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

“Well, Brummy hung around for a time, and tried to prove that he wasn’t an impostor, but no one wouldn’t believe him. He wanted to get some wages that was owing to him.

“He tried the police, but they were just as obstinate as the rest; and, beside, they had their dignity to hold up. ‘If I ain’t Brummy,’ he’d say, ‘who are I?’ But they answered that he knew best. So he did.

“At last he said that it didn’t matter much, any road; and so he went away⁠—Lord knows where⁠—to begin life again, I s’pose.”

The traveller smoked awhile reflectively; then he quietly rolled up his right sleeve and scratched his arm.

And on that arm we saw the tattooed figure of a woman, holding up a branch.

We tramped on by his side again towards the station-thinking very hard and not feeling very comfortable.

He must have been an awful old liar, now we come to think of it.

At the local police court, where the subject of this sketch turned up periodically amongst the drunks, he had “James” prefixed to his name for the sake of convenience and as a matter of form previous to his being fined forty shillings (which he never paid) and sentenced to “a month hard” (which he contrived to make as soft as possible). The local larrikins called him “Grog,” a very appropriate name, all things considered; but to the Geebung Times he was known until the day of his death as “a well-known character named Bogg.” The antipathy of the local paper might have been accounted for by the fact that Bogg strayed into the office one day in a muddled condition during the absence of the staff at lunch and corrected a revise proof of the next week’s leader, placing bracketed “query” and “see proof” marks opposite the editor’s most flowery periods and quotations, and leaving on the margin some general advice to the printers to “space better,” etc. He also corrected a Latin quotation or two, and added a few ideas of his own in good French.

But no one, with the exception of the editor of the Times, ever dreamed that there was anything out of the common in the shaggy, unkempt head upon which poor Bogg used to “do his little time,” until a young English doctor came to practise at Geebung. One night the doctor and the manager of the local bank and one or two others wandered into the bar of the Diggers’ Arms, where Bogg sat in a dark corner mumbling to himself as usual and spilling half his beer on the table and floor. Presently some drunken utterances reached the doctor’s ear, and he turned round in a surprised manner and looked at Bogg. The drunkard continued to mutter for some time, and then broke out into something like the fag-end of a song. The doctor walked over to the table at which Bogg was sitting, and, seating himself on the far corner, regarded the drunkard attentively for some minutes; but the latter’s voice ceased, his head fell slowly on his folded arms, and all became silent except the drip, drip of the overturned beer falling from the table to the form and from the form to the floor.

The doctor rose and walked back to his friends with a graver face.

“You seem interested in Bogg,” said the bank manager.

“Yes,” said the doctor.

“What was he mumbling about?”

“Oh, that was a passage from Homer.”

“What?”

The doctor repeated his answer.

“Then do you mean to say he understands Greek?”

“Yes,” said the doctor, sadly; “he is, or must have been, a classical scholar.”

The manager took time to digest this, and then asked:

“What was the song?”

“Oh, that was an old song we used to sing at the Dublin University,” said the doctor.

During his sober days Bogg used to fossick about among the old mullock heaps, or split palings in the bush, and just managed to keep out of debt. Strange to say, in spite of his drunken habits, his credit was as good as that of any man in the town. He was very unsociable, seldom speaking, whether drunk or sober; but a weary, hard-up sundowner was always pretty certain to get a meal and a shakedown at Bogg’s lonely but among the mullock heaps. It happened one dark night that a little push of local larrikins, having nothing better to amuse them, wended their way through the old mullock heaps in the direction of the lonely little bark hut, with the object of playing off an elaborately planned ghost joke on Bogg. Prior to commencing operations, the leader of the jokers put his eye to a crack in the bark to reconnoitre. He didn’t see much, but what he did see seemed to interest him, for he kept his eye there till his mates grew impatient. Bogg sat in front of his rough little table with his elbows on the same, and his hands supporting his forehead. Before him on the table lay a few articles such as lady novelists and poets use in their work, and such as bitter cynics often wear secretly next their bitter, cynical hearts.

There was the usual faded letter, a portrait of a girl, something that looked like a pressed flower, and, of course, a lock of hair. Presently Bogg folded his arms over these things, and his face sank lower and lower, till nothing was visible to the unsuspected watcher except the drunkard’s rough, shaggy hair; rougher and wilder looking in the uncertain light of the slush-lamp.

The larrikin turned away, and beckoned his comrades to follow him.

“Wot is it?” asked one, when they had gone some distance. The leader said, “We’re a-goin’ ter let ’im alone; that’s wot it is.”

There was some demur at this, and an explanation was demanded; but the boss bully unbuttoned his coat, and spat on his hands, and said:

“We’re a-goin’ ter let Bogg alone; that’s wot it