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

I must start at once; and I could do with some money. Moriarty, you’re owing me fifty notes.”

“I know I am,” replied the storekeeper, in a quivering voice. He was as punctiliously honourable in some ways as he was perfidious in others⁠—being amiably asinine in each extreme.

“Now, including your little liability to me, how much are you out, even if the Flemington gamble goes in your favour?” I asked.

“Only sixty-eight notes,” he faltered. “I’ll clear it, right enough, if I’m not rushed, and if I don’t get the sack off the station.”

“But, by every rule of analogy, you’re also badly left on the Flemington,” I continued serenely. “How much does that leave you out?”

“Ninety-seven notes, and my rifle,” he replied, steadying his voice by an effort. “Mad-mad-mad! I wish I were dead!”

“Will you swear off gambling altogether till my claim is discharged? On that condition, I can extend the time⁠—say to the Greek Kalends.”

“If you think I could raise the money by that time,” replied the poor fellow dubiously. “Anyway, I give you my solemn promise. But, I say,” he continued, with seeming irrelevance⁠—“when do you expect promotion?”

“At any moment. My presentiments, being based on the deepest inductions of science, and the subtlest intuitions of the higher philosophy, are a trifle more trustworthy than yours; and I have a presentiment that the thing is impending. But you needn’t congratulate me yet. Think about yourself.”

“That’s just what I’m doing. If you tell her about this wager, I’ll suicide, or clear.”

“Well, upon my word! Do you think I’d condescend to undermine you, you storekeeper? Look out for Martin; never mind me.”

“I don’t mean her,” mumbled the young fool; “I mean Mrs. Beaudesart. You’re going to marry her when you get your promotion⁠—ain’t you?”

There was such evident sincerity in his tone that I maintained a stern and stony silence, whilst his eyes met mine with a doubtful, deprecating look; then he remarked doggedly,

“Well, that’s what she told Mrs. Montgomery, last Sunday; and she said it seriously. Miss King was present at the time; and she told Butler, and Mooney, and me, across the gate of the flower-garden, the same evening. Mrs. Beaudesart takes it for granted, and so does everybody else. She says she accepted you some time ago.”

“You lying dog!” I remarked wearily.

“I hope I may never stir alive off this seat if I’m not telling you the exact truth. Ask Mooney or Butler.”

“If I do sleep, would all my wealth would wake me,” I murmured, half-unconsciously.

“You don’t want to marry her, then, after all?”

“How long do you suppose I would last?”

“Well, don’t marry her.”

“Does it occur to you,” I asked, with some bitterness, “that there are some things a person can do, and some things he can’t do? If the head of my Department orders me to Nyngan, I can reply by letter, telling him to mind his own business, and not concern himself about me; but if Mrs. Beaudesart assumes⁠—if she merely takes for granted⁠—that I’m going to marry her, I must do it, to keep her in countenance. How, in the fiend’s name, can I slink out of it, now that I’m accepted? Can I tell her I’ve examined my heart, and I find I can only love her as a sister? Now, wouldn’t that sound well? No, no; I’m a done man. Of course, she had no business to accept me unawares; but as she has done so, I must help her to keep up the grisly fraud of feminine reluctance; for, as the abbot sings, so must the sacristan respond. It is kismet. This is how all these unaccountable marriages are brought about; though, to be sure, I have the dubious satisfaction of knowing that the enterprise brings me a good many days’ march nearer home.”

The expression of heavenly beatitude on Moriarty’s face goaded my mind to activity. Sweeping, with one glance, the whole horizon of expediency and possibility, I caught sight of the idea glanced at in a former page, and suggested, you will remember, by my dialogue with Ida.

“By the way, Moriarty,” said I; “respecting that trifling debt of honour⁠—there’s another condition that I didn’t think of. As a sort of payment on account, you must privately and insidiously circulate a very grave scandal for me.”

“Well, I won’t!” exclaimed the young fellow, after a moment’s pause. “I don’t mind telling a lie when I’m driven to it; but a woman’s a woman. Do your own dirty work!”

“Then, by Jove, I’ll post you!”

If anyone had used this threat to me, I would have asked how the posting was usually done, and what results might be expected to follow; but Moriarty’s lip quivered under the threat.

“Do your worst,” said he, swallowing the lump in his throat.

“You may depend on that,” I replied quietly. “However, the scandal was only about myself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll enlighten you. I was going to ask you to take Nelson, or Mooney, or both of them, into your confidence. Then you would arrange that Mrs. Beaudesart should overhear you discussing some horrible scandal in connection with me. And mind, she would have to believe it, or you would be a ruined man for the rest of your life⁠—you would be a defaulting gambler, a byword, a hissing, an astonishment, with the curse of Cain upon your brow. Then she would spurn me with contumely, and I would be my own man again. I would be in sanctuary, so to speak; inviolable by reason of my disgrace. Metaphorically, you could lay the blast, and fire it at your leisure, in my absence. I would leave all details to your own judgment, only holding you responsible for quality of fuse, and quantity of powder. I’d stand the explosion.”

“I’m on!” exclaimed Moriarty, brightening up. “Gosh! I’ll give you a character to rights! Mind, it’ll make you look small.”

“The smaller the better. I have a small aperture to crawl through, and no other means of escape. Of course, being innocent all the time, the scandal won’t even fizz on my inner consciousness. In