The Storyteller. BABY'S BENEDICTION.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 241, 29 January 1898, Page 5 (Supplement)

The Storyteller. BABY'S BENEDICTION.

My first introduction to “Jack Thompson ” was, to put it mildly, not calculated to impress one favorably with the individual in question. I was plodding wearily along on a tired horse, having done 50 miles under a blistering summer’s sun, amidst a yellow fog of dust, through which the aforesaid orb glared like a red hot globe of metal fresh from some infernal furnace. Just as I entered a belt of pine scrub a vision flashed round a sharp corner of the road in front. It was that of a sober old stock horse, whose sides were red with spurring, coming at a swinging hard gallop, without a bridle, and on his back the most hopelessly drunken man that I ever expect to see, on horseback at any rate. As they turned the corner sharply the rider’s body lurched over in a way that apparently defied the law of gravitation, and then in a limp, disjoin ted fashion swung back to a perpendicular attitude, only to lurch just as far over the other way the next moment; the eccentric horseman’s wiry bandy legs, which apparently, like the horse, were sober, gripping the animal's ribs like a vice all the while, spite of gyrations of the other portions of the drunken one’s anatomy. Just as the apparition passed me the old horse swerved and put his foot into a deep rut, where a wool waggon had been “ down to the float rail ” in the last wet season, and ploughed a deep furrow with his nose in the choking dust for ten yards or more. With a desperate scramble he regained his feet and his even stride, the intoxicated body of the rider performing miracles in the way of vibratory balancing meanwhile, the sober and resolute legs preserving their grip intact, I watched the pair through the timber and out on to the big plain beyond, until they were swallowed up in the gathering dusk, and then plodded on my way again. Two miles further on I pulled up at a roadside “ hotel ” for tho night, and made inquires respecting the apparition, when I learned that “Jack Tompson” had been on “ the burst” for the last two days, and that his mates wore camped on the further side of the big plain referred to. As a piece of culminating lunacy he had in some mysterious fashion climbed into tho saddle and taken off his horse’s bridle, then, ramming the spurs home, had shot off down tho road towards the camp, where, as I afterwards learnt, he arrived in perfect safety, having performed this perilous feat of horsemanship on more than one occasion previously when under the influence of some peculiar variety of “ Chain Lightning Hum.” This was Jack Thompson at 25, a hard working hard swearing, hard drinking, specimen of a “flish native,” in fact a “ hard case ” altogether, and, as I then thought, one of the worst possible that in various ways, disgrace the name of man on this planet, I have been though slums in Melbourne in the small hours of the morning once or twice since then, and have had occasion to modify my views ; but this by the way. I never saw Jack drunk or sober in the flesh again; but when in after years a woman in Melbourne told me his later history, I would have liked to have done so, if only because of the bitter contempt in which I held him that day. “ Oh, he became a reformed character, did hel” somebody remarks impatiently, “ the reformed drunkard who becomes a pocket edition of an angel is played out.” But that is just where the premature critic is wrong ; Jack didn’t reform, not a bit of it. He wasn’t built that way, so he played the game of life out to the end in the same old fashion. Months of hard bullocking in the shearing shed and the fencer’s camp, weary days and sheepless nights on tho droving track in summer’s drought and winter’s cold, varied occasionally by a few days of the maddest drunken revelry. But wait till you know his whole history, and then judge him harshly if you can— I cannot. From the “Gulf” to Melbourne with cattle—ls months of a hard and anxious journey—through “ new country,” where nothing save bushcraft avails, and neither map nor track can be depended upon to guide the traveller ; through regions where, as the wanderer snatches a troubled sleep at midday after a night in the saddle, black stealthy spectres creep noiselessly through the long grass, and the sleeper awakes with a jagged spear pinning him to the ground, and is met by the crash of the nullah nullah as ho desperately struggles to regain his feet. Long days of scorching heat, when life or death hangs trembling in the balance on the chance of a thunderstorm filling the parched “ clay pans” in the dry track. Or later on, as the cold country is reached, with frozen feet in the stirrups, the watcher waits for the dawn as ho rides slowly round the mob in camp, and the end of it all a thousand miles away at the Melbourne sale yards. Well, tho drover’s life breeds “ men,” anyway, even if they are “hard cases.” But tho “things” you find in the city slums are not even “ men.”

Jack had been “ out back ” for some years. Humor has it that his sudden determination to leave Nesv South Wales for the “ Gulf Coun try ” was not altogether unconnected with the disappearanca of a thoroughbred colt, who left his native pastures about the same time ; but as that event might have been only a coincidence, Jack may as well have the benefit of the doubt, It doesn’t matter very much cither way now. He was coming down with the overland mob —one of the first that ever attempted that perilous journey and with his usual luck had come unscathed through treacherous spears and the vicissitudes of drought and flood. He had passed through a long period of preternatural sobriety also, and had a cheque “as big as a blanket,” as he said, to draw in Melbourne. And here it may be noted that one of the few things at which ho drew the line was getting on the burst when on the road with stock —that was against his code of honor; and just as those stubborn legs of his gripped his horse’s ribs with inflexible determination at all times and seasons, so in the same fashion he stuck in a mulish and obstinate way to his own idea of what was or was not the “ square thing.” And thus in his own way he lived up to his lights, dull, flickering, smoky luminaries as they undoubtedly were. The absolute certainly that when the stock was delivered Jack would straight-way proceed to embark on a gigantic and glorioous “drunk” was only equalled, as his various employers could testifly, by the certainty that nothing on earth would induce him to drink when on the road—a fact that makes one almost suspect that he had some kind of a rudimentary soul in that erring body of his. If so it was probably located in his legs, as they were the only portion of his anatomy which showed any symptom of a definite moral purpose. But the longest day must draw to a close and the weariest journey end, and so one day the time arrived when the XL cattle were lodged at the Melbourne sale yards. One of the things which induced Jack to tackle the overland trip was that an old mate of his had gone down to Melbourne a few years before, married and settled down to the unromantic and prosaic occupation of driving a van for one of the bigldinders-strcet warehouses, and the prospect of a Christmas spree in Melbourne with an old chum had a special attraction about it. When the sale was over, as ho left the yard a well-known stock buyer from lliverina stopped Jack with the information that he had just closed for a big lot of store wethers near Hay, and wanted a man to travel them to a new station he was stocking up in Queensland. ‘ You’d better, make up your mind to take them for me,” said the man of many fleeces. ‘Not me,” laughed Jack. “I’m good for a long spree in Melbourne after that trip from the Gulf, and I mean to have it. If you could put starting for a month we might make a deal.” ‘No, that won’t do,” said the other. “ I have to take delivery within a fortnight; but if you come across a good man to day send him round to me at tht hotel; you know where I am staying.” And they parted. After get ing rid of an accumulated layer of dust, which had its geological origin in Carpentaria, and ended with a sort of alluvial deposit of recent formation in the Melbourne sale yards, Jack proceeded to hunt up his old mate with a view to future revelry ; but at this point the hand of fate intervened, and the picturesque festivities of which ho had dreamed for the last twelve months never came oft'. An inquiry at the Flinders-street warehouse previously referred to revealed the fact that the old mate had died in the hospital a week previously, leaving a wife (whom Jack remembered as a free selector’s daughter on the Bogan) and a couple of little children to face the mercies of a merciless city. He obtained the address of the widow and walked away, half stunned, with .‘ill his visions of jollifications swept away. Suddenly he stopped in his walk, and after a moment’s pause, muttered, “ I’m d d if 1 don’t, it’s only one spree less, anyhow.” Then, as rapidly as those fickle legs (unaccustomed to pavements and pedestrian exercise) could carry him, he wended bis way to the bank and drew in notes the whole of his accumulated cheque, some one hundred and twenty-five pounds, and, getting on to a tram, proceeded to a dingy little suburb a few' miles out. His journey ended at a terrace of houses all precisely alike in their stereotyped squalidity. Just such a collection of brick rabbit hutches as delight die heart of the suburban jerry builder and the retired policemen, who generally own those singular edifices. A shame faced, hesitating knock brought a woman, dressed in cheap mourning, and with a hunted look on her white face, to the door. In the most clumsy and apparently unsympathetic fashion Jack introduced himself, and talked in a broken, disjointed manner with the widow’ about her “ bad luck in losing Tom.” Then he hesitated, and grew still more confused and awkward.

‘ls that your youngster?” lie suddenly ejaculated, pointed to a little girl I years old, who was sitting on the kerbstone. ‘ Yes ; there’s her and the baby, just turned 2, and God knows what I’m going to do,” said the woman, choking back her tears in the presense of this uncouth visitor. ' Well, good-bye, and better luck,” said Jack desperately, after a long pause; and he stepped outside, partially closing the door as he did so. Then hurriedly he pressed a queer looking parcel, tried up in a not over clean handkerchief, into the little one’s hands with “ Take that to your raammie, quick,” and as the frightened child obeyed Jack heat a hurried retreat. “ The parcel ” contained just £l2O in notes, and represented the proceeds of the trip from the Gulf. That afternoon the Riverina stock dealer was astenished to see Jack turn up with only about half a dozen whiskies on board, and sufficiently sober to inform him that he had changed his mind about slopping in Melbourne, and was off 1 to Wagga by the next train. ‘ I’ll meet you at Hay next week* and take those sheep to Queensland, if the job’s still open,” said Jack, with a preternatural effort to look sober when he was talking business. 1 All right, glad to hear it. But what on earth made you change your mind so suddenly 1” ‘ I don’t know,” said the other; “just a fancy, you know ; but I’ll meet you there, you can depend on that.” As the Albury express thundered along next day through a little tenth-rate town-ship beside the line, where, of course, the express didn’t stop, an exceedingly drunken hushman lurched heavily against the door of a second class carriage, under the mistaken idea that it was time to get out for another drink. The next moment he was under the wheels, smashed almost out of recognition, but still living as they laid him down in the little waiting room. The local policeman went for the doctor, and a well meaning spectator, vaguely expressing an opinion that “ the poor fellow oughtn’t to die like a dog, anyhow,” went for the parson, a good earnest man in his way, with a microscopical soul and a mountainous creed of rocky dogmas. The doctor got there first. One glance sufficed him. “Don’t worry the poor fellow,” ho said j “ he can’t last twenty minutes. Let him die where he is,” and just then the parson arrived. He, good man, knelt down on the blood - stained floor and prayed. Hot for the man’s life—that was past praying for; but that to the departing soul might be granted a moment’s respite and consciousness, and, if even at the eleventh hour, some chance of repentance. That moment came, and with it “ the hard case ” —fighting desperately with death—struggled up on one arm (the other was mostly pulp) to a sitting porture. As they held him there a moment his eyes had a queer, puzzled look, and then they lighted up with a sort of satisfaction. “ D it, it’s only one spree less, you know,” he said, and fell hack—dead. That night the worthy parson “ improved the occasion ” during his week night service, and with awe struck faces the congregation listened as he told the story of an unrepentant sinner’s doom. It was a great sermon, and the parson to this day looks back with a sort of pardonable and sanctified pride as he remembers the effect it had upon his congregation. And, strangely enough, that night also in Melbourne a woman, choking down her sobs, knelt by a baby’s cot, teaching the lisping lips a new petition. 1 Dod bless modder an’ sister an’ the mother. “ An’ Zack,” said the baby, sleepily.—“ Temple Bar.