Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/304

 a solitary 'traveller'—a name that has its own significance in Australia—sometimes in company with other 'sundowners.' He is free of the guild now, unluckily. They neither resent his companionship, nor feel flattered by it; in no way do they alter their mode of speech or action in consequence. It is known that he has 'seen better days,' as the phrase runs. If so, it is nobody's business but his own. A certain amount of reticence characterises Australian bushmen, which is not noticeable among their British comrades. The nomadic habit, and the goldfields' experience—for nearly every able-bodied man in Australia has graduated there—may be held accountable for this trait. Travel is the true civiliser, and in many respects supplies the place of the higher education, teaching reserve, undemonstrativeness, and the patient endurance of privations and dangers which cannot be evaded.

So, though it is generally believed that Jack Somers or Bill Brown was a gentleman (nothing, alas ! will ever make or keep him one again), he is treated by the master who employs him, and the station hands or farm labourers who work with him, exactly as the others—neither better nor worse. Generally a smart, intelligent worker, whether a shearer, rouseabout, boundary rider, road hand, what not, during the often protracted periods when he is compulsorily sober. This is secured by giving him no money (the more obvious necessaries can be procured from the station store), until his term of work be completed or his contract finished. Then he gets his cheque, and short work he makes of it. For the nearest bush public-house is to him a barrier fixed and impassable, while there is a pound in his purse.

After all, Australia is perhaps the best country for the fallen swell. A reasonable share of honest work is always open to him, which, from the custom of the country, is not held to be degrading, as it would be in Europe. He could not work in the field in Britain, tend sheep, drive a team, break stones. All these things he can do in Australia with but temporary loss of prestige or social rank. He would find it next to impossible to gain a living in the old country in any form of day labour. Were he even to succeed in doing so, he would be gazed and wondered at by the whole country-side. A man of good family requested me to officially certify his identity