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

the silent swagman. Farther along the table, Tam was already breast-deep in the stream of conversation. In answer to some question, he was replying that he had been only twelve months in the colonies.

“And what part of the Land o’ Cakes are you from?” I asked, wantonly, but civilly.

“A’m frae Dumfriessheer⁠—frae a spote they ca’ Ecchelfechan,” he replied complacently. “Bit, de’il tak’t, wha’ gar’d ye jalouse A was a Scoatsman?”

“What the (sheol) was the name o’ that (adj.) place you come from?” asked the station bullock driver, with interest.

“Ecchelfechan.”

“Nobody’s got any business to come from a place with sich a (adj.) name.”

“An’ wha’ fir no?” demanded Tam sternly. “Haud tae ye’se hae ony siccan a historic name in yir ain domd kintra. D’ye ken wha, firbye mysen, was boarn in Ecchelfechan syne? Vinna fash yirsel’ aboot⁠—”

“I say, Scotty,” interposed Toby; “Egglefeggan’s the place where they eat brose⁠—ain’t it?”

“A’ll haud nae deeskission wi’ the produc’ o’ hauf-a-dizzen generations o’ slavery,” replied Tam haughtily. “A dinna attreebute ony blame tae yir ain sel’, laddie; bit ye canna owrecam the kirse o’ Canaan.”

“Cripes! do you take me for a (adj.) mulatter?” growled the descendant of a thousand kings. “Why, properly speaking, I own this here (adj.) country, as fur as the eye can reach.”

“Od, ye puir, glaikit, misleart remlet o’ a perishin’ race,” retorted Tam⁠—“air ye no the mair unsicker? Air ye no feart ye’se aiblins see yon day gin ye’se thole waur fare nir a wamefu’ o’ gude brose? Heh!”

“Oh, speak English, you (adj.) bawbee-hunter!” muttered H.R.H. “Why, they’re a cut above brose in China⁠—ain’t they, Sling?”

“Eatee lice in China,” replied the gardener, with national pride. “Plenty lice⁠—good cookee⁠—welly ni’.”

“By gummies! Hi seed the time Hi’d ’a’ stopped yer jorrin’, Dave!” said a quavering voice, dominating some argument at the other end of the table. “Hi seed me fightin’ in a sawr-pit f’r tew hewrs an’ sebmteen minits, by the watch; an’ fetched ’ome in a barrer. Now wot’s the hupshot? Did ’n’ Hi say, ‘Look hout! we’ll git hit to rights’?”

“But you (adv.) well thought we’d get rain,” persisted the old man’s antagonist⁠—an open-mouthed, fresh-faced rouseabout, who was just undergoing that colonising process so much dreaded by mothers and deplored by the clergy.

“ ’Ow the (fourfold expletive) do you hundertake to know wot Hi thort? But wot war the hupshot? ‘Look hout!’ ses Hi; ‘we’ll git hit to rights!’ An’ did we, hor did we not? Straight, now, Dave?”

“You’re like Cassandra, Jack,” I observed, to fill up the pause which marked Dave’s discomfiture.

“That bloke as spoke las’, ’e’s got more hunder ’is ’at nor a six-’underd-an’-fo’ty-hacre paddick full o’ sich soojee speciments as you fellers,” said the old man impressively. “Wich o’ you knows hanythink about Cassandra? Hin ’twenty-six hit war, an’ hit seems like las’ week. Hi druv ole Major Learm’th to them races, Hi did; an’ wen the ’osses comes hin, ’e looks roun’ an’ ses to ’is labour, a-stannin’ aside the kerridge, ‘Cassandra fust,’ ses ’e, ’an’ the rest nowheers,’ ses ’e. Now what’s the hupshot? Collings’ll see the day. Them’s ole Jack Goldsmith’s words, an’ jis’ you mark ’em. Collings’ll see the day! Yes, Dave,” continued the heart of the old man to the Psalmist; “Hi won ten bob on Cassandra that day; an’ ten bob war ten bob them times,” etc., etc.

All this while, I had been observing the silent swagman, who seemed to grow uneasy under my notice.

“I was remarking to a friend just now that I fancied I had seen you before,” I explained.

“Well, they ain’t actilly sore, so much as sort o’ dazzly and dim,” replied the man, in evident relief. “I been tryin’ mostly everything this last four year, but I got better hopes now nor ever I had before. A boundary man he give me a little bottle o’ stuff the other day; an’ it seems to be about the correct thing. Jist feels like a spoonful o’ red-hot ashes in your eye; an’ if a drop falls outside, it tums your skin black. That ought to cut away the sort o’ glassy phlegm off o’ the optic nerve?”

“No; you want none of these burning quack remedies; you want three months’ careful treatment⁠—”

“I ain’t denyin’ it,” interrupted the man, sadly and sullenly. “An’ I don’t thank Tom for bein’ so fast,” he continued, raising his voice in attempted anger. “He ain’t the man I took him for⁠—an’ I’m sayin’ it to his face.”

The general conversation dropped, and Tam, pannikin in hand, rose and advanced to his mate’s side.

“An’ wha’ is’t ye’re sayin’ till ma face, Andraw?” he asked loudly, but with gentleness and commiseratiom “Puir body’s haird o’ hearin’,” he explained to the company.

“I’m sayin’ you’d no right to go blurtin’ out about a man gittin’ a stretch for a thing o’ that sort. Seems like as if there was a job for one of us on this station, an’ you was takin’ a mean advantage to collar it. It ain’t like you⁠—”

“Od, whisht! ye puir thrawart body!” interrupted Tam hastily.

“You might ’a’ went about it a bit more manly,” continued the other, with the querulousness of a sick child. “I don’t deny I done three months; but so help⁠—”

“Whisht! ye daft⁠—”

“So help me God, I never deserved it. I knowed no more about it nor the babe unborn, till I got it off o’ the bobby that nabbed me.”

“But how could you (adj.) well get three months for a thing you (adj.) well knew nothing about?” asked the catechumen rouseabout. (Henceforth, the reader will have to supply from his own imagination the clumsy and misplaced expletive which preceded each verb used by this young fellow.)

“Ye moight foine it dang aisy yeerself, Dave,” observed a middle-aged diner significantly.

“I been a misfortunate man, there’s no denyin’,” continued the swagman; “but I never done a injury to nobody in my life, so fur as I’m aware about.”

“What did he get the three months for?” asked Dave, turning to Tam.

“Gin ye speer onythin’