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

in allegorical form. The misty expanse of Futurity is radiated with divergent lines of rigid steel; and along one of these lines, with diminishing carbon and sighing exhaust, you travel at schedule speed. At each junction, you switch right or left, and on you go still, up or down the way of your own choosing. But there is no stopping or turning back; and until you have passed the current section there is no divergence, except by voluntary catastrophe. Another junction flashes into sight, and again your choice is made; negligently enough, perhaps, but still with a view to what you consider the greatest good, present or prospective. One line may lead through the Slough of Despond, and the other across the Delectable Mountains, but you don’t know whether the section will prove rough or smooth, or whether it ends in a junction or a terminus, till the cloven mists of the future melt into a manifest present. We know what we are, but we know not what we shall be.

Often the shunting seems a mere trifle; but, in reality, the switch is that wizard-wand which brings into evidence such corollaries of life as felicity or misery, peace or tribulation, honour or ignominy, found on the permanent way. For others, remember, as well as for ourselves. No one except the anchorite lives to himself; and he is merely a person who evades his responsibilities.

Here and there you find a curious complication of lines. From a junction in front, there stretches out into the mist a single line and a double line; and meantime, along a track converging toward your own, there spins a bright little loco, in holiday trim, dazzling you with her radiant headlights, and commanding your admiration by her ’tractive power. Quick! Choose! Single line to the next junction, or double line to the terminus? A major-alternative, my boy! “Double line!” you say. I thought so. Now you’ll soon have a long train of empty I’s to pull up the gradients; and while you snort and bark under a heavy draught, your disgusted consort will occasionally stimulate you with a “flying-kick”; and when this comes to pass, say Pompey told you so. To change the metaphor: Instead of remaining a self-sufficient lord of creation, whose house is thatched when his hat is on, you have become one of a Committee of Ways and Means⁠—a committee of two, with power to add to your number. Dan O’Connell, for instance, had negotiated this alternative, and, in the opinion of the barracks, had made his election in a remiss and casual way.

And as with the individual, so with the community. Men, thinking and acting in mass, do not (according to the accepted meaning of the phrase) follow the line of least resistance. The myriad-headed monster adopts the alternative which appears to promise such a line, but its previsions are more often wrong than right; and, in such cases, the irresistible momentum of the Destiny called into being by its shortsighted choice drives it helplessly along a line of the greatest conceivable resistance. Isn’t history a mere record of blundering option, followed by iron servitude to the irremediable suffering thereby entailed? Applied to the flying alternative, the “least resistance” theory is gratuitously sound; beyond that, it is misleading. However, all this must be taken as referring back to my own apparently insignificant decision not to disturb the masterly inactivity of that sundowner under the wilga. Mere afterthoughts, introduced here by reason of their bearing on this simple chronicle.]

As a matter of fact, I approached Rory’s neat, two-roomed hut speculating as to why he had purposely left me to feel my own way. I soon formed a good rough guess. A neatly-dressed child, in a vast, white sunbonnet, ran toward me as I came in sight, but presently paused, and returned at the same pace. On reaching the door I was met by a stern-looking woman of thirty-odd, to whom I introduced myself as an old friend of Mr. O’Halloran’s.

“Deed he hes plenty o’ frien’s,” replied the woman drily. “Are ye gunta stap the night?”

“Well, Mr. O’Halloran was kind enough to proffer his hospitality,” I replied, pulling the packsaddle off Bunyip. “By the way, I’m to tell you that he’ll be home presently.”

“Nat a fear but he’ll be home at mail-time. An’ a purty house he’s got fur till ax a sthranger intil.”

“Now, Mrs. O’Halloran, it’s the loveliest situation I’ve seen within a hundred miles,” I replied, as I set Cleopatra at liberty. “And the way that the place is kept reflects the very highest credit upon yourself.” Moreover, both compliments were as true as they were frank.

“Dacent enough for them that’s niver been used till betther. There’s a dale in how a body’s rairt.”

“True, Mrs. O’Halloran,” I sighed. “I’m sure you must feel it. But, my word! you can grow the right sort of children here! How old is the little girl?” My custom is to ask a mother the age of her child, and then express incredulity.

“Oul’er nor she’s good. She was five on the thurteenth iv last month.”

“No, but seriously, Mrs. O’Halloran?”

“A’m always sayrious about telling the thruth.” And with this retort courteous the impervious woman retired into her house, while I seated myself on the bucket stool against the wall, and proceeded to fill my pipe.

“We got six goats⁠—pure Angoras,” remarked the little girl, approaching me with instinctive courtesy. “We keep them for milkin’; an’ Daddy shears them ivery year.”

“I noticed them coming along,” I replied. “They’re beautiful goats. And I see you’ve got some horses too.”

“Yis; three. We bought wan o’ them chape, because he hed a sore back, fram a shearer, an’ it’s nat hailed up yit. Daddy rides the other wans. E-e-e! can’t my Daddy ride! An’ he ken grow melons, an’ he ken put up shelves, an’ he knows iverything!”

“Yes; your Daddy’s a good man. I knew him long, long ago, when there was no you. What’s your name, dear?”

“Mary.”

“She’s got no name,” remarked the grim voice from the interior