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

society which Daniel O’Connell was accustomed to refer to as “that highly important and respectable class, the men of no property”⁠—true makers of history, if the fools only knew, or could be taught, their power and responsibility. Occasionally one of these potential rulers and practical slaves would come to me with white lips and unsteady pace⁠—

“I say, Tom; I ain’t a man to jack-up while I got a sanguinary leg to stan’ on; but I’m gone in the inside, some road. I jist bin slingin’ up every insect-infected sanguinary thing I’ve et for the last month; an’ I’m as weak as a sanguinary cat. I must ding it. Mebbe I’ll be right tomorrow, if I jist step over to the pub, an’ git⁠—”

Here I would stop him, and endeavour to establish a diagnosis. But a man with the vocabulary of a Stratford wool-comber (whatever a woolcomber may be) of the 16th century⁠—a vocabulary of about two hundred and fifty words, mostly obscene⁠—is placed at a grave disadvantage when confronted by scientific terminology; and my patient, casting symptomatic precision to the winds, and roughly averaging his malady, would succinctly describe himself as sanguinary bad. That was all that was wrong with him. Nevertheless, having a little theory of my own respecting sickness, I always undertook to grapple with the complaint. I had noticed as a singular feature in Painkiller, that the more it is diluted, the more unspeakably nauseous and suffocating it becomes; wherefore, my medicine chest consisted merely of a couple of bottles of this rousing drug. My practice was to exhibit half-a-dozen tablespoonfuls of the panacea in a quart of oxide of hydrogen (vulgarly known as water). When my patient had swallowed that lot, I caused him to lie down in some shady place till the internal conflagration produced by the potent long-sleever had subsided to cherry-red; and then sent him back to his work like a giant refreshed with new wine. I never knew one of those potentates to be sick the second time.

Sollicker didn’t know whether his wife had any medicine, but we could see. Accordingly, when the twenty bullocks and the horse had landed themselves on Mondunbarra, close to Alf’s camp, we started at a canter, and, after riding a couple of miles, pulled up at a comfortable two-roomed cottage, half-concealed by the drooping, silvery foliage of a clump of myall. Sollicker turned his moke loose in the paddock; I tied my horse to the fence; and we entered the house. A tall, slight, sunburnt, and decidedly handsome young woman, with a brown moustache, was replenishing the fire.

“Theas (gentleman) ’e be a-wantin’ zoom zorter vizik f’r a zick man,” remarked the boundary rider, taking a seat.

“D⁠⸺⁠d if I know whether I got any,” replied his wife, with kindly concern, and with an easy mastery of expression seldom attained by her sex. “I’ll fine out in about two twinklin’s of a goat’s tail. Sit down an’ rest your weary bones, as the sayin’ is. I shoved the kettle on when I seen you comin’.” She opened a box, and produced a small, octagonal blue bottle, which she held up to the light. “Chlorodyne,” she explained; “an there’s some left, better luck. Good thing to keep about the house, but it ain’t equal to Painkiller for straightenin’ a person up.” She handed me the bottle, and proceeded to lay the table. I endeavoured to make friends with Roddy, but he was very shy, as bush children usually are.

“He’s a fine little fellow, ma’am,” I remarked. “How old is he?”

“He was two years an’ seven months on last Friday week,” she replied, with ill-concealed vainglory.

“No, no,” said I petulantly. “What is his age, really and truly?”

“Jist what I told you!” she replied, with a sunny laugh. “Think I was tryin’ to git the loan o’ you? Well, so help me God! There!”

“Helenar!” murmured her husband sadly. And, as he spoke, an inch of Helenar’s tongue shot momentarily into view as she turned her comely face, overflowing with merriment, toward me.

“My ole man was cut out for a archdeacon,” she remarked. “I tell him it’s all in the way a person takes a thing. But it’s better to be that way nor the other way; an’ he ain’t a bad ole sort⁠—give the divil his due. Anyway, that’s Roddy’s age, wrote in his Dad’s Bible.”

I laid my hand on the boundary rider’s shoulder. “Look here, sir,” said I impressively: “you’re an Englishman, and you’re proud of your country; but I tell you we’re going to have a race of people in these provinces such as the world has never seen before.” And, as I looked at the child, I drifted into a labyrinth of insoluble enigmas and perplexing hypotheses⁠—no new thing with me, as the sympathetic reader is by this time well aware.

The boundary rider shook his head. “Noa,” he replied dogmatically. “Climate plays ole Goozeb’ry wi’ heverythink hout ’ere. C’lonians bean’t got noo chest, n’ mo’n a greyhound.” And he placed his hand on his own abdomen to emphasise his teaching. “W’y leuk at ’er; leuk at ’ee ze’f; leuk at ’e ’oss, ev’n. Ees, zhure; an’ Roddy’ll be jis’ sich anutheh. Pore leetle (weed)!”

He took the child on his knee with an air of hopeless pity, and awkwardly but tenderly wiped the little fellow’s nose. I was still lost in thought. We are the merest tyros in Ethnology. Nothing is easier than to build Nankin palaces of porcelain theory, which will fall in splinters before the first cannon-shot of unparleying fact. What authority had the boundary man or I to dogmatise on the Coming Australian? Just the same authority as Marcus Clarke, or Trollope, or Froude, or Francis Adams⁠—and that is exactly none. Deductive reasoning of this kind is seldom safe. Who, for instance, could have deduced, from certain subtly interlaced conditions of food, atmosphere, association, and whatnot, the development of those silky honours which grace the upper lip of the Australienne? No doubt there are certain occult