Such Is Life Joseph Furphy (ebook reader screen .TXT) 📖

breathing affirmed a kind of fellowship with the rest, in spite of his alien birth and objectionable name. But I couldn’t sleep. Dear innocent, angel-faced Mary! perishing alone in the bush! Nature’s precious link between a squalid past and a nobler future, broken, snatched away from her allotted place in the long chain of the ages! Heiress of infinite hope, and dowered with latent fitness to fulfil her part, now so suddenly fallen by the wayside! That quaint dialect silent so soon! and forever vanished from this earth that keen, eager perception, that fathomless love and devotion! But such is life.

Yet it is well with her. And it is well with her father, since he, throughout her transitory life, spoke no word to hurt or grieve her. Poor old Rory! Reaching Goolumbulla, after his sorrowful journey, his soft heart would be stabbed afresh by the sight of two picture-books, which I had posted a fortnight before. And how many memories and associations would confront him when he returned to his daily round of life! How many reminders that the irremediable loss is a reality, from which there can be no awakening! How many relics to be contemplated with that morbid fascination for the re-quickening of a slumbering and intolerable sense of bereavement! But the saddest and most precious of memorials will be those little copper-toed boots that she left along the way. Deepest pathos lies only in homely things, since the frailness of mortality is the pathetic centre, and mortality is nothing but homely.

Hence, no relic is so affecting as the half-worn boots of the dead. Thus in the funeral of that gold-escort trooper, when I was but little older than poor Mary. The armed procession⁠—the Dead March⁠—the cap and sword on the coffin⁠—seemed so imposing that I forthwith resolved to be a trooper myself. That ambition passed away; but the pathos of the empty boots, reversed in the stirrups of the led horse, has remained with me ever since.

From sad reflections, I seemed to be thus drifting into philosophic musing, when Helsmok shook me gently by the shoulder. A glance at the setting moon showed that I had been asleep, and that it was long past midnight. Here, therefore, ends the record of January the 9th; and you might imagine this chapter of life fitly concluded.

But sometimes an undercurrent of plot, running parallel with the main action, emerges from its murky depths, and causes a transient eddy in the interminable stream of events. Something of this kind occurred on the morning of the 10th.

“Collince,” said the Dutchman softly. “Don’ wake op der odder vellers⁠—do no goot yoos now. I gone ’way roun’ der liknum, und der bullock und der horse not dere. Notteen cronk, I hope. Mi’s well com anodder trip?”

I left my lair, and we walked out across the plain, followed by the faithful Pup. When we had ranged for an hour, in half-mile zigzags, day began to break; and nothing had turned-up, except four of Stevenson’s horses. But we heard, through the stillness of the dawn, a faint, faraway trampling of hoofs. We headed for the sound, and presently found ourselves meeting three or four dozen of mixed bullocks and horses convoyed by five mounted Chinamen. We stood aside to let them pass. By this time, an advancing daylight enabled me to recognise the roan horse of Sam Young (also called Paul) with a rider who was more likely to be that proselyte than anyone else. At all events, he turned upon me the light of a countenance, broad, yellow, and effulgent as the harvest moon of pastoral poetry; and, like a silver clarion, rung the accents of that unknown tongue:

“Ah-pang-sen-lo! Missa Collin! sen-lo! Tlee-po’ week, me plully liah, all li; nek time, you plully liah, all li! Missa Smyte talkee you bimeby! Hak-i-long-see-ho! You lescue Walligal Alp bullock⁠—eh? You killee me, by cli! Whe’ you holse? Ling-tang-hon-me! My wuld, Tlinidad plully goo’ glass, no feah! Hi-lung-sing-i-lo-i-lo!”

“Goo’ molnin’, Missa Helsmok!” chanted another yellow agony. “Nicee molnin’, Missa Helsmok! Whaffoh you tellee me lah wintel you sclew my plully neck? Lak-no-ha-long-lee! Missa Smyte wakee you up⁠—tyillin’-ahead you holse! Man-di-sling-lo-he!”

“Donder und blitzen!” retorted the Dutchman, striding toward the escort, which scattered at his approach. “Yomp off dem olt crocks, every man yack of you, und swelp mine Gott! I weel ponch der het of der vive of you altogedder mit, ef so moch der yudge seegs mons pot me into der yail bot!”

“Helsmok,” said I, restraining him; “upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience. Let us accept the situation with dignity. Let us pit the honest frankness of the played-out Caucasian against the cunning of the successful Mongol.” Then, addressing the Turanian horde, and adapting my speech to the understanding of our lowest types: “My word!” I exclaimed admiringly, “you take-um budgeree rise out-a whitepeller, John! Merrijig you! Borak you shift-um that peller bullock; borak you shift-um that peller yarraman. Whitepeller gib-it you fi’ bob, buy-it opium. You savvy? Bale whitepeller tell-um boss. Bimeby whitepeller yabber like-it, ‘Chinaman berry good’-yabber likeit, ‘Comenavadrink, John’⁠—yabber like-it, ‘Chinaman brother b’long-a whitepeller.’ You savvy, John?”

“Lak-hi-lo-hen-slung!” carolled a third Chow disdainfully. “You go hellee shut up! Eulopean allee sem plully whool! Lum-la-no-sunhi-me!” And the raiders went on their way, warbling remarks to each other in their native tongue, while the discomfited foreign devils hurried toward their camp, to give the alarm.

But Baxter, Donovan, Thompson, and Saunders had already gone out to feast their eyes on the change which such a night would make in the appearance of their stock. Stevenson was just getting on his feet, and feeling for his pipe. Cartwright was still asleep. It seemed a pity to disturb him. Sharply whetted to this form of self-indulgence by hardship that would have finished any civilised man, he had gently dozed off as the last bite of a copious and indigestible supper reached his emu-stomach, and had never moved since.

“Now who’d’a’thought them Chinks was so suddent?” he