Bao Gan - "Sou Shen Ji, volume 15 17, 300 A.D."

Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): Colossians"

Arthur Conan Doyle - "Through the Magic Door"

Zachary Taylor - "State of the Union Addresses of Zachary Taylor"

Such is Life

J >> Joseph Furphy >> Such is Life




"Look here, Mosey," said Thompson slowly: "I'd rather--so help me God--
I'd rather cut my own throat than do a trick like that.
Are n't you frightened of bringing a curse on yourself?"

"I ain't (adj.) fool enough to believe in curses," replied Mosey--
his altered tone nevertheless belying his bravado.

"Simply because you don't keep your eyes open," retorted Thompson.
"Is n't it well known that a grog-seller's money never gets to his children?
Is n't it well known that if you mislead a woman, a curse'll follow you
like your shadow? Isn't it well known that if you're disobedient
to your parents, something'll happen to you? Is n't it well known
that Sabbath-breaking brings a curse on a man that he can't shake off
till he reforms? Now you stole that horse in the dirtiest way;
and stealing--well, anything except grass or water--brings as heavy a curse
as anything you can do. Mark my words."

"The Jackdaw of Rheims is a case in point," remarked Willoughby aside to me.

"Well," said Price emphatically, and qualifying every word
that would bear qualification, "so fur as workin' on Sundays goes,
I'm well sure I allus worked on Sundays, an' I'm well sure I allus will;
an' I'm well sure 'ere ain't no cuss on me. Why, I dunno
what the (complicated expletive) a cuss is! I'll get a blanket fer to lay on,"
he added; "this ground's sorter damp." And he went across to his wagon.

"He's got a curse on him as big as Mount Macedon, and he does n't know it,"
muttered Thompson.

"Bearing out the prophecy," said I aside to Willoughby, "that the sinner,
being a hundred years old, shall be accursed."

"You ought to show him a bit more respect, Mosey," remarked Cooper gravely.

"Well, to tell you the truth," replied Mosey frankly,
"I got no patience with the ole bunyip. Can't suffer fools, no road."

"Well, I don't want to be shovin' in my jor, but I'd take him to be more rogue
than fool," suggested Bum.

"Time he was thinkin' about repentin', anyhow," observed Dixon.

"Now, really Thompson--do you believe in these special malisons?"
asked Willoughby, as Price rejoined the company. "Are you so superstitious?
I should n't have thought it."

"I've good reason to believe in them," replied Thompson. "You asked me
this morning why I did n't have two teams. Now I'll tell you the reason.
It's because I'm not allowed to keep two teams. I've got a curse on me.
Many a long year ago, when I finished my second season, I found myself
at Moama, with a hundred and ten notes to the good, and the prospect
of going straight ahead, like the cube root--or the square of the hypotenuse,
is it? I forget the exact term, but no matter. Well, the curse came on me
in this way: Charley Webber, the young fellow I was travelling with,
got a letter from some relations in New Zealand, advising him to settle there;
so he offered me his plant for two-thirds of its value--fifty notes down
and fifty more when he would send for it. Sheer good-nature of him,
for he knew he could have the lot if he liked. But there's not many fellows
of Charley's stamp. So I paid him the fifty notes and we parted.
He was to send me his address as soon as he reached New Zealand;
but he never got there. The vessel was wrecked on some place they call
the North Spit; and Charley was one of the missing. Never heard of him
from that day to this."

"Good (ensanguined) shot!" remarked Mosey. "I wish that same specie
of a curse would come on me."

"My (ensanguined) colonial!" assented Dixon and Bum, with one accord.

"Well, nobody knows anything about the geography of New Zealand,"
continued Thompson, "and I purposely forgot the address of Charley's people.
Any honest man would have hunted them up, but that was n't my style;
I was n't a wheat-sample; I was a tare. Compromised with my conscience.
Thought there was no time to lose in making an independence--making haste
to be rich, and considering not that's there's many a slip between the cup
and the lip, as Solomon puts it. I said to myself, 'That's all right;
I'll pay it some time.' Now see the consequence----"

"Just two years after I bid the poor fellow good-bye-two years to the very day,
and not very lucky years neither--I found myself in the middle
of the Death Track, with flour for Wilcannia; one wagon left behind,
and the bullocks dropping off like fish out of water; bullocks worth ten notes
going as if they were n't worth half-a-crown. It was like the retreat
from Moscow. Finally, I lost fourteen on the trip--exactly the number
I had got dishonestly. As for the second wagon, I gave it to Baxter
for fetching the load the last fifty mile. I thought this might clear away
the curse, so I didn't fret over it. I felt as if Charley
had got satisfaction. But I wasn't going to get off so cheap.
Two years afterward--you remember, Dixon?--I bought that thin team
and the Melbourne wagon from Pribble, the contractor. Dixon, here,
was driving for Pribble at that very time, and he can tell you
how Dick the Devil cleaned me out of my fine old picked team and the new wagon,
leaving me to begin afresh with the remains of Pribble's skeletons
and my own old wagon. Then a year or two afterward, I went in debt
to buy that plant of Mulligan's--him that was killed off the colt at Mossgiel--
and that same winter the pleuro broke out in my lot, and they went
like rotten sheep till fourteen were gone; and then, of course,
the plague was stopped. Not having any use for Mulligan's wagon,
I swapped her for a new thirty-by-twenty-four wool-rag, and a Wagga pot,
good for eight or ten mile on a still night; and, within a month,
Ramsay's punt went down with my wagon; she's in the bottom
of the Murrumbidgee now, with eight ton of bricks to steady her,
and the tarpaulin and bell to keep her company. She'll be fetching
the most critical planks out of a steamer some of these times,
and I'll get seven years for leaving her there. Afterward,
when I was hauling logs for pontooning, on the Goulburn, I kept
buying up steers and breaking them in, till I had two twelves; and one day
I left sixteen of them standing in yoke while I went looking round
for a good log; and suddenly I heard a crash that rattled back and forward
across the river for a quarter of an hour. I had a presentiment
that Providence was on the job again, and I wasn't disappointed.
One of the fallers had left a tree nearly through when he went to dinner;
and a gust of wind sent it over, and it carried a couple of other trees
before it, right on the spot where my team was folded up in the shade.
Eight of them went that trip, between killed and crippled,
leaving me with sixteen. My next piece of luck was to lose
that new Yankee wagon in the Eight-mile Mallee, on Birrawong.
Then I could see plain enough that Providence had taken up Charley's case,
and was prepared to block me of keeping two teams; so I determined
to have one good one. Now, I've always stood pretty well with the agents
and squatters, and I know my way round Riverina, so I can turn over
as much money as any single-team man on the track, bar Warrigal Alf
(I beg your pardon, Cooper; I forgot)--but what's the use of money to me?
Only vanity and vexation of spirit, as Shakespear says. I get up
to a certain point, and then I'm knocked stiff. Mind, I've only given you
a small, insignificant sample of the misfortunes I've had since I cheated
that dead man; but if they don't prove there's a curse on me,
then there's no such thing as proof in this world."

Price cleared his throat. "Them misforcunes was invidiously owin'
to yer own (adj.) misjudgment," he said dogmatically.

"Serve you right for not havin' better luck," added Dixon.

"Learn you sense, anyhow," remarked Mosey.

"Misforcunes does some people good," hazarded Bum.

"Yes," replied Thompson gently. "I've had my turn. I hope I take it
like a man. Your turns will come sooner or later, as sure as you've got heads
on your bodies--perhaps next year; perhaps next week; perhaps to-morrow.
Let's see how you'll take it. Mind, there's a curse on every one of us.
And look here--we had no business to travel to-day; there was a bite of feed
in the Patagonia Swamp, if it came to the worst. Now we're in for it.
I've got a presentiment that something'll happen before to-morrow night.
Just mark my words."

A constrained silence fell on the grown-up children, till Willoughby
politely sought to restore ease by contributing his quota
to the evening's feast of reason--

"There occurs to my mind a capital thing," he said; "a capital thing, indeed,
though apropos of nothing in particular. A student, returning from a stroll,
encountered a countryman, carrying a hare in his hand. 'Friend,'
said the student quietly, 'is that thine own hare or a wig?' The joke,
of course, lies in the play on the word 'hare'."

Willoughby's courteous effort was worse than wasted,
for the general depression deepened.

"You're right, Thompson," said Cooper, at length. "Mostly everybody's got
a curse on them. I got a curse on me. I got it through swearin'
and Sabbath-breakin'. I've tried to knock off swearin' fifty dozen times,
but I might as well try to fly. Last time I tried to knock it off was when
I left Nyngan for Kenilworth, four months ago; but there happened to be
a two-hundredweight bag o' rice in the bottom o' the load;
an' something tore her, an' she started leakin' through the cracks
in the floor o' the wagon; an' I could n't git at her no road,
for there was seven ton on top of her; an' the blasted stuff
it kep' dribble-dribble till you could 'a' tracked me at a gallop
for over a hundred mile; an' me swearin' at it till I was black in the face;
an' it always stopped dribblin' at night, like as if it was to aggravate a man.
If it had n't been for that rice, I'd 'a' kep' from swearin' that trip;
an' then, comin' down from Kenilworth with Thompson, I'd 'a' kep' from it easy;
for Thompson he never swears. I give him credit for that much."

"I don't claim any credit," remarked Thompson, with the unconscious
spiritual swagger which so often antecedes, and possibly generates, lapse.
"I never could see that swearing did any good; so I just say to myself,
'You'd like to come out, would you?--well, then, once for all, you won't.'"

"You're a happy man, curse and all," replied the giant gloomily.
"For my own part, I was brought up careful, but I've turned out
a (adj.) failure. Nobody would think, seeing me so brisk an' cheerful,
that I got more worry nor anybody on'y myself could stand.
I got more trouble nor all you fellers put together." He paused,
evidently battling feebly with that impulse which bids us ease
the loaded breast, even when discovery's pain. His voice was even lower
and sadder as he resumed:

"My father he was well off, with a comfortable place of his own
on the Hawkesbury; an' there was on'y me an' my sister Molly;
for my mother died of a cold she caught when I was about twelve or fourteen,
and Molly she was hardly so old. If you was to travel the country,
you wouldn't meet another man like my ole dad. He was what you might call"----

"My farther he was a sojer," interposed Dixon. "He could whack any man
of his weight in the 40th. Las' word he says to me: 'Bob,' says he;
'be a man--an' keep Injun ink off o' yer arms, for you never know,' says he,
'what you might do.' "

"Not many men like my ole dad," pursued Cooper. "Fetch up your youngsters
in the natur' an' admiration o' the Lord, an' don't be frightened
to dress the knots off o' them. That was his idear, an' he went through
with it straight. 'William,' says he to me; 'if I catch a oath
out o' your mouth, I'll welt the (adj.) hide off o' you ;' an' many's the time
he done it. 'Always show respect to an ole man or an ole woman,' says he;
'an' never kick up a row with nobody; an' when you see a row startin',
you strike in an' squash it, for blessed be the peacemakers;
an' never you git drunk, nor yet laugh at a drunk man; an' never take
your Maker's name in vain, or by (sheol) He'll make it hot for you.'
That was my father's style with me. Same with my sister. He used to lay
a bit of a buggy-trace on the table, after supper: 'There, Molly,' says he;
'that's for girls as goes gallivantin' about after night ;'
an' many's the dose of it Molly got for flyin' round in the moonlight.
Consequently, as you might say, she growed up to be the best girl,
an' the cleverest, in the district. The other girls was weeds aside of her;
she stood inches higher nor any o' them, an' she was a picter' to look at.
Strong as whalebone, she was, an' not a lazy bone in her body.
She was different from me in regard o' learnin', for she always liked
to have her nose in a book, an' she went a lot to school. An' as for singin'
or playin' anything in the shape o' music--why, there was nobody about
could hold a candle to her. She was fair mad on it; an' my ole dad
he sent her to Sydney for over a year o' purpose to fetch her out.
Peanner, or flute, or fiddle, or the curliest instrument out of a brass band,
it was all one to her; it come sort o' natural to her to fetch music
out of anything. Pore Molly!" Cooper paused awhile before he resumed----

"She never took up with none o' the fellers. I knowed fellers try to kiss her;
but her style was to stiffen them with a clip under the ear,
an' they sort o' took the hint, an' never come back. But by-'n'-by a man
from the Queensland border, he bought the place next ours but one;
an' our two fam'lies got acquainted. Wonderful clever ole feller he was,
in regard o' findin' out new gases, an' smells, an' cures for snake-bites,
an' stuff that would go off like a cannon if you looked at it.
This cove had got one son an' two daughters, an' his missis was sickly.
Well, the son he was a young chap, about my own age at the time"----

"An' how old was you then?" demanded Mosey.

"About two-an'-twenty. He seemed to be a fine, off-handed, straightforrid,
well-edicated young feller; an' me an' him we soon got great cronies;
an' by-'n'-by I seen he was collared on Molly, an' she was collared on him.
Well, thank God! he's got a curse on him that he won't get rid of in a hurry.
Thank God for that much!"

"Ruined her?" queried Mosey briskly.

Cooper passed the question with unconscious dignity, and resumed.
"Things went on this way for a couple o' year; an' this feller's people
was agreeable; an', to make a long story short, the time was fixed
for two months on ahead."

"Your father was agreeable, of course?" said Thompson.

"He was dead," replied Cooper reverently. "Gone to eternity, I hope.
He deserved to go there if ever any livin' man did. He died about a year after
these people come to settle near our place."

"What was the young feller's name?" queried Mosey.

"Never you mind. Well, to make a long story short, one day pore Molly
wanted to go somewhere, an' she jumped on-to a horse I'd just left in the yard,
an' she shoved her foot in the stirrup-leather; an' the horse he was
a reg'lar devil; an' he played up with her in the yard; an' her heel
went through the loop o' the leather, an' she come off an' hung by her ankle;
an' the horse he was shod all round, an' he kicked her
in the face"--Cooper paused.

"Killed her?" suggested Mosey.

"I caught the horse, an' got her clear, an' carried her into the house,
all covered with blood, an' just like a corp; an' I left her there
with the married woman we had, while I went for the doctor. Well,
there she laid for weeks, half-ways between dead an' alive, an' me
like a feller in a dream, thinkin' an' thinkin', an' not able to rec'lect
anything but the hammerin's I used to give her, an' the things
I used to take off of her, an' set her cryin'. I would n't go through
that lot agen, not if I got a pension for it. Well, by-'n'-by
she got her senses complete; an' this young feller he had been hangin' about
the house every day, sayin' nothing to nobody; but when she begun
to come round, he begun to-keep away. At last she was all right
in regard o' health, but she was disfigured for life; she had to wear
a crape veil down to her mouth. Then the young feller he used to come
sometimes an' just shake hands with her, but otherways he would n't touch her
with a forty-foot pole. Then he begun to stop away altogether;
an' by-'n'-by he suddenly got married to a girl out o' the lowest pub. for
ten mile round; an' his father--real decent ole bloke he was--he told him
never to show his face about the place agen. But there was no end
o' go in him. He had an uncle in Sydney, middlin' rich,
a ship-chandler, an' this"--

"What's a ship-chandler?" demanded Mosey.

"A man that supplies candles to ships," I replied.

"This uncle he'd had a saw-mill left on his hands, out somewhere south;
an' he give the saw-mill to the young feller on sort o' time-payment;
an' I believe he got on splendid for a couple or three year;
an' his wife had one picaninny--so we come to hear--an' suddenly
he balled her out with some other feller. I on'y got hearsay for it,
mind, but I know it's true; for it's just what ought to happen. Anyhow,
the hand of God was on him, an' he got it hot an' heavy.
Accordin' to accounts, he sold out, an' give her the bulk o' the cash,
an' then he travelled. Last year, out on the Namoi, a man told me he seen him
bullock drivin' in the Bland country, seven year ago. It might be him,
or it might n't. I don't know, an' I don't want to know; for he's done
all the harm he could. I got to thank him for all my troubles. On'y for him,
I'd 'a' been livin' comfortable in the ole spot still. I don't mention
these things not once every three year on a average; but sometimes
when you think I'm pleasant an' cheerful, I'm fair wild with thinkin' about
that blasted cur; an' you chaps fetched him up fresh in my mind to-night."

"And the poor girl--is she still at home?" asked Thompson.

"No," replied Cooper hoarsely; "she's somewhere at the bottom
o' the Hawkesbury river; an' there's no more home. About three or four year
after her accident, I was away in Sydney one time, on some business
about shares; an' when I come home, Molly was gone. She'd left a letter
for me, sayin' she'd nothing to live for; an' we'd meet on the other side
o' the grave; an' I must always think kind of her; an' to remember ole times,
when there was on'y the two of us; an' prayin' God to bless me
for always bein' good to her--Why it knocked me stiff, for I'd always been
a selfish, unfeelin'"----He stopped abruptly; he had uttered the last sentences
only by a strong effort.

Presently Dixon, pitying his emotion, remarked to Thompson in a gratuitously
lively tone, and with diction too florid for exact reproduction,

"Say--was I tellin' you I seen that white bullock you swapped
to Cartwright las' year? I think he's gittin' a cancer;
mebbe it's on'y blight; I would n't say. An' that lyin' (individual),
Ike Cunningham, told me he busted his self with trefile
jist after Cartwright got him."

"Ah!" replied Thompson absently.

"What become o' yer place?" asked Mosey, turning to Cooper.

"I'll answer that question, but not to satisfy you," replied Cooper coldly.
"Well, chaps, when pore Molly's day was fixed, I scraped up a hundred notes,
an' borrered two hundred on the place, to give her a start when the thing
took place. My ole dad he left everything to me, with strict orders
to see Molly through. He did n't want to make her a bait for loafers.
Well, when the thing was squashed--me, like a fool, I was advised to lay
the money out in minin' shares for Molly; an' then I kep' risin' more money,
an' buyin' more shares; an' I got sort o' muddled somehow;
an' to make a long story short, the whole (adj.) thing went to (sheol).
It was goin' that road when I seen the last o' pore Molly; an' when I lost her,
I jist roused round an' got a team together, an' signed everything the lyin',
cheatin' (financiers) told me to sign; an' then I cleared off.
Must be gittin' on for--let's see--Molly was twenty-three when she
got her accident, an' it was three year after when she made away with herself.
That was nine year ago, so she'd be thirty-five if she was alive now.
She need n't 'a' done it! O, she should n't 'a' done it!--
for she'd the satisfaction o' knowin' the curse that come on that blasted dog!
I told her all the particulars I got, thinkin' to satisfy her;
but I believe it on'y done her harm, for the end come a week or ten days after.
Seems strange, lookin' back at it, to think how simple our fam'ly's been
broke up, an' my gran'father's old home gone into the hands o' strangers."

"Never got a trace of your sister?" asked Thompson.

"Not a trace. Some people would have it she was gone to America,
or California, or somewhere--but why would she go? Me an' the Ryans--
that was the married couple we had--we knowed most about it, an' we cared most;
an' we was sure from the first, though we done everything that could be done.
She went away at night, an' took nothing with her--not a single item
o' clothes, but jist as she stood. Ah! I'd give what little I got,
an' walk a thousand mile on to the back of it, to see her pore bones
buried safe, an' then I'd be satisfied."

Cooper sighed deeply, and lit his pipe; then, for a time, the utter stillness
of the bright starlight was broken only by the faint jingle
of the horses' hobble-chains, and the sound of some of the nearer bullocks
cropping the luxuriant grass.

"The ram-paddick's a fool to this spot," remarked Mosey, at length.
"Mind you, it was friendly of Number Two to lay us on. On'y decent thing
I ever knowed him to do. He ain't the clean spud."

"He's ill-natured, certainly," observed Thompson; "but I can't help taking
an interest in him. As a general rule, the more uncivilised a man is,
till you come right down to the level of the blackfellow,
the better bushman he is; but I must say this of Thingamybob,
that he comes as near the blackfellow"----

"Hold on," interrupted Dixon, whose private conversation with Bum
had caused him to lose step in the march of conversation--"Who the (sheol)
is this Thingamybob--bar sells?"

"I wish somebody would fetch me a drink of water," replied Thompson,
dropping his subject in pointed rebuke of Dixon's behaviour.
"I'd rather perish than go for it myself; and I won't live two hours
if I don't get it. It's Cooper's fault. When he keeps the meat fresh,
it walks away; and when he packs it in salt, and then roasts it in the pan--
like this evening--you can see the salt all over it like frost.
Grand remedy for scurvy, and Barcoo rot, and the hundreds of natural diseases
that flesh is subject to, as the poet says."

"Lis'n that (adj.) liar," growled Cooper, with a fairly successful attempt
at easy good-nature. "An' I'm as bad off as him; an' there ain't a whimper
out o' me."

"I'll bring a drink for you both," said I, rising and taking two pannikins
from the lid of the tucker-box. "I would n't do it only that I'm famishing,
myself; and I'm tired of waiting for some one else to give in."

Then, whilst helping myself to a drink from the water-bag under the rear
of Thompson's wagon, and filling the pannikins for my friends,
I couldn't possibly avoid overhearing the conversation which sprang into life
the moment my back was turned----

"My lord Billy-be-damd," remarked Mosey. "Wonder why the (sheol)
he ain't at Runnymede to-night, doin' the amiable with Mother Bodysark.
Bright pair, them two."

"Would n't trust him as fur's I could sling him," said Dixon.
"Too thick with the (adj.) squatters for my fancy. A man never knows what game
that bloke's up to."

"Can't make him out no road," confessed Cooper. "Seems a decent, easy-goin',
God-send-Sunday sort o' feller; but I'll swear there's more in his head
nor a comb'll take out."

"He calls himself a philosopher," murmured Thompson; "but his philosophy
mostly consists in thinking he knows everything, and other people know nothing.
That's the principal point I've seen in him; and we've been acquainted
since we were about that high. It was always his way."

"Who's this Mother Bodysark--if it's a fair question?" asked Cooper.

"Mrs. Beaudesart," corrected Thompson. "She's a widow woman--
sort of forty-second cousin to Mrs. Montgomery, and housekeeper at the station.
I never heard of anybody grudging her to Collins."

"Between ourselves, Thompson," remarked Willoughby, "his conversation
this afternoon rather amused me. It recalled to my mind an excellent
and most characteristic pleasantry, which you may not have heard.
The story goes that Coleridge once asked Lamb, 'Did you ever hear me preach?'
'Preach!' said Lamb; 'Gad, I never heard you do anything else!' And yet,
if Mr. Collins had enjoyed the advantages accruing from even the rudiments
of a liberal ed"----

"He's got summick to do with Gub'ment lately," said Price cunningly.
"My 'pinion, he's shadderin' summedy."

"He ain't a gurl o' that sort," interposed Bum hastily. "My 'pinion,
he's a spieler. No more a detective nor I am."

I returned to the group. My friends drained their pannikins;
Thompson threw his at the tucker-box, and Cooper was just aiming his,
when Willoughby, who had shared the frosted mutton, interposed----

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