While the Billy Boils by Henry Lawson (best value ebook reader .txt) 📕

just as a bullock does, and lose ambition and hope, and get contented with this animal life, like a dog, and till your swag seems part of yourself, and you’d be lost and uneasy and light-shouldered without it, and you don’t care a damn if you’ll ever get work again, or live like a Christian; and you go on like this till the spirit of a bullock takes the place of the heart of a man. Who cares? If we hadn’t found the track yesterday we might have lain and rotted in that lignum, and no one been any the wiser⁠—or sorrier⁠—who knows? Somebody might have found us in the end, but it mightn’t have been worth his while to go out of his way and report us. Damn the world, say I!”

He smoked for a while in savage silence; then he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, felt for his tobacco with a sigh, and said:

“Well, I am a bit out of sorts tonight. I’ve been thinking.⁠ ⁠… I think we’d best turn in, old man; we’ve got a long, dry stretch before us tomorrow.”

They rolled out their swags on the sand, lay down, and wrapped themselves in their blankets. Mitchell covered his face with a piece of calico, because the moonlight and wind kept him awake.

A Visit of Condolence

“Does Arvie live here, old woman?”

“Why?”

“Strike me dead! carn’t yer answer a civil queschin?”

“How dare you talk to me like that, you young larrikin! Be off! or I’ll send for a policeman.”

“Blarst the cops! D’yer think I cares for ’em? Fur two pins I’d fetch a push an’ smash yer ole shanty about yer ears⁠—y’ole cow! I only arsked if Arvie lived here! Holy Mosis! carn’t a feller ask a civil queschin?”

“What do you want with Arvie? Do you know him?”

“My oath! Don’t he work at Grinder Brothers? I only come out of my way to do him a good turn; an’ now I’m sorry I come⁠—damned if I ain’t⁠—to be barracked like this, an’ shoved down my own throat. (Pause) I want to tell Arvie that if he don’t come ter work termorrer, another bloke’ll collar his job. I wouldn’t like to see a cove collar a cove’s job an’ not tell a bloke about it. What’s up with Arvie, anyhow? Is he sick?”

“Arvie is dead!”

“Christ! (Pause) Garn! What-yer-giv’n-us? Tell Arvie Bill Anderson wants-ter see him.”

“My God! haven’t I got enough trouble without a young wretch like you coming to torment me? For God’s sake go away and leave me alone! I’m telling you the truth, my poor boy died of influenza last night.”

“My oath!”

The ragged young rip gave a long, low whistle, glanced up and down Jones’s Alley, spat out some tobacco-juice, and said “Swelp me Gord! I’m sorry, mum. I didn’t know. How was I to know you wasn’t havin’ me?”

He withdrew one hand from his pocket and scratched the back of his head, tilting his hat as far forward as it had previously been to the rear, and just then the dilapidated side of his right boot attracted his attention. He turned the foot on one side, and squinted at the sole; then he raised the foot to his left knee, caught the ankle in a very dirty hand, and regarded the sole-leather critically, as though calculating how long it would last. After which he spat desperately at the pavement, and said:

“Kin I see him?”

He followed her up the crooked little staircase with a who’s-afraid kind of swagger, but he took his hat off on entering the room.

He glanced round, and seemed to take stock of the signs of poverty⁠—so familiar to his class⁠—and then directed his gaze to where the body lay on the sofa with its pauper coffin already by its side. He looked at the coffin with the critical eye of a tradesman, then he looked at Arvie, and then at the coffin again, as if calculating whether the body would fit.

The mother uncovered the white, pinched face of the dead boy, and Bill came and stood by the sofa. He carelessly drew his right hand from his pocket, and laid the palm on Arvie’s ice-cold forehead.

“Poor little cove!” Bill muttered, half to himself; and then, as though ashamed of his weakness, he said:

“There wasn’t no post mortem, was there?”

“No,” she answered; “a doctor saw him the day before⁠—there was no post mortem.”

“I thought there wasn’t none,” said Bill, “because a man that’s been post mortemed always looks as if he’d been hurt. My father looked right enough at first⁠—just as if he was restin’⁠—but after they’d had him opened he looked as if he’d been hurt. No one else could see it, but I could. How old was Arvie?”

“Eleven.”

“I’m twelve⁠—goin’ on for thirteen. Arvie’s father’s dead, ain’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So’s mine. Died at his work, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So’d mine. Arvie told me his father died of something with his heart!”

“Yes.”

“So’d mine; ain’t it rum? You scrub offices an’ wash, don’t yer?”

“Yes.”

“So does my mother. You find it pretty hard to get a livin’, don’t yer, these times?”

“My God, yes! God only knows what I’ll do now my poor boy’s gone. I generally get up at half-past five to scrub out some offices, and when that’s done I’ve got to start my day’s work, washing. And then I find it hard to make both ends meet.”

“So does my mother. I suppose you took on bad when yer husband was brought home?”

“Ah, my God! Yes. I’ll never forget it till my dying day. My poor husband had been out of work for weeks, and he only got the job two days before he died. I suppose it gave your mother a great shock?”

“My oath! One of the fellows that carried father home said: ‘Yer husband’s dead, mum,’ he says; ‘he dropped off all of a suddint,’ and mother said, ‘My God! my God!’ just like that, and went off.”

“Poor soul! poor soul! And⁠—now my Arvie’s gone. Whatever will me and the