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

exchange for what Goldsmith thoughtlessly calls ‘the glaring impotence of dress.’ ”

I followed the buggy at a Chinaman’s trot, thinking the thing over, and switching myself desperately, for the night was getting hotter and darker, and mosquitos livelier. You will bear in mind that I was now retracing my way.

Keeping on the track which skirted the river timber⁠—the cool, impalpable dust being grateful to my bare feet⁠—I heard some people on horseback pass along the parallel track which ran by the fence. Demoralised by the conditions of my unhappy state, I again paused to eavesdrop. Good! One fellow was relating an anecdote suited to gentlemen only. Thanking Providence for the tendency of the yarn, I darted diagonally across the clearing to intercept these brethren, and was rapidly nearing the party, when Pup, thinking I was after something, crossed my course in the dark. I tripped over him, and landed some yards ahead, in one of the five patches of nettles in the county of Moira. By the time I had cleared myself and recovered my equanimity, the horsemen had improved their pace, and were out of reach.

A few minutes afterward, I became aware of the footfalls of a single horse, coming along behind me at a slow trot. I paused to make one more solicitation. When the horseman was within twenty yards of where I stood, he pulled up and dismounted. Then he struck a match, and began looking on the ground for something he had dropped. The horse shied at the light, and refused to lead; whereupon, after giving the animal a few kicks, he threw the reins over a post of the fence close by, and continued his search, lighting fresh matches. Assuming an air of unconcern, so as to avoid taking him by surprise, I drew nearer, and noted him as a large, fair young man, fashionably dressed.

“Good evening, sir,” said I urbanely.

With that peculiar form of rudeness which provokes me most, he flashed a match on me, instead of replying to my salutation.

“Are you satisfied?” I asked sardonically, switching myself the while, and still capering from the effect of the nettles.

He darted towards his horse, but before he reached the bridle my hand was on his shoulder.

“What do you want?” he gasped.

“I want your ⸻,” I replied sternly. “I’m getting full up of the admiration of the gods; I want the admiration of my fellow-men. In other words, I’m replete with the leading trait of Adamic innocence; I want the sartorial concomitants of Adamic guilt. Come! off with them!” and with that I snapped the laces of his balmorals; for he had sunk to the ground, and was lying on his back. “And seeing that I may as well be hanged for a whole suit as for a pair of ⸻, I’ll just take the complete outer ply while my hand’s in; leaving you whatever may be underneath. Let me impress upon you that I don’t attempt to defend this action on strictly moral grounds,” I continued, peeling off his coat and waistcoat with the celerity of a skilful butcher skinning a sheep for a bet. “I think we may regard the transaction as a pertinent illustration of Pandulph’s aphorism⁠—to wit, that ‘He who stands upon a slippery place, makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up.’ When the hurly-burly’s done, I must get you to favour me with your address, so that⁠—” Here my antagonist suddenly gave tongue.

During an eventful life, I have frequently had occasion to observe that when woman finds herself in a tight place, her first impulse is to set the wild echoes flying; whereas, man resists or submits in silence, except, perhaps, for a few bad words ground out between his teeth. Therefore, when the legal owner of the ⸻ which I was in the act of unfastening, suddenly splintered the firmament with a double-barrelled screech, the thought flashed on my mind that he was one of those De Lacy Evanses we often read of in novels; and in two seconds I was fifty yards away, trying to choose between the opposing anomalies of the case. A little reflection showed the balance of probability strongly against a disguise which I have never met with in actual life; but by this time I heard the clatter of horses’ feet approaching rapidly from both sides. The prospective violation of my incognito by a haphazard audience made my position more and more admirable from a mythological point of view, so I straightway vaulted over the fence, and lay down among some cockspurs.

Within the next few minutes, several people on horseback came up to the scene of the late attempted outrage. I can’t give the exact number, of course, as I could only judge by sound, but there might have been half a dozen. A good deal of animated conversation followed⁠—some of it, I thought, in a feminine voice⁠—then the whole party went trampling along the fence, close to my ambush, and away out of hearing.

The mosquitos were worse than ever. I pulled two handfuls of crop to replace the switches I had thrown away on attempting to cajole the Chevalier d’Eon out of his ⸻. My mind was made up. I would solicit this impracticable generation no longer. I would follow the river road for eight or ten miles, and then wait in some secluded spot for the first peep of daylight. I began to blame myself for not having gone straight on when Archie unconsciously gave me my longitude. To get home in the dark was, of course, entirely out of the question; all that I could do was to aim approximately in the right direction.

I was pacing along at the double, when a lighted window, a couple of hundred yards from the road, attracted my attention. Like Frankenstein’s unhappy Monster, I had a hankering, just then, for human vicinity; though, like It, I met with nothing but horrified repulse. You will notice that Mrs. Shelley, with true womanly delicacy, avoids saying, in