Frightened me out of a year"s growth." Moriarty paused, and drew a long breath.
"Well?" said I, hazily; wondering whether this piteous wreckage of plot was owing to some defect in my own strategy, or to bad lieutenantry in the working out.
"So I had to make a clean breast of it," continued the plenipotentiary, in a reluctant and apologetic tone. "No use talking. It was impossible to stand to the yarn, when Montgomery"s eye was on me--let alone being taken by surprise. It was dragged from me by a sort of hypodermic influence; and all the fun seemed to have died out of it, till it sounded mean and small and unmanly. Yes; I had to tell him the fix you were in, and the commission you had given me, and everything from first to last; bar that infernal wager.
Well, you know, Montgomery never laughs; but I saw his face twitching, once or twice; and before I had done, he wheeled round and stood looking out of the door, as if I was n"t worth listening to. Then he went away, coughing fit to break his neck."
"I may thank him for being tree"d, in the first place; and he knows it,"
I remarked, with a sourness which appears pardonable even at this distance of time.
"What had he got to do with it?" asked Moriarty.
"How the tempus does fugit!" I replied. For the mid-day bell was ringing at the hut.
"Best sound since breakfast-time," said Moriarty, rising. "Come on to lunch."
As we left the store, half-a-dozen representatives of the lower cla.s.ses were stringing-in from different directions toward the hut, to attend to the most ancient and eminent of human inst.i.tutions--the inst.i.tution which predicates and affirms the brotherhood of our race as positively, and, to the philosophic mind, as touchingly, as death itself; being recognised and remembered by the aristocrat who forgets his own personal dirt-origin and dirt-destination; by the woman who forgets the date of her birth; by the friend who forgets the insulting language he used to you when he was under the influence; and by the boy who forgets his catechism.
The meal-signal is the real Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame; the Greek invocation which calls fools into a circle as surely as wise men; for neither folly nor wisdom is proof against its spell.
Just then, two swagmen on foot came into the yard, and approached Moriarty and me. I fixed my belltopper, adjusted my specs, and a.s.sumed my stately pipe, whilst my soul went forth in psalms of thanksgiving. Here was the true key to the Wilcannia shower; here was the under-side of my imagined precaution against ophthalmia; here was the hidden purpose of that repet.i.tional picking and sorting of the hawker"s stock which had left Jack the Sh.e.l.lback his Hobson"s choice in coats; here was a Wesleyan converging of the whole vast order of the universe toward the happiest issue. For here was Tom Armstrong at last; and I stood prepared to force a temporary renewal--albeit for double the original amount--of the bill, drawn by me on the Royal Inevitable, and now about to be presented by the legitimate holder.
"Is the bose at hame?" asked the holder briskly, turning first to Moriarty and then to me. "Losh! it"s no Tam M"Callum!"--he swung his swag to the ground, and extended his hand--"Mony "s the thocht A had o" ye, mun.
Ma certie, A kent weel we wad forgather ir lang. An" hoo"re ye farin" syne?"
"Excellent, i" faith--of the chameleon"s dish," I replied, with winning politeness, and a hearty hand-grip, though I felt like a man in the act of parrying a rifle bullet. "I have a wretched memory for faces, yet yours seems familiar; and I "m certain I"ve heard your voice before.
Pardon me if I ask your name?"
"Tam Airmstrang," replied my creditor, in an altered tone.
"Now, where have we met before?" I pondered. "Armstrong? I know several of the name in Riverina, and several in Victoria. Wait a moment--Did we meet at the Caledonian Sports, in Echuca, two years ago, past? No! Well, perhaps--yes--didn"t we have a drink together, at Ivanhoe, three or four months ago?"
"Od sink "t," muttered the honest fellow, in vexation; "A thocht ye was yin Tam M"Callum, frae Selkirksheer."
"I"m a Victorian myself, and my people are Irish," I remarked gently.
"But my name"s Collins," I continued, brightening up; "and Collins sounds something like M"Callum."
"Ye "se no be the mon A thocht ye was," replied Tam decidedly--and the unconscious double-meaning of his words sank into my heart--"Bit hae ye onything tae dae wi" Rinnymede?"
"No; I "m only a caller, like yourself. Moriarty, here, is the storekeeper."
"D" ye want ony han"s?" continued Tam, addressing Moriarty.
"I think we do," replied the young fellow, moving toward the barracks.
"The boss was saying there was a few burrs that would have to be looked after at once. Call again in the evening, and see him."
"Yon wad fit mysen like auld breeks," persisted Tam; "bit A"m takkin" thocht o" Andraw here. Puir body"s sicht"s nae fit fir sic wark; an" A mauna pairt wi" him the noo. An ye henna onythin" firbye birrkittin", we maun gang fairther ava."
He resumed his swag. I made a sign, perceptible only to Moriarty, and the latter hesitated a moment.
By virtue of a fine tradition, or unwritten law, handed down from the time of Montgomery"s father, a subaltern officer of Runnymede had power to send any decent-looking swagman--or a couple of them, for that matter--to the hut for a feed. Certain conditions, however, had formulated themselves around this prerogative: first, the stranger must of necessity be a decent-looking man; second, he must be within the precincts of the homestead at the ringing of the bell; third, the officer must walk down to the hut with him, as a testimony; fourth, no particular sub must make a trade of it.
The prerogative was something like one enjoyed by abbots, and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, in the ages of faith; namely, the right to extend the jurisdiction and protection of the Church over any secular prisoner accidentally met on his way to execution--a prerogative, the existence of which depended on its not being abused. And though Moriarty was only on the Commissariat, and was therefore unmercifully sat-on by the vulgar whenever he presumed to give orders, he held this right through a series of forerunners extending back to the time when Montgomery I. had been his own storekeeper. Don"t you believe the yarns your enthusiast tells of the squatter"s free-and-easy hospitality toward the swagman.
Such things were, and are; but I would n"t advise you to count upon the inst.i.tution as a neat and easy escape from the Adamic penalty.
You might fall-in. Hence Moriarty"s personal reluctance in the matter was perfectly natural. The meal at the hut, and the pannikin of dust at the store, are two widely different things. But a faithful and exhaustive inquiry into the ethics of station hospitality would fill many pages, for the question has more than one aspect.
"Go down to the hut, and have some dinner," said Moriarty, turning back; and we preceded the two men on their way. "Can you make room for these chaps, Matt?" he asked, looking into the hut.
The cook growled a.s.sent; and the two strangers took their places at the table.
"Scotty thought he knew you," observed Moriarty, with characteristic profundity, as we turned again toward the barracks. The remark broke a spell that was coming over me.
"And I thought I knew his mate, though I can"t manage to locate him,"
I replied. "But, as I was telling Scotty, I have the worst memory in the world for faces."
"Ay, that poor wreck would n"t fetch much in the yard," remarked Moriarty, referring to Tam"s mate. "When a fellow comes to his state, he ought to be turned out for the summer in a swamp paddock, with the leeches on his legs; then you ought to sell him to Cobb and Co., to get the last kick out of him.
Or else poll-axe the beggar."
"Very good system, Moriarty. Apply it to yourself also. You"re not dead yet."
"But I"ll never come to that state of affairs."
"a.s.suredly you will, sonny--just for the remark you"ve made. But I "d like to see that fellow again. Go on to the barracks; I"ll be after you in two minutes."
Confused ident.i.ty seemed to be in the air. Had I seen that weary looking figure, and that weather-worn face, before? I could n"t determine; and I can"t determine now--but the question has nothing to do with this record.
At all events, impelled partly by a desire to have another look at the man, and partly, perhaps, by a morbid longing to flaunt myself before Tam, I grandly dipped my lofty belltopper under the doorway of the hut, and, without removing it, helped myself to a pannikin of tea from the bucket by the hearth, and sat down opposite the silent swagman. Farther along the table, Tam was already breast-deep in the stream of conversation.
In answer to some question, he was replying that he had been only twelve months in the colonies.
"And what part of the Land o" Cakes are you from?" I asked, wantonly, but civilly.
"A"m frae Dumfriessheer--frae a spote they ca" Ecchelfechan," he replied complacently. "Bit, de"il tak"t, wha" gar"d ye jalouse A was a Scoatsman?"
"What the (sheol) was the name o" that (adj.) place you come from?"
asked the station bullock driver, with interest.
"Ecchelfechan."
"n.o.body "s got any business to come from a place with sich a (adj.) name"
"An" wha" fir no?" demanded Tam sternly. "Haud tae ye "se hae ony siccan a historic name in yir ain domd kintra. D"ye ken wha, firbye mysen, was boarn in Ecchelfechan syne? Vinna fash yirsel" aboot"--
"I say, Scotty," interposed Toby; "Egglefeggan "s the place where they eat brose--ain"t it?"
"A"ll haud nae deeskission wi" the produc" o" hauf-a-dizzen generations o" slavery," replied Tam haughtily. "A dinna attreebute ony blame tae yir ain sel", laddie; bit ye canna owrecam the kirse o" Canaan."
"Cripes! do you take me for a (adj.) mulatter?" growled the descendant of a thousand kings. "Why, properly speaking, I own this here (adj.) country, as fur as the eye can reach."
"Od, ye puir, glaikit, misleart remlet o" a perishin" race," retorted Tam-- "air ye no the mair unsicker? Air ye no feart ye"se aiblins see yon day gin ye "se thole waur fare nir a wamefu" o" gude brose? Heh!"
"Oh, speak English, you (adj.) bawbee-hunter!" muttered H.R.H. "Why, they "re a cut above brose in China--ain"t they, Sling?"
"Eatee lice in China," replied the gardener, with national pride.