"Seems to me that honest, hard-working men seem to accumulate the heaviest swags of trouble in this world." -- Steelman.
Told by Mitchell's Mate.
We were coming back from West Australia, steerage -- Mitchell, the Oracle, and I. I had gone over saloon, with a few pounds in my pocket.
Mitchell said this was a great mistake -- I should have gone over steerage with nothing but the clothes I stood upright in, and come back saloon with a pile. He said it was a very common mistake that men made, but, as far as his experience went, there always seemed to be a deep-rooted popular prejudice in favour of going away from home with a few pounds in one's pocket and coming back stumped; at least amongst rovers and vagabonds like ourselves -- it wasn't so generally popular or admired at home, or in the places we came back to, as it was in the places we went to. Anyway it went, there wasn't the slightest doubt that our nearest and dearest friends were, as a rule, in favour of our taking away as little as we could possibly manage with, and coming back with a pile, whether we came back saloon or not; and that ought to settle the matter as far as any chap that had the slightest consideration for his friends or family was concerned.
There was a good deal of misery, underneath, coming home in that steerage.
One man had had his hand crushed and amputated out Coolgardie way, and the stump had mortified, and he was being sent to Melbourne by his mates.
Some had lost their money, some a couple of years of their life, some their souls; but none seemed to have lost the heart to call up the quiet grin that southern rovers, vagabonds, travellers for "graft" or fortune, and professional wanderers wear in front of it all. Except one man -- an elderly eastern digger -- he had lost his wife in Sydney while he was away.
They sent him a wire to the Boulder Soak, or somewhere out back of White Feather, to say that his wife was seriously ill; but the wire went wrong, somehow, after the manner of telegrams not connected with mining, on the lines of "the Western". They sent him a wire to say that his wife was dead, and that reached him all right -- only a week late.
I can imagine it. He got the message at dinner-time, or when they came back to the camp. His mate wanted him to sit in the shade, or lie in the tent, while he got the billy boiled.
"You must brace up and pull yourself together, Tom, for the sake of the youngsters." And Tom for long intervals goes walking up and down, up and down, by the camp -- under the brassy sky or the gloaming -- under the brilliant star-clusters that hang over the desert plain, but never raising his eyes to them; kicking a tuft of grass or a hole in the sand now and then, and seeming to watch the progress of the track he is tramping out. The wife of twenty years was with him -- though two thousand miles away -- till that message came.
I can imagine Tome sitting with his mates round the billy, they talking in quiet, subdued tones about the track, the departure of coaches, trains and boats -- arranging for Tom's journey East, and the working of the claim in his absence.
Or Tom lying on his back in his bunk, with his hands under his head and his eyes fixed on the calico above -- thinking, thinking, thinking.
Thinking, with a touch of his boyhood's faith perhaps; or wondering what he had done in his long, hard-working married life, that God should do this thing to him now, of all times.
"You'd best take what money we have in the camp, Tom; you'll want it all ag'in' the time you get back from Sydney, and we can fix it up arterwards. . . . There's a couple o' clean shirts o' mine -- you'd best take 'em -- you'll want 'em on the voyage. . . .
You might as well take them there new pants o' mine, they'll only dry-rot out here -- and the coat, too, if you like -- it's too small for me, anyway.
You won't have any time in Perth, and you'll want some decent togs to land with in Sydney."
. . . . .
"I wouldn't 'a' cared so much if I'd 'a' seen the last of her," he said, in a quiet, patient voice, to us one night by the rail. "I would 'a' liked to have seen the last of her."
"Have you been long in the West?"
"Over two years. I made up to take a run across last Christmas, and have a look at 'em. But I couldn't very well get away when `exemption-time' came. I didn't like to leave the claim."
"Do any good over there?"
"Well, things brightened up a bit the last month or two.
I had a hard pull at first; landed without a penny, and had to send back every shilling I could rake up to get things straightened up a bit at home.
Then the eldest boy fell ill, and then the baby. I'd reckoned on bringing 'em over to Perth or Coolgardie when the cool weather came, and having them somewheres near me, where I could go and have a look at 'em now and then, and look after them."
"Going back to the West again?"
"Oh, yes. I must go for the sake of the youngsters. But I don't seem to have much heart in it." He smoked awhile. "Over twenty years we struggled along together -- the missus and me -- and it seems hard that I couldn't see the last of her. It's rough on a man."
"The world is damned rough on a man sometimes," said Mitchell, "most especially when he least deserves it."
The digger crossed his arms on the rail like an old "cocky" at the fence in the cool of the evening, yarning with an old crony.
"Mor'n twenty years she stuck to me and struggled along by my side.
She never give in. I'll swear she was on her feet till the last, with her sleeves tucked up -- bustlin' round. . . . And just when things was brightening and I saw a chance of giving her a bit of a rest and comfort for the end of her life. . . .
