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

last, Burns and Paine flashed their own strong, healthy personalities on the community, marking an epoch; and from that day to this, the Apology of Humanity acquires ever-increasing momentum, and ever-widening scope. Now, if social-economic conditions fail to keep abreast with the impetuous, uncontrollable advance of popular intelligence, the time must come when, with one tiger-spring, the latter shall assail the former; and the scene of this unpleasantness (concluded the infatuated pipe) is called in the Hebrew tongue, Armageddon.

The swagman approached, plodding steadily along, with his billy in one hand and his water-bag in the other; on his shoulder, horseshoe fashion, his forty years’ gathering; and in his patient face his forty years’ history, clearly legible to me by reason of a gift which I happily possess. I was roused from my reverie by someone saying:

“How fares our cousin Hamlet? Come and have a drink of tea, and beggar the expense.”

“Good day,” responded Hamlet, still pursuing his journey.

“Come on! come on! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?”

“Eh?” And he stopped, and faced about.

“Come and have a feed!” I shouted.

“I’ll do that ready enough,” said he, laying his fardel down in the shade, and seating himself on it with a satisfied sigh.

I rooted my damper out of its matrix, flogged the ashes off it with a saddlecloth, and placed it before my guest, together with a large wedge of leathery cheese, a sheath-knife, and the quart pot and pannikin.

“Eat, and good dich thy good heart, Apemantus,” said I cordially. Then, resuming my seat, I took leisure to observe him. He was an everyday sight, but one which never loses its interest to me⁠—the bent and haggard wreck of what should have been a fine soldierly man; the honest face sunken and furrowed; the neglected hair and matted beard thickly strewn with grey. His eyes revealed another victim to the scourge of ophthalmia. This malady, by the way, must not be confounded with sandy blight. The latter is acute; the former, chronic.

“Coming from Moama?” I conjectured, at length.

“Well, to tell you the truth, I ain’t had anything since yesterday afternoon. Course, you of’en go short when you’re travellin’; but I’m a man that don’t like to be makin’ a song about it.”

“Wouldn’t you stand a better show for work on the other side of the river?”

“Eh?”

“Isn’t the Vic. side the best for work?” I shouted.

“Yes; takin’ it generally. But there’s a new sawmill startin’ on this side, seven or eight mile up from here; an’ I know the two fellers that owns it⁠—two brothers, the name o’ H⁠⸺. Fact, I got my eyes cooked workin’ at a thresher for them. I’m not frightened but what I’ll git work at the mill. Fine, offhanded, reasonable fellers.”

“Wouldn’t it suit you better to look out for some steady work on a farm?”

“Very carm. Sort o’ carm heat. I think there’s a thunderstorm hangin’ about. We’ll have rain before this moon goes out for a certainty. She come in on her back⁠—I dunno whether you noticed?”

“I didn’t notice. Don’t you find this kind of weather making your eyes worse?”

“My word, you’re right. Not much chance of a man makin’ a rise the way things is now. Dunno what the country’s comin’ to. I don’t blame people for not givin’ work when they got no work to give, but they might be civil” he paused, and went on with his repast in silence for a minute. It required no great prescience to read his thought. Man must be subject to sale by auction, or be a wearer of Imperial uniform, before the susceptibility to insult perishes in his soul. “I been carryin’ a swag close on twenty year,” he resumed; “but I never got sich a divil of a blaggardin’ as I got this mornin’. Course, I’m wrong to swear about it, but that’s a thing I ain’t in the habit o’ doin’. It was at a place eight or ten mile down the river, on the Vic. side. I wasn’t cadging, nyther. I jist merely ast for work⁠—not havin’ heard about the H⁠⸺⁠s till after⁠—an’ I thought the bloke was goin’ to jump down my throat. I didn’t ketch the most o’ what he said, but I foun’ him givin’ me rats for campin’ about as fur off of his place as from here to the other side o’ the river; an’ a lagoon betwixt; an’ not a particle o’ grass for the fire to run on. Fact, I’m a man that’s careful about fire. Mind you, I did set fire to a bit of a dead log on the reserve, but a man has to get a whiff o’ smoke these nights, on account o’ the muskeeters; an’ there was no more danger nor there is with this fire o’ yours. Called me everything but a gentleman.”

“Possess your soul in patience. You have no remedy and no appeal till we gather at the river.”

“O, I was in luck there. Jist after I heard about this sawmill⁠—bein’ then on the Vic. side⁠—I foun’ a couple o’ swells goin’ to a picnic in a boat; an’ I told them I wanted to git across, an’ they carted me over, an’ no compliment. Difference in people.”

“I know the H⁠⸺⁠s,” I shouted. “When did you hear about them starting this sawmill?”

“O! this forenoon. I must ast you to speak loud. I got the misfortune to be a bit hard o’ hearin’. Most people notices it on me, but I was thinkin’ p’r’aps you didn’t remark it. It come through a cold I got in the head, about six year ago, spud-diggin’ among the Bungaree savages.”

“I’m sorry for you.”

“Well, it was this way. After the feller hunted me off of his place this mornin’, who should I meet but a young chap an’ his girl, goin’ to this picnic, with a white horse in the buggy. Now, that’s one o’ these civil, good-hearted sort o’ chaps you’ll sometimes git among the farmers. Name o’ Archie M⁠⸺. I dunno