As a result of his howls lights soon flickered in windows and fanlights; and with prompt, eager, anxious, and awed bush first-aid and assistance, they carried a very sober, battered and blasphemous driver inside and spread mattresses on the floor. And, some six weeks afterwards, an image, mostly of plaster-of-Paris and bandages, reclined, much against its will, on a be-cushioned cane lounge on the hospital veranda; and, from the only free and workable corner of its mouth, when the pipe was removed, came shockingly expressed opinions of them—newfangled—two-story—! "night houses" (as it called them). And, thereafter, when he had a load on, or the weather was too bad for sleeping in or under his wagon, the veranda of a one-storied shanty (if he could get to it) was good enough for MacSomething, the carrier.



THE HYPNOTIZED TOWNSHIP



They said that Harry Chatswood, the mail contractor would do anything for Cobb & Co., even to stretching fencing-wire across the road in a likely place: but I don't believe that—Harry was too good-hearted to risk injuring innocent passengers, and he had a fellow feeling for drivers, being an old coach driver on rough out-back tracks himself. But he did rig up fencing-wire for old Mac, the carrier, one night, though not across the road. Harry, by the way, was a city-born bushman, who had been everything for some years. Anything from six-foot-six to six-foot-nine, fourteen stone, and a hard case. He is a very successful coach-builder now, for he knows the wood, the roads, and the weak parts in a coach.

It was in the good seasons when competition was keen and men's hearts were hard—not as it is in times of drought, when there is no competition, and men's hearts are soft, and there is all kindness and goodwill between them. He had had much opposition in fighting Cobb & Co., and his coaches had won through on the outer tracks. There was little malice in his composition, but when old Mac, the teamster, turned his teams over to his sons and started a light van for parcels and passengers from Cunnamulla—that place which always sounds to me suggestive of pumpkin pies—out in seeming opposition to Harry Chatswood, Harry was annoyed.

Perhaps Mac only wished to end his days on the road with parcels that were light and easy to handle (not like loads of fencing wire) and passengers that were sociable; but he had been doing well with his teams, and, besides, Harry thought he was after the mail contract: so Harry was annoyed more than he was injured. Mac was mean with the money he had not because of the money he had a chance of getting; and he mostly slept in his van, in all weathers, when away from home which was kept by his wife about half-way between the half-way house and the next "township."

One dark, gusty evening, Harry Chatswood's coach dragged, heavily though passengerless, into Cunnamulla, and, as he turned into the yard of the local "Royal," he saw Mac's tilted four-wheeler (which he called his "van") drawn up opposite by the kerbing round the post office. Mac always chose a central position—with a vague idea of advertisement perhaps. But the nearness to the P.O. reminded Harry of the mail contracts, and he knew that Mac had taken up a passenger or two and some parcels in front of him (Harry) on the trip in. And something told Harry that Mac was asleep inside his van. It was a windy night, with signs of rain, and the curtains were drawn close.

Old Mac was there all right, and sleeping the sleep of a tired driver after a long drowsy day on a hard box-seat, with little or no back railing to it. But there was a lecture on, or an exhibition of hypnotism or mesmerism—"a blanky spirit rappin' fake," they called it, run by "some blanker" in "the hall;" and when old Mac had seen to his horses, he thought he might as well drop in for half an hour and see what was going on. Being a Mac, he was, of course, theological, scientific, and argumentative. He saw some things which woke him up, challenged the performer to hypnotize him, was "operated" on or "fooled with" a bit, had a "numb sorter light-headed feelin'," and was told by a voice from the back of the hall that his "leg was being pulled, Mac," and by another buzzin' far-away kind of "ventrillick" voice that he would make a good subject, and that, if he only had the will power and knew how (which he would learn from a book the professor had to sell for five shillings) he would be able to drive his van without horses or any thing, save the pole sticking straight out in front. These weren't the professor's exact words—But, anyway, Mae came to himself with a sudden jerk, left with a great Scottish snort of disgust and the sound of heavy boots along the floor; and after a resentful whisky at the Royal, where they laughed at his scrooging bushy eyebrows, fierce black eyes and his deadly-in-earnest denunciation of all humbugs and imposters, he returned to the aforesaid van, let down the flaps, buttoned the daft and "feekle" world out, and himself in, and then retired some more and slept, as I have said, rolled in his blankets and overcoats on a bed of cushions, and chaff-bag.

Harry Chatswood got down from his empty coach, and was helping the yard boy take out the horses, when his eye fell on the remnant of a roll of fencing wire standing by the stable wall in the light of the lantern. Then an idea struck him unexpectedly, and his mind became luminous. He unhooked the swinglebar, swung it up over his "leader's" rump (he was driving only three horses that trip), and hooked it on to the horns of the hames. Then he went inside (there was another light there) and brought out a bridle and an old pair of spurs that were hanging on the wall. He buckled on the spurs at the chopping block, slipped the winkers off the leader and the bridle on, and took up the fencing-wire, and started out the gate with the horse. The boy gaped after him once, and then hurried to put up the other two horses. He knew Harry Chatswood, and was in a hurry to see what he would be up to.

There was a good crowd in town for the show, or the races, or a stock sale, or land ballot, or something; but most of them were tired, or at tea—or in the pubs—and the corners were deserted. Observe how fate makes time and things fit when she wants to do a good turn—or play a practical joke. Harry Chatswood, for instance, didn't know anything about the hypnotic business.

It was the corners of the main street or road and the principal short cross street, and the van was opposite the pub stables in the main street. Harry crossed the streets diagonally to the opposite corner, in a line with the van. There he slipped the bar down over the horse's rump, and fastened one end of the wire on to the ring of it. Then he walked back to the van, carrying the wire and letting the coils go wide, and, as noiselessly as possible, made a loop in the loose end and slipped it over the hooks on the end of the pole. ("Unnecessary detail!" my contemporaries will moan, "Overloaded with uninteresting details!" But that's because they haven't got the details—and it's the details that go.) Then Harry skipped back to his horse, jumped on, gathered up the bridle reins, and used his spurs. There was a swish and a clang, a scrunch and a clock-clock and rattle of wheels, and a surprised human sound; then a bump and a shout—for there was no underground drainage, and the gutters belonged to the Stone Age. There was a swift clocking and rattle, more shouts, another bump, and a yell. And so on down the longish main street. The stable-boy, who had left the horses in his excitement, burst into the bar, shouting, "The Hypnertism's on, the Mesmerism's on! Ole Mae's van's runnin' away with him without no horses all right!" The crowd scuffled out into the street; there were some unfortunate horses hanging up of course at the panel by the pub trough, and the first to get to them jumped on and rode; the rest ran. The hall—where they were clearing the willing professor out in favour of a "darnce"—and the other pubs decanted their contents, and chance souls skipped for the verandas of weather-board shanties out of which other souls popped to see the runaway. They saw a weird horseman, or rather, something like a camel (for Harry rode low, like Tod Sloan with his long back humped—for effect)—apparently fleeing for its life in a veil of dust, along the long white road, and some forty rods behind, an unaccountable tilted coach careered in its own separate cloud of dust. And from it came the shouts and yells. Men shouted and swore, women screamed for their children, and kids whimpered. Some of the men turned with an oath and stayed the panic with:

"It's only one of them flamin' motor-cars, you fools."

It might have been, and the yells the warning howls of a motorist who had burst or lost his honk-kook and his head.

"It's runnin' away!" or "The toff's mad or drunk!" shouted others. "It'll break its crimson back over the bridge."

"Let it!" was the verdict of some. "It's all the crimson carnal things are good for."

But the riders still rode and the footmen ran. There was a clatter of hoofs on the short white bridge looming ghostly ahead, and then, at a weird interval, the rattle and rumble of wheels, with no hoof-beats accompanying. The yells grew fainter. Harry's leader was a good horse, of the rather heavy coachhorse breed, with a little of the racing blood in her, but she was tired to start with, and only excitement and fright at the feel of the "pull" of the twisting wire kept her up to that speed; and now she was getting winded, so half a mile or so beyond the bridge Harry thought it had gone far enough, and he stopped and got down. The van ran on a bit, of course, and the loop of the wire slipped off the hooks of the pole. The wire recoiled itself roughly along the dust nearly to the heels of Harry's horse. Harry grabbed up as much of the wire as he could claw for, took the mare by the neck with the other hand, and vanished through the dense fringe of scrub off the road, till the wire caught and pulled him up; he stood still for a moment, in the black shadow on the edge of a little clearing, to listen. Then he fumbled with the wire until he got it untwisted, cast it off, and moved off silently with the mare across the soft rotten ground, and left her in a handy bush stockyard, to be brought back to the stables at a late hour that night—or rather an early hour next morning—by a jackaroo stable-boy who would have two half-crowns in his pocket and afterthought instructions to look out for that wire and hide it if possible.

Then Harry Chatswood got back quickly, by a roundabout way, and walked into the bar of the Royal, through the back entrance from the stables, and stared, and wanted to know where all the chaps had gone to, and what the noise was about, and whose trap had run away, and if anybody was hurt.

The growing crowd gathered round the van, silent and awestruck, and some of them threw off their hats, and lost them, in their anxiety to show respect for the dead, or render assistance to the hurt, as men do, round a bad accident in the bush. They got the old man out, and two of them helped him back along the road, with great solicitude, while some walked round the van, and swore beneath their breaths, or stared at it with open mouths, or examined it curiously, with their eyes only, and in breathless silence. They muttered, and agreed, in the pale moonlight now showing, that the sounds of the horses' hoofs had only been "spirit-rappin' sounds;" and, after some more muttering, two of the stoutest, with subdued oaths, laid hold of the pole and drew the van to the side of the road, where it would be out of the way of chance night traffic. But they stretched and rubbed their arms afterwards, and then, and on the way back, they swore to admiring acquaintances that they felt the "blanky 'lectricity" runnin' all up their arms and "elbers" while they were holding the pole, which, doubtless, they did—in imagination.

They got old Mac back to the Royal, with sundry hasty whiskies on the way. He was badly shaken, both physically, mentally, and in his convictions, and, when he'd pulled himself together, he had little to add to what they already knew. But he confessed that, when he got under his possum rug in the van, he couldn't help thinking of the professor and his creepy (it was "creepy," or "uncanny," or "awful," or "rum" with 'em now)—his blanky creepy hypnotism; and he (old Mac) had just laid on his back comfortable, and stretched his legs out straight, and his arms down straight by his sides, and drew long, slow breaths; and tried to fix his mind on nothing—as the professor had told him when he was "operatin' on him" in the hall. Then he began to feel a strange sort of numbness coming over him, and his limbs went heavy as lead, and he seemed to be gettin' light-headed. Then, all on a sudden, his arms seemed to begin to lift, and just when he was goin' to pull 'em down the van started as they had heard and seen it. After a while he got on to his knees and managed to wrench a corner; of the front curtain clear of the button and get his head out. And there was the van going helter-skelter, and feeling like Tam o'Shanter's mare (the old man said), and he on her barebacked. And there was no horses, but a cloud of dust—or a spook—on ahead, and the bare pole steering straight for it, just as the professor had said it would be. The old man thought he was going to be taken clear across the Never-Never country and left to roast on a sandhill, hundreds of miles from anywhere, for his sins, and he said he was trying to think of a prayer or two all the time he was yelling. They handed him more whisky from the publican's own bottle. Hushed and cautious inquiries for the Professor (with a big P now) elicited the hushed and cautious fact that he had gone to bed. But old Mac caught the awesome name and glared round, so they hurriedly filled out another for him, from the boss's bottle. Then there was a slight commotion. The housemaid hurried scaredly in to the bar behind and whispered to the boss. She had been startled nearly out of her wits by the Professor suddenly appearing at his bedroom door and calling upon her to have a stiff nobbler of whisky hot sent up to his room. The jackaroo yard-boy, aforesaid, volunteered to take it up, and while he was gone there were hints of hysterics from the kitchen, and the boss whispered in his turn to the crowd over the bar. The jackaroo just handed the tray and glass in through the partly opened door, had a glimpse of pyjamas, and, after what seemed an interminable wait, he came tiptoeing into the bar amongst its awe-struck haunters with an air of great mystery, and no news whatever.

They fixed old Mac on a shake-down in the Commercial Room, where he'd have light and some overflow guests on the sofas for company. With a last whisky in the bar, and a stiff whisky by his side on the floor, he was understood to chuckle to the effect that he knew he was all right when he'd won "the keystone o' the brig." Though how a wooden bridge with a level plank floor could have a keystone I don't know—and they were too much impressed by the event of the evening to inquire. And so, with a few cases of hysterics to occupy the attention of the younger women, some whimpering of frightened children and comforting or chastened nagging by mothers, some unwonted prayers muttered secretly and forgettingly, and a good deal of subdued blasphemy, Cunnamulla sank to its troubled slumbers—some of the sleepers in the commercial and billiard-rooms and parlours at the Royal, to start up in a cold sweat, out of their beery and hypnotic nightmares, to find Harry Chatswood making elaborate and fearsome passes over them with his long, gaunt arms and hands, and a flaming red table-cloth tied round his neck.

To be done with old Mac, for the present. He made one or two more trips, but always by daylight, taking care to pick up a swagman or a tramp when he had no passenger; but his "conveections" had had too much of a shaking, so he sold his turnout (privately and at a distance, for it was beginning to be called "the haunted van") and returned to his teams—always keeping one of the lads with him for company. He reckoned it would take the devil's own hypnotism to move a load of fencingwire, or pull a wool-team of bullocks out of a bog; and before he invoked the ungodly power, which he let them believe he could—he'd stick there and starve till he and his bullocks died a "natural" death. (He was a bit Irish—as all Scots are—back on one side.)

But the strangest is to come. The Professor, next morning, proved uncomfortably unsociable, and though he could have done a roaring business that night—and for a week of nights after, for that matter—and though he was approached several times, he, for some mysterious reason known only to himself, flatly refused to give one more performance, and said he was leaving the town that day. He couldn't get a vehicle of any kind, for fear, love, or money, until Harry Chatswood, who took a day off, volunteered, for a stiff consideration, to borrow a buggy and drive him (the Professor) to the next town towards the then railway terminus, in which town the Professor's fame was not so awesome, and where he might get a lift to the railway. Harry ventured to remark to the Professor once or twice during the drive that "there was a rum business with old Mac's van last night," but he could get nothing out of him, so gave it best, and finished the journey in contemplative silence.

Now, the fact was that the Professor had been the most surprised and startled man in Cunnamulla that night; and he brooded over the thing till he came to the conclusion that hypnotism was a dangerous power to meddle with unless a man was physically and financially strong and carefree—which he wasn't. So he threw it up.

He learnt the truth, some years later, from a brother of Harry Chatswood, in a Home or Retreat for Geniuses, where "friends were paying," and his recovery was so sudden that it surprised and disappointed the doctor and his friend, the manager of the home. As it was, the Professor had some difficulty in getting out of it.



THE EXCISEMAN



Harry Chatswood, mail contractor (and several other things), was driving out from, say, Georgeville to Croydon, with mails, parcels, and only one passenger—a commercial traveller, who had shown himself unsociable, and close in several other ways. Nearly half-way to a place that was half-way between the halfway house and the town, Harry overhauled "Old Jack," a local character (there are many well-known characters named "Old Jack") and gave him a lift as a matter of course.

"Hello! Is that you, Jack?" in the gathering dusk.

"Yes, Harry."

"Then jump up here."

Harry was good-natured and would give anybody a lift if he could.

Old Jack climbed up on the box-seat, between Harry and the traveller, who grew rather more stand—(or rather sit) offish, wrapped himself closer in his overcoat, and buttoned his cloak of silence and general disgust to the chin button. Old Jack got his pipe to work and grunted, and chatted, and exchanged bush compliments with Harry comfortably. And so on to where they saw the light of a fire outside a hut ahead.

"Let me down here, Harry," said Old Jack uneasily, "I owe Mother Mac fourteen shillings for drinks, and I haven't got it on me, and I've been on the spree back yonder, and she'll know it, an' I don't want to face her. I'll cut across through the paddock and you can pick me up on the other side."

Harry thought a moment.

"Sit still, Jack," he said. "I'll fix that all right."

He twisted and went down into his trouser-pocket, the reins in one hand, and brought up a handful of silver. He held his hand down to the coach lamp, separated some of the silver from the rest by a sort of sleight of hand—or rather sleight of fingers—and handed the fourteen shillings over to Old Jack.

"Here y'are, Jack. Pay me some other time."

"Thanks, Harry!" grunted Old Jack, as he twisted for his pocket.

It was a cold night, the hint of a possible shanty thawed the traveller a bit, and he relaxed with a couple of grunts about the weather and the road, which were received in a brotherly spirit. Harry's horses stopped of their own accord in front of the house, an old bark-and-slab whitewashed humpy of the early settlers' farmhouse type, with a plank door in the middle, one bleary-lighted window on one side, and one forbiddingly blind one, as if death were there, on the other. It might have been. The door opened, letting out a flood of lamp-light and firelight which blindly showed the sides of the coach and the near pole horse and threw the coach lamps and the rest into the outer darkness of the opposing bush.

"Is that you, Harry?" called a voice and tone like Mrs Warren's of the Profession.

"It's me."

A stoutly aggressive woman appeared. She was rather florid, and looked, moved and spoke as if she had been something in the city in other years, and had been dumped down in the bush to make money in mysterious ways; had married, mated—or got herself to be supposed to be married—for convenience, and continued to make money by mysterious means. Anyway, she was "Mother Mac" to the bush, but, in the bank in the "town," and in the stores where she dealt, she was Mrs Mac, and there was always a promptly propped chair for her. She was, indeed, the missus of no other than old Mac, the teamster of hypnotic fame, and late opposition to Harry Chatswood. Hence, perhaps, part of Harry's hesitation to pull up, farther back, and his generosity to Old Jack.

Mrs or Mother Mac sold refreshments, from a rough bush dinner at eighteenpence a head to passengers, to a fly-blown bottle of ginger-ale or lemonade, hot in hot weather from a sunny fly-specked window. In between there was cold corned beef, bread and butter, and tea, and (best of all if they only knew it) a good bush billy of coffee on the coals before the fire on cold wet nights. And outside of it all, there was cold tea, which, when confidence was established, or they knew one of the party, she served hushedly in cups without saucers; for which she sometimes apologized, and which she took into her murderous bedroom to fill, and replenish, in its darkest and most felonious corner from homicidal-looking pots, by candle-light. You'd think you were in a cheap place, where you shouldn't be, in the city.

Harry and his passengers got down and stretched their legs, and while Old Jack was guardedly answering a hurriedly whispered inquiry of the traveller, Harry took the opportunity to nudge Mrs Mac, and whisper in her ear:

"Look out, Mrs Mac!—Exciseman!"

"The devil he is!" whispered she.

"Ye-e-es!" whispered Harry.

"All right, Harry!" she whispered. "Never a word! I'll take care of him, bless his soul."

After a warm at the wide wood fire, a gulp of coffee and a bite or two at the bread and meat, the traveller, now thoroughly thawed, stretched himself and said:

"Ah, well, Mrs Mac, haven't you got anything else to offer us?"

"And what more would you be wanting?" she snapped. "Isn't the bread and meat good enough for you?"

"But—but—you know—" he suggested lamely.

"Know?—I know!—What do I know?" A pause, then, with startling suddenness, "Phwat d'y' mean?"

"No offence, Mrs Mac—no offence; but haven't you got something in the way of—of a drink to offer us?"

"Dhrink! Isn't the coffee good enough for ye? I paid two and six a pound for ut, and the milk new from the cow this very evenin'—an' th' water rain-water."

"But—but—you know what I mean, Mrs Mac."

"An' I doan't know what ye mean. Phwat do ye mean? I've asked ye that before. What are ye dhrivin' at, man—out with it!"

"Well, I mean a little drop of the right stuff," he said, nettled. Then he added: "No offence—no harm done."

"O-o-oh!" she said, illumination bursting in upon her brain. "It's the dirrty drink ye're afther, is it? Well, I'll tell ye, first for last, that we doan't keep a little drop of the right stuff nor a little drop of the wrong stuff in this house. It's a honest house, an' me husband's a honest harrd-worrkin' carrier, as he'd soon let ye know if he was at home this cold night, poor man. No dirrty drink comes into this house, nor goes out of it, I'd have ye know."

"Now, now, Mrs Mac, between friends, I meant no offence; but it's a cold night, and I thought you might keep a bottle for medicine—or in case of accident—or snake-bite, you know—they mostly do in the bush."

"Medicine! And phwat should we want with medicine? This isn't a five-guinea private hospital. We're clean, healthy people, I'd have ye know. There's a bottle of painkiller, if that's what ye want, and a packet of salts left—maybe they'd do ye some good. An' a bottle of eye-water, an' something to put in your ear for th' earache—maybe ye'll want 'em both before ye go much farther."

"But, Mrs Mac—"

"No, no more of it!" she said. "I tell ye that if it's a nip ye're afther, ye'll have to go on fourteen miles to the pub in the town. Ye're coffee's gittin' cowld, an' it's eighteenpence each to passengers I charge on a night like this; Harry Chatswood's the driver an' welcome, an' Ould Jack's an ould friend." And she flounced round to clatter her feelings amongst the crockery on the dresser—just as men make a great show of filling and lighting their pipes in the middle of a barney. The table, by the way, was set on a brown holland cloth, with the brightest of tin plates for cold meals, and the brightest of tin pint-pots for the coffee (the crockery was in reserve for hot meals and special local occasions) and at one side of the wide fire-place hung an old-fashioned fountain, while in the other stood a camp-oven; and billies and a black kerosene-tin hung evermore over the fire from sooty chains. These, and a big bucket-handled frying-pan and a few rusty convict-time arms on the slab walls, were mostly to amuse jackaroos and jackarooesses, and let them think they were getting into the Australian-dontcherknow at last.

Harry Chatswood took the opportunity (he had a habit of taking opportunities of this sort) to whisper to Old Jack:

"Pay her the fourteen bob, Jack, and have done with it. She's got the needle to-night all right, and damfiknow what for. But the sight of your fourteen bob might bring her round." And Old Jack—as was his way—blundered obediently and promptly right into the hole that was shown him.

"Well, Mrs Mae," he said, getting up from the table and slipping his hand into his pocket. "I don't know what's come over yer to-night, but, anyway—" Here he put the money down on the table. "There's the money I owe yer for—for—"

"For what?" she demanded, turning on him with surprising swiftness for such a stout woman.

"The—the fourteen bob I owed for them drinks when Bill Hogan and me—"

"You don't owe me no fourteen bob for dhrinks, you dirty blaggard! Are ye mad? You got no drink off of me. Phwat d'ye mean?"

"Beg—beg pardin, Mrs Mac," stammered Old Jack, very much taken aback; "but the—yer know—the fourteen bob, anyway, I owed you when—that night when me an' Bill Hogan an' yer sister-in-law, Mary Don—"

"What? Well, I—Git out of me house, ye low blaggard! I'm a honest, respictable married woman, and so is me sister-in-law, Mary Donelly; and to think!—Git out of me door!" and she caught up the billy of coffee. "Git outside me door, or I'll let ye have it in ye'r ugly face, ye low woolscourer—an' it's nearly bilin'."

Old Jack stumbled dazedly out, and blind instinct got him on to the coach as the safest place. Harry Chatswood had stood with his long, gaunt figure hung by an elbow to the high mantelshelf, all the time, taking alternate gulps from his pint of coffee and puffs from his pipe, and very calmly and restfully regarding the scene.

"An' now," she said, "if the gentleman's done, I'd thank him to pay—it's eighteenpence—an' git his overcoat on. I've had enough dirty insults this night to last me a lifetime. To think of it—the blaggard!" she said to the table, "an' me a woman alone in a place like this on a night like this!"

The traveller calmly put down a two-shilling piece, as if the whole affair was the most ordinary thing in the world (for he was used to many bush things) and comfortably got into his overcoat.

"Well, Mrs Mae, I never thought Old Jack was mad before," said Harry Chatswood. "And I hinted to him," he added in a whisper. "Anyway" (out loudly), "you'll lend me a light, Mrs Mac, to have a look at that there swingle-bar of mine?"

"With pleasure, Harry," she said, "for you're a white man, anyway. I'll bring ye a light. An' all the lights in heaven if I could, an'—an' in the other place if they'd help ye."

When he'd looked to the swingle-bar, and had mounted to his place and untwisted the reins from a side-bar, she cried:

"An' as for them two, Harry, shpill them in the first creek you come to, an' God be good to you! It's all they're fit for, the low blaggards, to insult an honest woman alone in the bush in a place like this."

"All right, Mrs Mac," said Harry, cheerfully. "Good night, Mrs Mac."

"Good night, Harry, an' God go with ye, for the creeks are risen after last night's storm." And Harry drove on and left her to think over it.

She thought over it in a way that would have been unexpected to Harry, and would have made him uneasy, for he was really good-natured. She sat down on a stool by the fire, and presently, after thinking over it a bit, two big, lonely tears rolled down the lonely woman's fair, fat, blonde cheeks in the firelight.

"An' to think of Old Jack," she said. "The very last man in the world I'd dreamed of turning on me. But—but I always thought Old Jack was goin' a bit ratty, an' maybe I was a bit hard on him. God forgive us all!"

Had Harry Chatswood seen her then he would have been sorry he did it. Swagmen and broken-hearted new chums had met worse women than Mother Mac.

But she pulled herself together, got up and bustled round. She put on more wood, swept the hearth, put a parcel of fresh steak and sausages—brought by the coach—on to a clean plate on the table, and got some potatoes into a dish; for Chatswood had told her that her first and longest and favourite stepson was not far behind him with the bullock team. Before she had finished the potatoes she heard the clock-clock of heavy wheels and the crack of the bullock whip coming along the dark bush track.

But the very next morning a man riding back from Croydon called, and stuck his head under the veranda eaves with a bush greeting, and she told him all about it.

He straightened up, and tickled the back of his head with his little finger, and gaped at her for a minute.

"Why," he said, "that wasn't no excise officer. I know him well—I was drinking with him at the Royal last night afore we went to bed, an' had a nip with him this morning afore we started. Why! that's Bobby Howell, Burns and Bridges' traveller, an' a good sort when he wakes up, an' willin' with the money when he does good biz, especially when there's a chanst of a drink on a long road on a dark night."

"That Harry Chatswood again! The infernal villain," she cried, with a jerk of her arm. "But I'll be even with him, the dirrty blaggard. An' to think—I always knew Old Jack was a white man an'—to think! There's fourteen shillin's gone that Old Jack would have paid me, an' the traveller was good for three shillin's f'r the nips, an'—but Old Jack will pay me next time, and I'll be even with Harry Chatswood, the dirrty mail carter. I'll take it out of him in parcels—I'll be even with him."

She never saw Old Jack again with fourteen shillings, but she got even with Harry Chatswood, and—But I'll tell you about that some other time. Time for a last smoke before we turn in.



MATESHIP IN SHAKESPEARE'S ROME



How we do misquote sayings, or misunderstand them when quoted rightly! For instance, we "wait for something to turn up, like Micawber," careless or ignorant of the fact that Micawber worked harder than all the rest put together for the leading characters' sakes; he was the chief or only instrument in straightening out of the sadly mixed state of things—and he held his tongue till the time came. Moreover—and "Put a pin in that spot, young man," as Dr "Yark" used to say—when there came a turn in the tide of the affairs of Micawber, he took it at the flood, and it led on to fortune. He became a hardworking settler, a pioneer—a respected early citizen and magistrate in this bright young Commonwealth of ours, my masters!

And, by the way, and strictly between you and me, I have a shrewd suspicion that Uriah Heep wasn't the only cad in David Copperfield.

Brutus, the originator of the saying, took the tide at the flood, and it led him and his friends on to death, or—well, perhaps, under the circumstances, it was all the same to Brutus and his old mate, Cassius.

And this, my masters, brings me home, Bush-born bard, to Ancient Rome.

And there's little difference in the climate, or the men—save in the little matter of ironmongery—and no difference at all in the women.

We'll pass over the accident that happened to Caesar. Such accidents had happened to great and little Caesars hundreds of times before, and have happened many times since, and will happen until the end of time, both in "sport" (in plays) and in earnest:

Cassius: ....How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted over In states unborn and accents yet unknown?

Brutus: How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport, That now at Pompey's basis lies along No worthier than the dust!

Shakespeare hadn't Australia and George Rignold in his mind's eye when he wrote that.

Cassius: So oft as that shall be, So often shall the knot of us be call'd The men that gave their country liberty.

Well, be that as it will, I'm with Brutus too, irrespective of the merits of the case. Antony spoke at the funeral, with free and generous permission, and see what he made of it. And why shouldn't I? and see what I'll make of it.

Antony, after sending abject and uncalled-for surrender, and grovelling unasked in the dust to Brutus and his friends as no straight mate should do for another, dead or alive—and after taking the blood-stained hands of his alleged friend's murderers—got permission to speak. To speak for his own ends or that paltry, selfish thing called "revenge," be it for one's self or one's friend.

"Brutus, I want a word with you," whispered Cassius. "Don't let him speak! You don't know how he might stir up the mob with what he says."

But Brutus had already given his word:

Antony: That's all I seek: And am moreover suitor that I may Produce his body to the market place, And in the pulpit, as becomes a friend, Speak in the order of his funeral.

Brutus: You shall, Mark Antony.

And now, strong in his right, as he thinks, and trusting to the honour of Antony, he only stipulates that he (Brutus) shall go on to the platform first and explain things; and that Antony shall speak all the good he can of Caesar, but not abuse Brutus and his friends.

And Antony (mark you) agrees and promises and breaks his promise immediately afterwards. Maybe he was only gaining time for his good friend Octavius Caesar, but time gained by such foul means is time lost through all eternity. Did Mark think of these things years afterwards in Egypt when he was doubly ruined and doubly betrayed to his good friend Octavius by that hot, jealous, selfish, shallow, shifty, strumpet, Cleopatra, and Octavius was after his scalp with a certainty of getting it? He did—and he spoke of it, too.

Brutus made his speech, a straightforward, manly speech in prose, and the gist of the matter was that he did what he did (killed Caesar), not because he loved Caesar less, but because he loved Rome more. And I believe he told the simple honest truth.

Then he acts as Antony's chairman, or introducer, in a manly straightforward manner, and then he goes off and leaves the stage to him, which is another generous act; though it was lucky for Brutus, as it happened afterwards, that he was out of the way.

Mark Antony gets all the limelight and blank verse. He had the "gift of the gab" all right. Old Cassius referred to it later on in one of those "words-before-blows" barneys they had on the battlefield where they hurt each other a damned sight more with their tongues than they did with their swords afterwards.

We've all heard of Antony's speech:

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

Which was a lie to start with.

The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones.

Which is not so true in these days of newspapers and magazines. And so on. He says that Brutus and his friends are honourable men about nine times in his short speech. Now, was Mark Antony an honourable man?

And then the flap-doodle about dead Caesar's wounds, and their poor dumb mouths, and the people kissing them, and dipping their handkerchiefs in his sacred blood. All worthy of our Purves trying to pump tears out of a jury.

But it fetched the crowd; it always did, it always has done, it always does, and it always will do. And the hint of Caesar's will, and the open abuse of Brutus and Co. when he saw that he was safe, and the cheap anti-climax of the reading of the will. Nothing in this line can be too cheap for the crowd, as witness the melodramas of our own civilized and enlightened times.

Antony was a noble Purves.

And the mob rushed off to burn houses, as it has always done, and will always do when it gets a chance—it tried to burn mine more than once.

The quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius is one of the best scenes in Shakespeare. It is great from the sublime to the ridiculous—you must read it for yourself. It seems that Brutus objected to Cassius's, or one of his off-side friends' methods of raising the wind—he reckoned it was one of the very things they killed Julius Caesar for; and Cassius, loving Brutus more than a brother, is very much hurt about it. I can't make out what the trouble really was about and I don't suppose either Cassius or Brutus was clear as to what it was all about either. It's generally the way when friends fall out. It seems also that Brutus thinks that Cassius refused to lend him a few quid to pay his legions, and, you know, it's an unpardonable crime for one mate to refuse another a few quid when he's in a hole; but it seems that the messenger was but a fool who brought Cassius's answer back. It is generally the messenger who is to blame, when friends make it up after a quarrel that was all their own fault. Messengers had an uncomfortable time in those days, as witness the case of the base slave who had to bring Cleopatra the news of Antony's marriage with Octavia.

But the quarrel scene is great for its deep knowledge of the hearts of men in matters of man to man—of man friend to man friend—and it is as humanly simple as a barney between two old bush mates that threatens to end in a bloody fist-fight and separation for life, but chances to end in a beer. This quarrel threatened to end in the death of either Brutus or Cassius or a set-to between their two armies, just at the moment when they all should have been knit together against the forces of Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar; but it ended in a beer, or its equivalent, a bowl of wine.

Earlier in the quarrel, where Brutus asks why, after striking down the foremost man in all the world for supporting land agents and others, should they do the same thing and contaminate their fingers with base bribes?

I'd rather be a dog and bay the moon, Than such a Roman.

Cassius says:

Brutus, bait not me I'll not endure it: you forget yourself, To hedge me in; I am a soldier, I, Older in practice, abler than yourself To make conditions.

Brutus: Go to, you are not, Cassius.

Cassius: I am.

Brutus: I say you are not.

And so they get to it again until:

Cassius: Is it come to this?

Brutus: You say you are a better soldier: Let it appear so; make your vaunting true, And it shall please me well: for mine own part, I shall be glad to learn of noble men.

Cassius: You wrong me every way; you wrong me, Brutus; I said, an elder soldier, not a better. Did I say better?

(What big boys they were—and what big boys we all are!)

Brutus: If you did, I care not.

Cassius: When Caesar lived he durst not thus have moved me.

Brutus: Peace, peace! you durst not thus have tempted him.

Cassius: I durst not!

Brutus: No.

Cassius: What! Durst not tempt him!

Brutus: For your life you durst not.

Cassius: Do not presume too much upon my love; I may do that I shall be sorry for.

Brutus: You have done that you should be sorry for.

And so on till he gets to the matter of the refused quids, which is cleared up at the expense of the messenger.

Cassius: .... Brutus hath rived my heart A friend should bear his friend's infirmities, But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.

Brutus: I do not, till you practise them on me.

Cassius: You love me not.

Brutus: I do not like your faults.

Cassius: A friendly eye could never see such faults.

Brutus: A flatterer's would not, though they do appear As huge as high Olympus.

Then Cassius lets himself go. He calls on Antony and young Octavius and all the rest of 'em to come and be revenged on him alone, for he's tired of the world ("Cassius is aweary of the world," he says). He's hated by one he loves (that's Brutus). He's braved by his "brother" (Brutus), checked like a bondman, and Brutus keeps an eye on all his faults and puts 'em down in a note-book, and learns 'em over and gets 'em off by memory to cast in his teeth. He offers Brutus his dagger and bare breast and wants Brutus to take out his heart, which, he says, is richer than all the quids—or rather gold—which Brutus said he wouldn't lend him. He wants Brutus to strike him as he did Caesar, for he reckons that when Brutus hated Caesar worst he loved him far better than ever he loved Cassius.

Remember these men were Southerners, like ourselves, not cold-blooded Northerners—and, in spite of the seemingly effeminate Italian temperament, as brave as our men were at Elands River. The reason of Brutus's seeming coldness and hardness during the quarrel is set forth in a startling manner later on, as only the greatest poet in this world could do it.

Brutus tells him kindly to put up his pig-sticker (and button his shirt) and he could be just as mad or good-tempered as he liked, and do what he liked, Brutus wouldn't mind him:

.... Dishonour shall be humour. O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb That carries anger as the flint bears fire, Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark And straight is cold again.

Whereupon Cassius weeps because he thinks Brutus is laughing at him.

Hath Cassius lived To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus, When grief and blood ill-temper'd vexeth him.

Brutus: When I spoke that, I was ill-temper'd too.

Cassius: Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.

Brutus: And my heart too.

Then Cassius explains that he got his temper from his mother (as I did mine).

Cassius: O Brutus!

Brutus: What's the matter? [Shakespeare should have added 'now.']

Cassius: Have not you love enough to bear with me, When that rash humour which my mother gave me Makes me forgetful?

Brutus: Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth, When you are over-earnest with your Brutus, He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so.

And all this on the brink of disaster and death.

But here comes a rare touch, and we might as well quote it in full.

Mind you, I am following Shakespeare, and not history, which is mostly lies.

A great poet's instinct might be nearer the truth; after all. Of course scholars know that Macbeth (or Macbethad) reigned for upwards of twenty years in Scotland a wise and a generous king—so much so that he was called "Macbathad the Liberal," and it was Duncan who found his way to the throne by way of murder; but it didn't fit in with Shakespeare's plans, and—anyway that's only a little matter between the ghosts of Bill and Mac which was doubtless fixed up long ago. More likely they thought it such a one-millionth part of a trifle that they never dreamed of thinking of mentioning it.

(Noise within.)

Poet (within): Let me go in to see the generals; There is some grudge between 'em—'tis not meet They be alone.

Lucilius (within): You shall not come to them.

Poet (within): Nothing but death shall stay me.

("Within" in this case is, of course, without—outside the tent where Lucilius and Titinius are on guard.)

Enter POET.

Cassius: How now! What's the matter?

Poet: For shame, you generals! What do you mean? Love, and be friends, as two such men should be: For I have seen more years, I'm sure, than ye.

Cassius: Ha, ha! how vilely doth this cynic rhyme!

Brutus: Get you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow, hence!

Cassius: Bear with him, Brutus; 'tis his fashion.

Brutus: I'll know his humour when he knows his time: What should the wars do with these jingling fools? Companion, hence!

Cassius: Away, away, be gone!

(Exit POET.)

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit a black eye (Lawson). Shakespeare was ever rough on poets—but stay! Consider that this great world of Rome and all the men and women in it were created by a "jingling fool" and a master of bad—not to say execrable—rhymes, and his name was William Shakespeare. You need to sit down and think awhile after that.

Brutus sends Lucilius and Titinius to bid the commanders lodge their companies for the night, and then all come to him. Then he gives Cassius a shock and strikes him to the heart for his share in the quarrel. It is almost directly after the row, when they have kicked out the "jingling fool" of a poet. Cassius does not know that Brutus has to-day received news of the death, in Rome, of his good and true wife Portia, who, during a fit of insanity, brought on by her grief and anxiety for Brutus, and in the absence of her attendant, has poisoned herself—or "swallowed fire," as Shakespeare has it.

Brutus (to Lucius, his servant): Lucius, a bowl of wine! Cassius: I did not think you could have been so angry. Brutus: O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.

Cassius: Of your philosophy you make no use, If you give place to accidental evils.

Brutus: No man bears sorrow better:—Portia is dead.

Cassius: Ha! Portia!

Brutus: She is dead.

Cassius: How 'scaped I killing when I cross'd you so! O insupportable and touching loss! Upon what sickness?

Brutus: Impatient of my absence, And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony Have made themselves so strong: for with her death That tidings came; with this she fell distract, And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.

Cassius: And died so?

Brutus: Even so.

Cassius: O, ye immortal gods!

(Enter Lucius, with a jar of wine, a goblet, and a taper.)

Brutus: Speak no more of her. Give me a bowl of wine: In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius. (Drinks.)

Cassius: My heart is thirsty for that noble pledge. Fill, Lucius, till the wine o'erswell the cup; I cannot drink too much of Brutus' love. (Drinks.)

You ought to read that scene carefully. It will do no one any harm. It did me a lot of good one time, when I was about to quarrel with a friend whose heart was sick with many griefs that I knew nothing of at the time. You never know what's behind.

Titinius and Messala come in, and proceed to discuss the situation.

Brutus: Come in, Titinius!! Welcome, good Messala. Now sit we close about this taper here, And call in question our necessities.

Cassius (on whom the wine seems to have taken some effect): Portia, art thou gone?

Brutus: No more, I pray you. Messala, I have here received letters, That young Octavius and Mark Antony Come down upon us with a mighty power, Bending their expedition towards Philippi.

Messala has also letters to the same purpose, and they have likewise news of the murder, or execution, of upwards of a hundred senators in Rome.

Cassius: Cicero one! Messala: Cicero is dead.

Poor Brutus! His heart had cause to be sick of many griefs that day. Messala thinks he has news to break, and Brutus draws him out. How many and many a man and woman, with a lump in the throat, have broken sad and bad news since that day, and started out to do it in the same old gentle way:

Messala: Had you your letters from your wife, my lord?

Brutus: No, Messala.

Messala: Nor nothing in your letters writ of her?

Brutus: Nothing, Messala.

Messala: That, methinks, is strange.

Brutus: Why ask you? Hear you aught of her in yours?

Maybe it strikes Messala like a flash that Brutus is in no need of any more bad news just now, and it had better be postponed till after the battle:

Messala: No, my lord.

Brutus: Now, as you are a Roman, tell me true.

Messala: Then like a Roman bear the truth I tell: For certain she is dead, and by strange manner.

Brutus: Why, farewell, Portia. We must die, Messala: With meditating that she must die once I have the patience to endure it now.

Poor Messala comes to the scratch again rather lamely with a little weak flattery: "Even so great men great losses should endure;" and Cassius says, rather mixedly—it might have been the wine—that he has as much strength in bearing trouble as Brutus has, and yet he couldn't bear it so.

I have as much of this in art as you, But yet my nature could not bear it so.

Brutus: Well, to our work alive. What do you think Of marching on Philippi presently?

Brutus was a strong man. Portia's spirit must bide a while. They discuss a plan of campaign. Cassius is for waiting for the enemy to seek them and so get through his tucker and knock his men up, while they rest in a good position; but Brutus argues that the enemy will gather up the country people between Philippi and their camp and come on refreshed with added numbers and courage, and it would be better for them to meet him at Philippi with these people at their back. The politics or inclination of the said country people didn't matter in those days. "There is a tide in the affairs of men"—and so they decide to take it at the flood and float high on to the rocks at Philippi. Ah well, it led on to immortality, if it didn't to fortune.

Well, there's no more to say. Brutus thinks that the main thing now is a little rest—in which you'll agree with him; and he sends for his night-shirt.

Good night, Titinius: noble, noble Cassius, Good night, and good repose!

That old fool of a Cassius—remorseful old smooth-bore—is still a bit maudlin—maybe he had another swig at the wine when Shakespeare wasn't looking.

Cassius: O my dear brother! This was an ill beginning of the night Never come such division 'tween our souls! Let it not, Brutus.

Brutus: Everything is well.

Cassius: Good night, my lord.

Brutus: Good sight, good brother.

Titinius and Messala: Good night, Lord Brutus.

Brutus: Farewell, every one.

And Cassius is the man whom Caesar denounced as having a lean and hungry look: "Let me have men about me that are fat... such men are dangerous." (Mr Archibald held with that—and he had a lean, if not a hungry, look too.) When Antony put in a word for Cassius, Caesar said that he wished he was fatter anyhow. "He thinks too much," Caesar said to Antony. He read a lot; he could look through men; he never went to the theatre, and heard no music; he never smiled except as if grinning sarcastically at himself for "being moved to smile at anything." Caesar said that such men were never at heart's ease while they could see a bigger man than themselves, and therefore such men were dangerous. "Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf, and tell me truly what thou think'st of him." (That's a touch, for deafness in people affected that way is usually greater in the left ear.)

When Lucilius returned from taking a message from Brutus to Cassius re the loan of the fivers aforementioned and other matters—and before the arrival of Cassius with his horse and foot, and the quarrel—Brutus asked Lucilius what sort of a reception he had, and being told "With courtesy and respect enough," he remarked, "Thou hast described a hot friend cooling," and so on. But Cassius will cool no more until death cools him to-morrow at Philippi.

The rare gentleness of Brutus's character—and of the characters of thousands of other bosses in trouble—is splendidly, and ah! so softly, pictured in the tent with his servants after the departure of the others. It is a purely domestic scene without a hint of home, women, or children—save that they themselves are big children. The scene now has the atmosphere of a soft, sad nightfall, after a long, long, hot and weary day full of toil and struggle and trouble—though it is really well on towards morning.

Lucius comes in with the gown. Brutus says, "Give me the gown," and asks where his (Lucius's) musical instrument is, and Lucius replies that it's here in the tent. Brutus notices that he speaks drowsily. "Poor knave, I blame thee not, thou are o'er-watched." He tells him to call Claudius and some other of his men: "I'd have them sleep on cushions in my tent." They come. He tells them he might have to send them on business by and by to his "brother" Cassius, and bids them lie down and sleep, calling them sirs. They say they'll stand and watch his pleasure. "I will not have it so; lie down, good sirs." He finds, in the pocket of his gown, a book he'd been hunting high and low for—and had evidently given Lucius a warm time about—and he draws Lucius's attention to the fact:

Look, Lucius, here's the book I sought for so: I put it in the pocket of my gown.

Lucius: I was sure your lordship did not give it to me.

Brutus: Bear with me, good boy, I am much forgetful, etc.

He asks Lucius if he can hold up his heavy eyes and touch his instrument a strain or two. But better give it all—it's not long:

Lucius: Ay, my lord, an't please you.

Brutus: It does, my boy: I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing.

Lucius: It is my duty, sir.

Brutus: I should not urge thy duty past thy might; I know young bloods look for a time of rest.

Lucius: I have slept, my lord, already.

Brutus: It was well done; and thou shalt sleep again; I will not hold thee long: if I do live, I will be good to thee. (Music, and a song.) This is a sleepy tune. O murderous slumber, Lay'st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good-night; I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee: If thou dost nod, thou break'st thy instrument; I'll take it from thee; and, good boy, good-night. Let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turn'd down Where I left reading? Here it is, I think. (He sits down.)

A man for all time! How natural it all reads! You must remember that he is a tired man after a long, strenuous day such as none of us ever know. The fate of Rome and his—a much smaller matter—are hanging on the balance, and tomorrow will decide; but he is so mind-dulled and shoulder-weary under the tremendous burden of great things and of many griefs that he is almost apathetic; and over all is the cloud of a loss that he has not yet had time to realize. He is self-hypnotized, so to speak, and his mind mercifully dulled for the moment on the Sea of Fatalism.

Enter GHOST of CAESAR

Brutus: How ill this taper burns! Ha! who comes here? I think it is the weakness of mine eyes That shapes this monstrous apparition. It comes upon me. Art thou any thing? Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil That makest my blood cold, and my hair to stare? Speak to me what thou art!

His very "scare," or rather his cold blood and staring hair are as things apart, to be analysed and explained quickly and put aside.

Ghost: Thy evil spirit, Brutus.

That was frank enough, anyway.

Brutus: Why comest thou?

Ghost: To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.

Brutus: Well; then I shall see thee again?

Ghost: Ay, at Philippi. (Vanishes.)

That was very satisfactory, so far. But Brutus, having taken heart, as he says, would hold more talk with the "ill spirit." A ghost always needs to be taken quietly—it's no use getting excited and threshing round. But Caesar's, being a new-chum ghost and bashful, was doubtless embarrassed by his cool, matter-of-fact reception, and left. It didn't matter much. They were to meet soon, above Philippi, on more level terms.

But I cannot get away from the idea that Caesar's ghost's visit was made in a friendly spirit. Who knows? Perhaps Portia's spirit had sent it to comfort Brutus: her own being prevented from going for some reason only known to the immortal gods.

Then Brutus wakes them all.

Lucius: The strings, my lord, are false.

Brutus: He thinks he is still at his instrument. Lucius, awake!

And after questioning them as to whether they cried out in their sleep, or saw anything, he bids the boy sleep again (it is easy for tired boys to sleep at will in camp) and sends two of the others to Cassius to bid him get his forces on the way early and he would follow.

Brutus: Go and commend me to my brother Cassius; Bid him set on his powers betimes before, And we will follow.

Varro and Claudius: It shall be done, my lord.

For, being a wise soldier, as well as a brave and gentle one, he reckoned, no doubt, that it would be best to have a strong man in the rear until the field was actually reached, for the benefit of would-be deserters, and unconsidered trifles of country people-and maybe for another reason not totally disconnected with his erratic friend Cassius.

Just one more scene, and a very different one, before we hurry on to the end, as they have done to Philippi. It's the only scene in which those two unlucky Romans, Cassius and Brutus, seem to score.

It is during the barney, or as Shakespeare calls it, the "parley" before the battle. Those parleys never seemed to do any good—except to make matters worse, if I might put it like that: it's the same, under similar circumstances, right up to to-day. Enter on one side Octavius Caesar, Mark Antony, and their pals and army; and, on the other, Brutus and Cassius and the friends and followers of their falling fortunes.

Brutus: Words before blows: is it so, countrymen?

Octavius: Not that we love words better, as you do.

You see, Octavius starts it.

Brutus lays himself open:

Brutus: Good words are better than bad strokes, Octavius. Antony: In your bad strokes, Brutus, you give good words: Witness the hole you made in Caesar's heart, Crying, "Long live! hail, Caesar!"

This is one for Brutus, though it contains a lie. But Cassius comes to the rescue:

Cassius: Antony, The posture of your blows are yet unknown, But, for your words, they rob the Hybla bees And leave them honeyless.

Antony: Not stingless too.

Brutus: O, yes, and soundless too; For you have stol'n their buzzing, Antony, And very wisely threat before you sting.

That was one for Antony, and he gets mad. "Villains!" he yells, and he abuses them about their vile daggers hacking one another in the sides of Caesar (a little matter that ought to be worn threadbare by now), and calls them apes and hounds and bondmen and curs, and O, flatterers (which seems to be worst of all in his opinion—for he isn't one, you know), and damns 'em generally.

Old Cassius remarks, "Flatterers!"

Then Octavius breaks loose, and draws his Roman chopper and waves it round, and spreads himself out over Caesar's three-and-thirty wounds—which ought to be given a rest by this time, but only seem to be growing in number—and swears that he won't put up said chopper till said wounds are avenged,

Or till another Caesar Have added slaughter to the sword of traitors.

Brutus says quietly that he cannot die by traitors unless he brings 'em with him. (He sent one to Egypt later on.) Octavius says he hopes he wasn't born to die on Brutus's sword; and Brutus says, in effect, that even if he was any good he couldn't die more honourably.

Brutus: O, if thou wert the noblest of thy strain, Young man, thou couldst not die more honourable.

Cassius: A peevish schoolboy, worthless of such honour, Join'd with a masker and a reveller!

Octavius calls off his dogs, and tells them to come on to-day if they dare, or if not, when they have stomachs.

Cassius: Why, now, blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark! The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.

Yes, I reckon old Cassius ("old" in an affectionate sense) and Brutus came out top dogs from that scrap anyway. And, yes, Antony was good at orating. He was great at orating over dead men—especially dead "friends" (as he called his rivals) and dead enemies. Brutus was "the noblest Roman of them all" when Antony came across him stiff later on. Now when I die—

Octavius, by the way, orated over Antony and his dusky hussy later on in Egypt, and they were the most "famous pair" in the world. I wonder whether the grim humour of it struck Octavius then: but then that young man seemed to have but little brains and less humour.

But now they go to see about settling the matter with ironmongery. You can imagine the fight; the heat and the dust, for it was spring in a climate like ours. The bullocking, sweating, grunting, slaughter, the crack and clash and rattle as of fire-irons in a fender. The bad Latin language; the running away and chasing en masse and by individuals. The mutual pauses, the truces or spells—"smoke-ho's" we'd call 'em—between masses and individuals. The battered-in, lost, discarded or stolen helmets; the blood-stained, dinted, and loosened armour with bits missing, and the bloody and grotesque bandages. The confusion amongst the soldiers, as it is to-day—the ignorance of one wing as to the fate of the other, of one party as to the fate of the other, of one individual as to the fate of another:

Brutus: Ride, ride, Messala, ride, and give these bills [directions to officers] Unto the legions on the other side:

Poor Cassius, routed and in danger of being surrounded, and thinking Brutus is in the same plight, or a prisoner or dead—and that Titinius is taken or killed—gets his bondman, whose life he once saved, to kill him in return for his freedom.

Stand not to answer: here, take thou the hilts; And when my face is cover 'd, as 'tis now, Guide thou the sword. Caesar, thou art revenged, Even with the sword that kill'd thee.

Good-bye, Cassius, old chap!

Titinius and Messala, coming too late, find Cassius dead; and Titinius, being left alone while Messala takes the news to Brutus, kills himself with Cassius's sword. Titinius, farewell!

Come Brutus and those that are left.

Brutus: Where, where, Messala, doth his body lie?

Messala: Lo, yonder, and Titinius mourning it.

Brutus: Titinius' face is upward.

Cato: He is slain.

Grim mates in a grim day in a grim hour. Then the cry of Brutus:

O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!

But if he were, perhaps he only gathered old Cassius and Titinius to be sure of their company with him and Brutus amongst the gods a little later.

Brutus: Friends, I owe more tears To this dead man than you shall see me pay. I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time.

And, after making arrangements for the removal of Cassius's body, they go to try their fortunes in a second fight. Young Cato is killed and good Lucilius taken. Comes Brutus beaten, with Dardanius his last friend, and his three servants, Clitus, Strato, and Volumnius.

Brutus: Come, poor remains of friends, rest on this rock.

Strato, exhausted, goes to sleep, as man can sleep during a battle; and Brutus whispers the others, one after another, to kill him; but they are shocked and refuse: "I'll rather kill myself," "I do such a deed?" etc. He begs Volumnius, his old schoolmate, to hold his sword-hilt while he runs on it, for their love of old.

Volumnius: That's not the office for a friend, my lord.

There are alarums, and they urge him to fly, for it's no use stopping there.

Brutus: Farewell to you; and you; and you, Volumnius. Strato, thou hast been all this while asleep; Farewell to thee too, Strato! Countrymen, My heart doth joy that yet in all my life I found so man but he was true to me.

Ye gods! but it's grand. I wish to our God that I could say as much—or that man or woman [n]ever found me untrue. Could Antony say as much, afterwards, in Egypt—or Octavius! with Antony then on his mind? Even Antony's last man and servant failed him in the end, killing himself rather than kill his master. But Strato—

There are more alarums and voices calling to them to run. They urge Brutus again, and he tells them to go and he'll follow. They all run except Strato, who hesitates.

Brutus: I prithee, Strato, stay thou by thy lord: Thou art a fellow of a good respect; Thy life hath had some snatch of honour in it Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face, While I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato?

Strato: Give me your hand first: fare you well, my lord.

Brutus: Farewell, good Strato. Caesar, now be still: I kill'd not thee with half so good a will.

Brutus, good night!

I like Shakespeare's servants. They seem to show that he sprang from servants or common people rather than from lords and masters, for he deals with them very gently. It must be understood that servants, bond and free, were born unto the same house and served it for generations; and so down to modern England, where the old nurse and the tottering old gardener often nursed and played with "Master Will," when his father, the dead and gone old squire, was a young man.

See where Timon's servants stand in the only patch of sunlight in that black and bitter story:

Enter Flavius, with two or three SERVANTS.

1 Serv.: Hear you, master steward, where's our master? Are we undone? cast off? nothing remaining?

Flav.: Alack, my fellows, what should I say to you? Let me be recorded by the righteous gods, I am as poor as you.

1 Serv.: Such a house broke! So noble a master fall'n! All gone! and not One friend to take his fortune by the arm, And go along with him!

2 Serv.: As we do turn our backs From our companion thrown into his grave, So his familiars to his buried fortunes Slink all away; leave their false vows with him, Like empty purses pick'd; and his poor self, A dedicated beggar to the air, With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty, Walks, like contempt, alone. More of our fellows.

Enter other Servants

Flav.: All broken implements of a ruin'd house.

3 Serv.: Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery; That see I by our faces; we are fellows still, Serving alike in sorrow: leak'd is our bark, And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck, Hearing the surges threat; we must all part Into this sea of air.

Flav.: Good fellows all, The latest of my wealth I'll share amongst you. Wherever we shall meet, for Timon's sake Let's yet be fellows; let's shake our heads, and say, As 'twere a knell unto our master's fortunes, "We have seen better days." Let each take some. (Giving them money.) Nay, put out all your hands. Not one word more: Thus part we rich in sorrow, parting poor.



Notes on Australianisms. Based on my own speech over the years, with some checking in the dictionaries. Not all of these are peculiar to Australian slang, but are important in Lawson's stories, and carry overtones.

barrackers: people who cheer for a sporting team, etc. boko: crazy. bushman/bushwoman: someone who lives an isolated existence, far from cities, "in the bush", "outback". (today: "bushy". In New Zealand it is a timber getter. Lawson was sacked from a forestry job in New Zealand, "because he wasn't a bushman":-) bushranger: an Australian "highwayman'', who lived in the 'bush'— scrub—and attacked and robbed, especially gold carrying coaches and banks. Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures— cf. Ned Kelly—but usually very violent. US use was very different (more = explorer), though some lexicographers think the word (along with "bush" in this sense) was borrowed from the US... churchyarder: Sounding as if dying—ready for the churchyard = cemetery cobber: mate, friend. Used to be derived from Hebrew chaver via Yiddish. General opinion now seems to be that it entered the language too early for that—and an English etymology is preferred. fiver: a five pound (sterling) note (or "bill") fossick: pick out gold, in a fairly desultory fashion. In old "mullock" heaps or crvices in rocks. jackaroo: (Jack + kangaroo; sometimes jackeroo)—someone, in early days a new immigrant from England, learning to work on a sheep/cattle station (U.S. "ranch".) kiddy: young child. "kid" plus ubiquitous Australia "-y" or "-ie" nobbler: a drink, esp. of spirits overlanding: driving (or, "droving", cattle from pasture to market or railhead.) pannikin: a metal mug. Pipeclay: or Eurunderee, Where Lawson spent much of his early life (including his three years of school... Poley: name for s hornless (or dehorned) cow. skillion(-room): A "lean-to", a room built up against the back of some other building, with separate roof. sliprails: portion of a fence where the rails are lossely fitted so that they may be removed from one side and animal let through. smoke-ho: a short break from, esp., heavy physical work, and those who wish to can smoke. sov.: sovereign, gold coin worth one pound sterling splosh: money Sqinny: nickname for someone with a squint. Stousher: nickname for someone often in a fight (or "stoush") swagman (swaggy): Generally, anyone who is walking in the "outback" with a swag. (See "The Romance of the Swag".) Lawson also restricts it at times to those whom he considers to be tramps, not looking for work but for "handouts" (i.e., "bums" in US. In view of the Great Depression, 1890->, perhaps unfairly. In 1892 it was reckoned 1/3 men were out of work)

GJC

THE END