bit o' land for 'em with my moulder and rot. That's all. They'd do better with my sort if they knocked us on the head betimes, and boiled us down for our fat and marrow."

Not much in that line to be got from YOUR carcase, my friend, thought Mahony, with an inward smile.

But Tangye had paused merely to draw breath. "What I say is, instead o' layin' snares for us, it ought to be forbid by law to give men o' my make ship room. At home in the old country we'd find our little nook, and jog along decently to the end of our days. But just the staid, respectable, orderly sort I belonged to's neither needed nor wanted here. I fall to thinkin' sometimes on the fates of the hundreds of honest, steady-goin' lads, who at one time or another have chucked up their jobs over there--for this. The drink no doubt's took most: they never knew before that one COULD sweat as you sweat here. And the rest? Well, just accident . . . or the sun . . . or dysentery. . . or the bloody toil that goes by the name o' work in these parts--you know the list, doctor, better'n me. They say the waste o' life in a new country can't be helped; doesn't matter; has to be. But that's cold comfort to the wasted. No! I say to you, there ought to be an Act of Parliament to prevent young fellows squanderin' themselves, throwin' away their lives as I did mine. For when we're young, we're not sane. Youth's a fever o' the brain. And I WAS young once, though you mightn't believe it; I had straight joints, and no pouch under my chin, and my full share o' windy hopes. Senseless truck these! To be spilled overboard bit by bit--like on a hundred-mile tramp a new-chum finishes by pitchin' from his swag all the needless rubbish he's started with. What's wanted to get on here's somethin' quite else. Horny palms and costive bowels; more'n a dash o' the sharper; and no sickly squeamishness about knockin' out other men and steppin' into their shoes. And I was only an ordinary young chap; not over-strong nor over-shrewd, but honest--honest, by God I was! That didn't count. It even stood in my way. For I was too good for this and too mealy-mouthed for that; and while I stuck, considerin' the fairness of a job, some one who didn't care a damn whether it was fair or not, walked in over my head and took it from me. There isn't anything I haven't tried my luck at, and with everything it's been the same. Nothin's prospered; the money wouldn't come--or stick if it did. And so here I am--all that's left of me. It isn't much; and by and by a few rank weeds 'ull spring from it, and old Joey there, who's paid to grub round the graves, old Joey 'ull curse and say: a weedy fellow that, a rotten, weedy blackguard; and spit on his hands and hoe, till the weeds lie bleedin' their juices--the last heirs of me. . . the last issue of my loins!"

"Pray, does it never occur to you, you fool, that FLOWERS may spring from you?"

He had listened to Tangye's diatribe in a white heat of impatience. But when he spoke he struck an easy tone--nor was he in any hesitation how to reply: for that, he had played devil's advocate all too often with himself in private. An unlovely country, yes, as Englishmen understood beauty; and yet not without a charm of its own. An arduous life, certainly, and one full of pitfalls for the weak or the unwary; yet he believed it was no more impossible to win through here, and with clean hands, than anywhere else. To generalise as his companion had done was absurd. Preposterous, too, the notion that those of their fellow-townsmen who had carried off the prizes owed their success to some superiority in bodily strength. . . or sharp dealing. . . or thickness of skin. With Mr. Tangye's permission he would cite himself as an example. He was neither a very robust man, nor, he ventured to say, one of any marked ability in the other two directions. Yet he had managed to succeed without, in the process, sacrificing jot or tittle of his principles; and to-day he held a position that any member of his profession across the seas might envy him.

"Yes, but till you got there!" cried Tangye. "Hasn't every superfluous bit of you--every thought of interest that wasn't essential to the daily grind--been pared off?"

"If," said Mahony stiffening, "if what you mean by that is, have I allowed my mind to grow narrow and sluggish, I can honestly answer no."

In his heart he denied the charge even more warmly; for, as he spoke, he saw the great cork-slabs on which hundreds of moths and butterflies made dazzling spots of colour; saw the sheets of pink blotting-paper between which his collection of native plants lay pressed; the glass case filled with geological specimens; his Bible, the margins of which round Genesis were black with his handwriting; a pile of books on the new marvel Spiritualism; Colenso's PENTATEUCH; the big black volumes of the ARCANA COELESTIA; Locke on Miracles: he saw all these things and more. "No, I'm glad to say I have retained many interests outside my work."

Tangye had taken off his spectacles and was polishing them on a crumpled handkerchief. He seemed about to reply, even made a quick half-turn towards Mahony; then thought better of it, and went on rubbing. A smile played round his lips.

"And in conclusion let me say this," went on Mahony, not unnettled by his companion's expression. "It's sheer folly to talk about what life makes of us. Life is not an active force. It's we who make what we will, of life. And in order to shape it to the best of our powers, Mr. Tangye, to put our brief span to the best possible use, we must never lose faith in God or our fellow-men; never forget that, whatever happens, there is a sky, with stars in it, above us."

"Ah, there's a lot of bunkum talked about life," returned Tangye dryly, and settled his glasses on his nose. "And as man gets near the end of it, he sees just WHAT bunkum it is. Life's only got one meanin', doctor; seen plain, there's only one object in everything we do; and that's to keep a sound roof over our heads and a bite in our mouths--and in those of the helpless creatures who depend on us. The rest has no more sense or significance than a nigger's hammerin' on the tam-tam. The lucky one o' this world don't grasp it; but we others do; and after all p'raps, it's worth while havin' gone through it to have got at ONE bit of the truth, however, small. Good night."

He turned on his heel, and before his words were cold on the air had vanished, leaving Mahony blankly staring.

The moonshine still bathed the earth, gloriously untroubled by the bitterness of human words and thoughts. But the night seemed to have grown chilly; and Mahony gave an involuntary shiver. "Some one walking over my . . . now what would that specimen have called it? Over the four by eight my remains will one day manure!"

"An odd, abusive, wrong-headed fellow," he mused, as he made his way home. "Who would ever have thought, though, that the queer little chemist had so much in him? A failure? . . . yes, he was right there; and as unlovely as failures always are--at close quarters." But as he laid his hands on the gate, he jerked up his head and exclaimed half aloud: "God bless my soul! What he wanted was not argument or reason but a little human sympathy." As usual, however, the flash of intuition came too late. "For such a touchy nature I'm certainly extraordinarily obtuse where the feelings of others are concerned," he told himself as he hooked in the latch.

"Why, Richard, where HAVE you been?" came Mary's clear voice--muted so as not to disturb John and Jinny, who had retired to rest. Purdy and she sat waiting on the verandah. "Were you called out? We've had time to clear everything away. Here, dear, I saved you some sandwiches and a glass of claret. I'm sure you didn't get any supper yourself, with looking after other people."

Long after Mary had fallen asleep he lay wakeful. His foolish blunder in response to Tangye's appeal rankled in his mind. He could not get over his insensitiveness. How he had boasted of his prosperity, his moral nicety, his saving pursuits--he to boast!--when all that was asked of him was a kindly: "My poor fellow soul, you have indeed fought a hard fight; but there IS a God above us who will recompense you at His own time, take the word for it of one who has also been through the Slough of Despond." And then just these. . . these hobbies of his, of which he had made so much. Now that he was alone with himself he saw them in a very different light. Lepidoptera collected years since were still unregistered, plants and stones unclassified; his poor efforts at elucidating the Bible waited to be brought into line with the Higher Criticism; Home's levitations and fire-tests called for investigation; while the leaves of some of the books he had cited had never even been cut. The mere thought of these things was provocative, rest-destroying. To induce drowsiness he went methodically through the list of his acquaintances, and sought to range them under one or other of Tangye's headings. And over this there came moments when he lapsed into depths. . . fetched himself up again--but with an effort. . . only to fall back. . ..

But he seemed barely to have closed his eyes when the night-bell rang. In an instant he was on his feet in the middle of the room, applying force to his sleep-cogged wits.

He threw open the sash. "Who's there? What is it?"

Henry Ocock's groom. "I was to fetch you out to our place at once, governor."

"But--Is Mrs. Henry taken ill?"

"Not as I know of," said the man dryly. "But her and the boss had a bit of a tiff on the way home, and Madam's excited-like."

"And am I to pay for their tiffs?" muttered Mahony hotly.

"Hush, Richard! He'll hear you," warned Mary, and sat up.

"I shall decline to go. Henry's a regular old woman."

Mary shook her head. "You can't afford to offend the Henrys. And you know what he is so hasty. He'd call in some one else on the spot, and you'd never get back. If only you hadn't stayed out so long, dear, looking at the moon!"

"Good God! Mary, is one never to have a moment to oneself? Never a particle of pleasure or relaxation?"

"Why, Richard!" expostulated his wife, and even felt a trifle ashamed of his petulance. "What would you call to-night, I wonder? Wasn't the whole evening one of pleasure and relaxation?"

And Mahony, struggling into shirt and trousers, had to admit that he would be hard put to it to give it another name.