Such Is Life - Joseph Furphy (philippa perry book txt) 📗

crash that rattled back and forward across the river for a quarter of an hour. I had a presentiment that Providence was on the job again, and I wasn’t disappointed. One of the fallers had left a tree nearly through when he went to dinner; and a gust of wind sent it over, and it carried a couple of other trees before it, right on the spot where my team was folded up in the shade. Eight of them went that trip, between killed and crippled, leaving me with sixteen. My next piece of luck was to lose that new Yankee wagon in the Eight-mile Mallee, on Birrawong. Then I could see plain enough that Providence had taken up Charley’s case, and was prepared to block me of keeping two teams; so I determined to have one good one. Now, I’ve always stood pretty well with the agents and squatters, and I know my way round Riverina, so I can turn over as much money as any single-team man on the track, bar Warrigal Alf (I beg your pardon, Cooper; I forgot)⁠—but what’s the use of money to me? Only vanity and vexation of spirit, as Shakespeare says. I get up to a certain point, and then I’m knocked stiff. Mind, I’ve only given you a small, insignificant sample of the misfortunes I’ve had since I cheated that dead man; but if they don’t prove there’s a curse on me, then there’s no such thing as proof in this world.”

Price cleared his throat. “Them misforcunes was invidiously owin’ to yer own (adj.) misjudgment,” he said dogmatically.

“Serve you right for not havin’ better luck,” added Dixon.

“Learn you sense, anyhow,” remarked Mosey.

“Misforcunes does some people good,” hazarded Bum.

“Yes,” replied Thompson gently. “I’ve had my turn. I hope I take it like a man. Your turns will come sooner or later, as sure as you’ve got heads on your bodies⁠—perhaps next year; perhaps next week; perhaps tomorrow. Let’s see how you’ll take it. Mind, there’s a curse on every one of us. And look here⁠—we had no business to travel today; there was a bite of feed in the Patagonia Swamp, if it came to the worst. Now we’re in for it. I’ve got a presentiment that something’ll happen before tomorrow night. Just mark my words.”

A constrained silence fell on the grownup children, till Willoughby politely sought to restore ease by contributing his quota to the evening’s feast of reason⁠—

“There occurs to my mind a capital thing,” he said; “a capital thing, indeed, though apropos of nothing in particular. A student, returning from a stroll, encountered a countryman, carrying a hare in his hand. ‘Friend,’ said the student quietly, ‘is that thine own hare or a wig?’ The joke, of course, lies in the play on the word ‘hare.’ ”

Willoughby’s courteous effort was worse than wasted, for the general depression deepened.

“You’re right, Thompson,” said Cooper, at length. “Mostly everybody’s got a curse on them. I got a curse on me. I got it through swearin’ and Sabbath-breakin’. I’ve tried to knock off swearin’ fifty dozen times, but I might as well try to fly. Last time I tried to knock it off was when I left Nyngan for Kenilworth, four months ago; but there happened to be a two-hundredweight bag o’ rice in the bottom o’ the load; an’ something tore her, an’ she started leakin’ through the cracks in the floor o’ the wagon; an’ I couldn’t git at her no road, for there was seven ton on top of her; an’ the blasted stuff it kep’ dribble-dribble till you could ’a’ tracked me at a gallop for over a hundred mile; an’ me swearin’ at it till I was black in the face; an’ it always stopped dribblin’ at night, like as if it was to aggravate a man. If it hadn’t been for that rice, I’d ’a’ kep’ from swearin’ that trip; an’ then, comin’ down from Kenilworth with Thompson, I’d ’a’ kep’ from it easy; for Thompson he never swears. I give him credit for that much.”

“I don’t claim any credit,” remarked Thompson, with the unconscious spiritual swagger which so often antecedes, and possibly generates, lapse. “I never could see that swearing did any good; so I just say to myself, ‘You’d like to come out, would you?⁠—well, then, once for all, you won’t.’ ”

“You’re a happy man, curse and all,” replied the giant gloomily. “For my own part, I was brought up careful, but I’ve turned out a (adj.) failure. Nobody would think, seeing me so brisk an’ cheerful, that I got more worry nor anybody on’y myself could stand. I got more trouble nor all you fellers put together.” He paused, evidently battling feebly with that impulse which bids us ease the loaded breast, even when discovery’s pain. His voice was even lower and sadder as he resumed:

“My father he was well off, with a comfortable place of his own on the Hawkesbury; an’ there was on’y me an’ my sister Molly; for my mother died of a cold she caught when I was about twelve or fourteen, and Molly she was hardly so old. If you was to travel the country, you wouldn’t meet another man like my ole dad. He was what you might call⁠—”

“My farther he was a sojer,” interposed Dixon. “He could whack any man of his weight in the 40th. Las’ word he says to me: ‘Bob,’ says he; ‘be a man⁠—an’ keep Injun ink off o’ yer arms, for you never know,’ says he, ‘what you might do.’ ”

“Not many men like my ole dad,” pursued Cooper. “Fetch up your youngsters in the natur’ an’ admiration o’ the Lord, an’ don’t be frightened to dress the knots off o’ them. That was his idear, an’ he went through with it straight. ‘William,’ says he to me; ‘if I catch a oath out o’ your mouth, I’ll welt the (adj.) hide off o’ you;’ an’ many’s the time he done it. ‘Always show respect to