Part 18

Malachi occupied a hut some distance from the station, and one night, the last night of the bricklayer's stay, as Malachi sat smoking over the fire the door opened quietly and the phrenologist entered. He carried a bag with a pumpkin in the bottom of it, and, sitting down on a stool, he let the bag down with a bump on the floor between his feet. Malachi was badly scared, but he managed to stammer out--

“'Ello!” “'Ello!” said the phrenologist.

There was an embarrassing silence, which was at last broken by “Bricky” saying “How are you gettin' on, Malachi?”

“Oh, jist right,” replied Malachi.

Nothing was said for a while, until Malachi, after fidgeting a good deal on his stool, asked the bricklayer when he was leaving the station.

“Oh, I'm going away in the morning, early,” said he. “I've jist been over to Jimmy Nowlett's camp, and as I was passing I thought I'd call and get your head.”

“What?”

“I come for your skull.

“Yes,” the phrenologist continued, while Malachi sat horror-stricken; “I've got Jimmy Nowlett's skull here,” and he lifted the bag and lovingly felt the pumpkin--it must have weighed forty pounds. “I spoilt one of his best bumps with the tomahawk. I had to hit him twice, but it's no use crying over spilt milk.” Here he drew a heavy shingling-hammer out of the bag and wiped off with his sleeve something that looked like blood. Malachi had been edging round for the door, and now he made a rush for it. But the skull-fancier was there before him.

“Gor-sake you don't want to murder me!” gasped Malachi.

“Not if I can get your skull any other way,” said Bricky.

“Oh!” gasped Malachi--and then, with a vague idea that it was best to humour a lunatic, he continued, in a tone meant to be off-hand and careless--“Now, look here, if yer only waits till I die you can have my whole skelington and welcome.”

“Now Malachi,” said the phrenologist sternly, “d'ye think I'm a fool? I ain't going to stand any humbug. If yer acts sensible you'll be quiet, and it'll soon be over, but if yer---”

Malachi did not wait to hear the rest. He made a spring for the back of the hut and through it, taking down a large new sheet of stringy-bark in his flight. Then he could be heard loudly ejaculating “It's a caution!” as he went through the bush like a startled kangaroo, and he didn't stop till he reached the station.

Jimmy Nowlett and I had been peeping through a crack in the same sheet of bark that Malachi dislodged; it fell on us and bruised us somewhat, but it wasn't enough to knock the fun out of the thing.

When Jimmy Nowlett crawled out from under the bark he had to lie down on Malachi's bunk to laugh, and even for some time afterwards it was not unusual for Jimmy to wake up in the' night and laugh till we wished him dead.

I should like to finish here, but there remains something more to be said about Malachi.

One of the best cows at the homestead had a calf, about which she made a great deal of fuss. She was ordinarily a quiet, docile creature, and, though somewhat fussy after calving no one ever dreamed that she would injure anyone. It happened one day that the squatter's daughter and her intended husband, a Sydney exquisite, were strolling in a paddock where the cow was. Whether the cow objected to the masher or his lady love's red parasol, or whether she suspected designs upon her progeny, is not certain; anyhow, she went for them. The young man saw the cow coming first, and he gallantly struck a bee-line for the fence, leaving the girl to manage for herself. She wouldn't have managed very well if Malachi hadn't been passing just then. He saw the girl's danger and ran to intercept the cow with no weapon but his hands.

It didn't last long. There was a roar, a rush, and a cloud of dust, out of which the cow presently emerged, and went scampering back to the bush in which her calf was hidden.

We carried Malachi home and laid him on a bed. He had a terrible wound in the groin, and the blood soaked through the bandages like water. We did all that was possible for him, the boys killed the squatter's best horse and spoilt two others riding for a doctor, but it was of no use. In the last half-hour of his life we all gathered round Malachi's bed; he was only twenty-two. Once he said:

“I wonder how mother'll manage now?”

“Why, where's your mother?” someone asked gently; we had never dreamt that Malachi might have someone to love him and be proud of him.

“In Bathurst,” he answered wearily--“she'll take on awful, I 'spect, she was awful fond of me--we've been pulling together this last ten years--mother and me--we wanted to make it all right for my little brother Jim--poor Jim!”

“What's wrong with Jim?” someone asked.

“Oh, he's blind,” said Malachi “always was--we wanted to make it all right for him agin time he grows up--I--I managed to send home about--about forty pounds a year--we bought a bit of ground, and--and--I think--I'm going now. Tell 'em, Harry--tell 'em how it was--”

I had to go outside then. I couldn't stand it any more. There was a lump in my throat and I'd have given anything to wipe out my share in the practical jokes, but it was too late now.

Malachi was dead when I went in again, and that night the hat went round with the squatter's cheque in the bottom of it and we made it “all right” for Malachi's blind brother Jim.

TWO DOGS AND A FENCE

“Nothing makes a dog madder,” said Mitchell, “than to have another dog come outside his fence and sniff and bark at him through the cracks when he can't get out. The other dog might be an entire stranger; he might be an old chum, and he mightn't bark--only sniff--but it makes no difference to the inside dog. The inside dog generally starts it, and the outside dog only loses his temper and gets wild because the inside dog has lost his and got mad and made such a stinking fuss about nothing at all; and then the outside dog barks back and makes matters a thousand times worse, and the inside dog foams at the mouth and dashes the foam about, and goes at it like a million steel traps.

“I can't tell why the inside dog gets so wild about it in the first place, except, perhaps, because he thinks the outside dog has taken him at a disadvantage and is 'poking it at him;' anyway, he gets madder the longer it lasts, and at last he gets savage enough to snap off his own tail and tear it to bits, because he can't get out and chew up that other dog; and, if he did get out, he'd kill the other dog, or try to, even if it was his own brother.

“Sometimes the outside dog only smiles and trots off; sometimes he barks back good-humouredly; sometimes he only just gives a couple of disinterested barks as if he isn't particular, but is expected, because of his dignity and doghood, to say something under the circumstances; and sometimes, if the outside dog is a little dog, he'll get away from that fence in a hurry on the first surprise, or, if he's a cheeky little dog, he'll first make sure that the inside dog can't get out, and then he'll have some fun.

“It's amusing to see a big dog, of the Newfoundland kind, sniffing along outside a fence with a broad, good-natured grin on his face all the time the inside dog is whooping away at the rate of thirty whoops a second, and choking himself, and covering himself with foam, and dashing the spray through the cracks, and jolting and jerking every joint in his body up to the last joint in his tail.

“Sometimes the inside dog is a little dog, and the smaller he is the more row he makes--but then he knows he's safe. And, sometimes, as I said before, the outside dog is a short-tempered dog who hates a row, and never wants to have a disagreement with anybody--like a good many peaceful men, who hate rows, and are always nice and civil and pleasant, in a nasty, unpleasant, surly, sneering sort of civil way that makes you want to knock their heads off; men who never start a row, but keep it going, and make it a thousand times worse when it's once started, just because they didn't start it--and keep on saying so, and that the other party did. The short-tempered outside dog gets wild at the other dog for losing his temper, and says:

“'What are you making such a fuss about? What's the matter with you, anyway? Hey?'

“And the inside dog says:

“'Who do you think you're talking to? You---! I'll----' etc., etc., etc.

“Then the outside dog says:

“'Why, you're worse than a flaming old slut!'

“Then they go at it, and you can hear them miles off, like a Chinese war--like a hundred great guns firing eighty blank cartridges a minute, till the outside dog is just as wild to get inside and eat the inside dog as the inside dog is to get out and disembowel him. Yet if those same two dogs were to meet casually outside they might get chummy at once, and be the best of friends, and swear everlasting mateship, and take each other home.”

JONES'S ALLEY

She lived in Jones's Alley. She cleaned offices, washed, and nursed from daylight until any time after dark, and filled in her spare time cleaning her own place (which she always found dirty--in a “beastly filthy state,” she called it--on account of the children being left in possession all day), cooking, and nursing her own sick--for her family, though small, was so in the two senses of the word, and sickly; one or another of the children was always sick, but not through her fault. She did her own, or rather the family washing, at home too, when she couldn't do it by kind permission, or surreptitiously in connection with that of her employers. She was a haggard woman. Her second husband was supposed to be dead, and she, lived in dread of his daily resurrection. Her eldest son was at large, but, not being yet sufficiently hardened in misery, she dreaded his getting into trouble even more than his frequent and interested appearances at home. She could buy off the son for a shilling or two and a clean shirt and collar, but she couldn't purchase the absence of the father at any price--_he_ claimed what he called his “conzugal rights” as well as his board, lodging, washing and beer. She slaved for her children, and nag-nag-nagged them everlastingly, whether they were in the right or in the wrong, but they were hardened to it and took small notice. She had the spirit of a bullock. Her whole nature was soured. She had those “worse troubles” which she couldn't tell to anybody, but had to suffer in silence.

She also, in what she called her “spare time,” put new cuffs and collar-bands on gentlemen's shirts. The gentlemen didn't live in Jones's Alley--they boarded with a patroness of the haggard woman; they didn't know their shirts were done there--had they known it, and known Jones's Alley, one or two of them, who were medical students, might probably have objected. The landlady charged them just twice as much for repairing their shirts as she paid the haggard woman, who, therefore, being unable to buy the cuffs and collar-bands ready-made for sewing on, had no lack of employment with which to fill in her spare time.

Therefore, she was a “respectable woman,” and was known in Jones's Alley as “Misses” Aspinall, and called so generally, and even by Mother Brock, who kept “that place” opposite. There is implied a world of difference between the “Mother” and the “Misses,” as applied to matrons in Jones's Alley; and this distinction was about the only thing--always excepting the everlasting “children”--that the haggard woman had left to care about, to take a selfish, narrow-minded sort of pleasure in--if, indeed, she could yet take pleasure, grim or otherwise, in anything except, perhaps, a good cup of tea and time to drink it in.

Times were hard with Mrs Aspinall. Two coppers and two half-pence in her purse were threepence to her now, and the absence of one of the half-pence made a difference to her, especially in Paddy's market--that eloquent advertisement of a young city's sin and poverty and rotten wealth--on Saturday night. She counted the coppers as anxiously and nervously as a thirsty dead-beat does. And her house was “falling down on her” and her troubles, and she couldn't get the landlord to do a “han'stern” to it.

At last, after persistent agitation on her part (but not before a portion of the plastered ceiling had fallen and severely injured one of her children) the landlord caused two men to be sent to “effect necessary repairs” to the three square, dingy, plastered holes--called “three rooms and a kitchen”--for the privilege of living in which, and calling it “my place,” she paid ten shillings a week.

Previously the agent, as soon as he had received the rent and signed the receipt, would cut short her reiterated complaints--which he privately called her “clack”--by saying that he'd see to it, he'd speak to the landlord; and, later on, that he _had_ spoken to him, or could do nothing more in the matter--that it wasn't his business. Neither it was, to do the agent justice. It was his business to collect the rent, and thereby earn the means of paying his own. He had to keep a family on his own account, by assisting the Fat Man to keep his at the expense of people--especially widows with large families, or women, in the case of Jones's Alley--who couldn't afford it without being half-starved, or running greater and unspeakable risks which “society” is not supposed to know anything about.

So the agent was right, according to his lights. The landlord had recently turned out a family who had occupied one of his houses for fifteen years, because they were six weeks in arrears. He let them take their furniture, and explained: “I wouldn't have been so lenient with them only they were such old tenants of mine.” So the landlord was always in the right according to _his_ lights.

But the agent naturally wished to earn his living as peacefully and as comfortably as possible, so, when the accident occurred, he put the matter so persistently and strongly before the landlord that he said at last: “Well, tell her to go to White, the contractor, and he'll send a man to do what's to be done; and don't bother me any more.”

White had a look at the place, and sent a plasterer, a carpenter, and a plumber. The plasterer knocked a bigger hole in the ceiling and filled it with mud; the carpenter nailed a board over the hole in the floor; the plumber stopped the leak in the kitchen, and made three new ones in worse places; and their boss sent the bill to Mrs Aspinall.

She went to the contractor's yard, and explained that the landlord was responsible for the debt, not she. The contractor explained that he had seen the landlord, who referred him to her. She called at the landlord's private house, and was referred through a servant to the agent. The agent was sympathetic, but could do nothing in the matter--it wasn't his business; he also asked her to put herself in his place, which she couldn't, not being any more reasonable than such women are in such cases. She let things drift, being powerless to prevent them from doing so; and the contractor sent another bill, then a debt collector and then another bill, then the collector again, and threatened to take proceedings, and finally took them. To make matters worse, she was two weeks in arrears with the rent, and the wood-and-coalman's man (she had dealt with them for ten years) was pushing her, as also were her grocers, with whom she had dealt for fifteen years and never owed a penny before.

She waylaid the landlord, and he told her shortly that he couldn't build houses and give them away, and keep them in repair afterwards.

She sought for sympathy and found it, but mostly in the wrong places. It was comforting, but unprofitable. Mrs Next-door sympathized warmly, and offered to go up as a witness--she had another landlord. The agent sympathized wearily, but not in the presence of witnesses--he wanted her to put herself in his place. Mother Brock, indeed, offered practical assistance, which offer was received in breathlessly indignant silence. It was Mother Brock who first came to the assistance of Mrs Aspinall's child when the plaster accident took place (the mother being absent at the time), and when Mrs Aspinall heard of it, her indignation cured her of her fright, and she declared to Mrs Next-door that she would give “that woman”--meaning Mother Brock--“in char-rge the instant she ever _dared_ to put her foot inside her (Mrs A.'s) respectable door-step again. She was a respectable, honest, hard-working woman, and---” etc.

Whereat Mother Brock laughed good-naturedly. She was a broad-minded bad woman, and was right according to _her_ lights. Poor Mrs A. was a respectable, haggard woman, and was right according to _her_ lights, and to Mrs Next-door's, perfectly so--they being friends--and _vice versa_. None of them knew, or would have taken into consideration, the fact that the landlord had lost all his money in a burst financial institution, and half his houses in the general depression, and depended for food for his family on the somewhat doubtful rents of the remainder. So they were all right according to their different lights.

Mrs Aspinall even sought sympathy of “John,” the Chinaman (with whom she had dealt for four months only), and got it. He also, in all simplicity, took a hint that wasn't intended. He said: “Al li'. Pay bimeby. Nexy time Flyday. Me tlust.” Then he departed with his immortalized smile. It would almost appear that he was wrong--according to our idea of Chinese lights.

Mrs Aspinall went to the court--it was a small local court. Mrs Next-door was awfully sorry, but she couldn't possibly get out that morning. The contractor had the landlord up as a witness. The landlord and the P.M. nodded pleasantly to each other, and wished each other good morning.... Verdict for plaintiff with costs... Next case!... “You mustn't take up the time of the court, my good woman.”.. “Now, constable!”...“Arder in the court!”... “Now, my good woman,” said the policeman in an undertone, “you must go out; there's another case on-come now.” And he steered her--but not unkindly--through the door.

“My good woman” stood in the crowd outside, and looked wildly round for a sympathetic face that advertised sympathetic ears. But others had their own troubles, and avoided her. She wanted someone to relieve her bursting heart to; she couldn't wait till she got home.

Even “John's” attentive ear and mildly idiotic expression would have been welcome, but he was gone. He _had_ been in court that morning, and had won a small debt case, and had departed cheerfully, under the impression that he lost it.

“Y'aw Mrs Aspinall, ain't you?”

She started, and looked round. He was one of those sharp, blue or grey-eyed, sandy or freckled complexioned boys-of-the-world whom we meet everywhere and at all times, who are always going on towards twenty, yet never seem to get clear out of their teens, who know more than most of us have forgotten, who understand human nature instinctively--perhaps unconsciously--and are instinctively sympathetic and diplomatic; whose satire is quick, keen, and dangerous, and whose tact is often superior to that of many educated men-of-the-world. Trained from childhood in the great school of poverty, they are full of the pathos and humour of it.

“Don't you remember me?”

“No; can't say I do. I fancy I've seen your face before somewhere.”

“I was at your place when little Arvie died. I used to work with him at Grinder Brothers', you know.”

“Oh, of course I remember you! What was I thinking about? I've had such a lot of worry lately that I don't know whether I'm on my head or my heels. Besides, you've grown since then, and changed a lot. You're Billy--Billy---”

“Billy Anderson's my name.”

“Of course! To be sure! I remember you quite well.”

“How've you been gettin' on, Mrs Aspinall?”

“Ah! Don't mention it--nothing but worry and trouble--nothing but worry and trouble. This grinding poverty! I'll never have anything else but worry and trouble and misery so long as I live.”

“Do you live in Jones's Alley yet?”

“Yes.”

“Not bin there ever since, have you?”

“No; I shifted away once, but I went back again. I was away nearly two years.”

“I thought so, because I called to see you there once. Well, I'm goin' that way now. You goin' home, Mrs Aspinall?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I'll go along with you, if you don't mind.”

“Thanks. I'd be only too glad of company.”

“Goin' to walk, Mrs Aspinall?” asked Bill, as the tram stopped in their way.

“Yes. I can't afford trams now--times are too hard.”

“Sorry I don't happen to have no tickets on me!”

“Oh, don't mention it. I'm well used to walking. I'd rather walk than ride.”

They waited till the tram passed.

“Some people”--said Bill, reflectively, but with a tinge of indignation in his tone, as they crossed the street--“some people can afford to ride in trams.

“What's your trouble, Mrs Aspinall--if it's a fair thing to ask?” said Bill, as they turned the corner.

This was all she wanted, and more; and when, about a mile later, she paused for breath, he drew a long one, gave a short whistle, and said:

“Well, it's red-hot!”

Thus encouraged, she told her story again, and some parts of it for the third and fourth and even fifth time--and it grew longer, as our stories have a painful tendency to do when we re-write them with a view to condensation.

But Bill heroically repeated that it was “red-hot.”

“And I dealt off the grocer for fifteen years, and the wood-and-coal man for ten, and I lived in that house nine years last Easter Monday and never owed a penny before,” she repeated for the tenth time.

“Well, that's a mistake,” reflected Bill. “I never dealt off nobody more'n twice in my life.... I heerd you was married again, Mrs Aspinall--if it's a right thing to ask?”

“Wherever did you hear that? I did get married again--to my sorrow.”

“Then you ain't Mrs Aspinall--if it's a fair thing to ask?”

“Oh, yes! I'm known as Mrs Aspinall. They all call me Mrs Aspinall.”

“I understand. He cleared, didn't he? Run away?”

“Well, yes--no---he---”

“I understand. He's s'posed to be dead?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that's red-hot! So's my old man, and I hope he don't resurrect again.”

“You see, I married my second for the sake of my children.”

“That's a great mistake,” reflected Bill. “My mother married my step-father for the sake of me, and she's never been done telling me about it.”

“Indeed! Did _your_ mother get married again?”