SPRING-TIME
I
THIS year the seed-eating birds did not nest in the numbers usual to a normal year, but the carnivorous birds bred with unwonted fecundity, for their food supplies were abnormal. Long stretches of the river-bed were dry, and a selector above Wilcannia sowed a crop of oats along a mile stretch of sand-bottom–and reaped a harvest. Water in the holes at the bends mysteriously maintained its level, and in the depths lurked giant cod that preyed on the perch, which in turn preyed on the tiny fish that might have become giant cod.
Feng Ching-wei’s life during these months of drought was far more independent than ever it had been. Before the coming of Ethel Mayne he had occupied rooms in Government House, which gave him all the privacy he desired, yet still kept him chained to the communal system presided over by a housekeeper in the employ of a man not himself.
With those conditions he was not dissatisfied. They had existed from the day he and Frank Mayne had come home to mourn Old Man Mayne and carry on the work of Atlas. He accepted them because he had known no other. Not until the furnishing of his bungalow did he appreciate real independence, and not until the coming of Mary O’Doyle did he experience that peculiar masculine satisfaction of being properly cared for.
Little links of confidence eventually formed for him the chain of Mary’s harsh history, a chronicle of years of unwomanly labours unsoftened by the influence of real affection. Wielding a pickaxe, toiling at a windlass over a mine shaft, and yoking and driving a bullock team are not labours that help a woman to love or to be loved. The incredible conditions ruling the birth of her one child, which died a few weeks later, give sufficient proof of this. When she was heavy with child, she and her husband each drove a bullock team over the Broken Hill-Wilcannia track in the heat of early summer. They were nine miles from water when the pains came to Mary. She shouted to her husband to stop his team and keep an eye on hers whilst she went into the bush for an hour, produced her baby, brought it back to her wagon, and drove her team the nine miles to water.
Almost all her life she had worked as a man, and better than many a man. Frugal in her habits, she made money for her two husbands to squander on drink. All her life she had sought for love, and had found but poor imitations of it. When death took her baby it left her with nothing.
Looking backward from the security of Feng’s house, her arrival at Atlas seemed like coming home from a stormy voyage. The conditions of Feng’s household suited her independent spirit, which at several periods, never for long, bore with the oversight of a mistress. Here in Feng’s establishment there was no “high-falutin’, la-de-da, hoity-toity city woman” to order her about. Here she was mistress herself. Here, most wonderfully, she could mother a lonely young man, feed him, mend for him, guard him from discomfort, keep his house spotless. From the storms of life she found herself in the haven of peaceful anchorage. Feng she grew to love as she would have loved the baby born beside the track–as she would have loved either of her husbands had they been gentle.
All this Feng Ching-wei knew or shrewdly guessed, and because of it was the more astonished by the information imparted to him one morning by his cook-housekeeper-needlewoman-guardian. When she had set before him the tray containing the morning tea, she said, in unusually broad Irish:
“Misther Feng, ’tis a worrd wid ye I’d loike.”
“Very well, Mary,” assented Feng, smiling into her round red face, in which the shining eyes and the shining button of a nose formed the points of a triangle. Rising courteously, he offered her a chair, which she accepted with hesitation. He observed her eyes to be dim with tears.
“Oi–oh, Misther Feng! Some’ow ’tis sorrowful I am to tell ye. But–but––”
Mary burst into tears. Feng waited in wonderment.
“Oi’ve served ye now nearly eighteen monse, Misther Feng,” Mary sobbed. “All that toime ye’ve behaved like a gintleman, and now–and now––”
“You do not intend leaving me, do you, Mary?” Feng exclaimed in quick alarm.
“Oi don’ be knowin’, indade Oi don’t. For shure I don’ be wanting to, but that feller’s been pesterin’ the loife out of me, an’ now he says Oi’m to go ter Menindee ter-morrer by the coach. Oi don’ wanner go–yet Oi do wanner go.”
“Please explain, Mary, why you want to go and do not want to go to Menindee,” questioned Feng, now racked by the nightmare of living without the ministrations of Mary O’Doyle.
With great effort she dried her eyes by the application of a red forearm. When again she spoke her voice was steady and her accent less Irish. Volubly she burst forth:
“’Tis that blackguard ava Todd Gray, the poor little runt. He’s been a-courtin’ avme these last six weeks, and then–him being in Menindee on a spree, as you know–he sent worrd to the sergint of police to marry us next Tuesday. That was close on three weeks gone. The banns ’ave bin posted outside the police-station, an’ I’ve bin arguing with meself if I’d go or not. Now he’s sint me worrd to catch the mail-car termorrer. Oh, Misther Feng! You must be a-letting me go, or he’ll spind arl his money on the accursed dhrink, and come home like poor old Sir John.”
“But––” Feng gasped, so intense was his astonishment, so terrible his fear of losing her. To be sure, Todd Gray often had been seen talking to Mary O’Doyle at her kitchen door, but courtship and marriage had never occurred to him. He began to make objections.
“But is Todd Gray going to make a home for you, Mary? Has he got a home ready for you?”
To which Mary countered with trembling indignation:
“Make a ’ome for me! Not ’im! I wouldn’t go in it if ’e ’ad. Till you be a-kicking av me out av this ’ouse, a hundred Todd Grays wouldn’t be a-dragging of us asunder.”
Observing Mary’s bulk, Feng felt tempted to smile, but temptation fled before the seriousness of this affair, which yet was not quite clear. He said:
“Then it is his intention, and yours too, to return to Atlas when married?”
“Shure,” she said simply.
“As a married couple you intend carrying on your present occupations?” Feng pressed, with rising hope.
“You agreein’, Misther Feng.” Mary grew scarlet. “Todd could cart his dunnage from his room, and come and camp in my room here. It–it’s big enough for two.”
Feng’s gaze dropped. For a little while he was silent. Then:
“Supposing I could not agree to that, Mary?”
“Then it’s a widder I’ll be stoppin’. If ut’s me choice, I choose me presint job, for I’m rememberin’ ’ow it was you who picked me out av the Gutter av Australia.”
“But I have no objection, Mary,” Feng said, suddenly smiling at her. “If you want Todd for your husband, you shall have him. Besides your present room you shall have the one next it for a living-room or a sitting-room, whichever you prefer. There is no finer quality than loyalty. It was my intention to leave for Broken Hill next Tuesday in the station car, but we will leave to-morrow evening for Menindee, and I will stay over Tuesday and attend your wedding.
If you like, Mary, I will give away the bride. Would that please you?”
For the second time Mary O’Doyle burst into tears.
2
The township of Menindee on the Darling River, about 180 miles from that river’s junction with the Murray, marks one of the oldest settlements in the west of the State. It was there when Burke and Wills passed through on their last ill-omened journey. And that was not so long ago, for an old resident there to-day describes their passage, and how common members of the party dared not dismount and rest their tired horses till the leader chose to command them to do so. With that kind of leader success was impossible.
Like many bush towns, Menindee to-day is but the ghost of its former self. In these years of drought it supported three hotels, a convent, a hall, several general stores, a police-station, and a school, besides some thirty dwellings constructed mainly of odd lengths of corrugated iron and many hessian bags. It is built on a belt of reddish sand which rolls toward the river from the wilderness round Lake Menindee, which is sometimes filled through a creek by the river when in flood.
To Menindee on the Monday afternoon drove Feng Ching-wei in the big station car, with Mary O’Doyle sitting beside him. In the Australian cities, or in any other country, what Feng had determined to do would have meant ostracism from his class. It did horrify Ethel Mayne, but she knew nothing of it till after it was over.
Arrived at Menindee, they discovered that Todd Gray was staying at the Menindee Hotel, and, consequently, Feng secured rooms for Mary and himself at the Albemarle Hotel across the sand-dune that constituted the main street.
The following morning, when Feng Ching-wei entered the dining-room, he found Mary O’Doyle already at breakfast, and he nonplussed a squatter, two jackeroos, and a director of a chain of stores when he smilingly declined their invitation to join them, and slipped into a chair facing the bride, who sat alone at a separate table.
Mary O’Doyle wore a black dress trimmed with grey velvet. Her hair now was ruffled in a style most unlike her usual “bun” affair, but which despite the greyness vanquished many years. Afterwards Feng discovered that on her heavy feet were elastic-sided riding-boots. But Mary’s face was shining with suppressed excitement, her small blue eyes emitting a marvellous light.
“Well, Mary, are you quite prepared to face this important day?” he asked, before attacking lamb’s fry and bacon.
“For shure, Misther Feng,” she replied, smiling broadly. “Y’see, it’ll be me thirrd weddin’. I know just wot to do to stop the confetti getting entangled in me ’air. But will ye be doing av me a favour?”
“Why, certainly.”
“Then, whin I go along to the store to buy me one or two things, will you dig up that blackguard av a Todd Gray, an’ sober him up for the ceremony?”
“But surely he will not be intoxicated this day of all days?” expostulated Feng.
“Don’t ye be believin’ av it, Misther Feng. Weddin’ days are a grand excuse for boozin’ an’ all. Don’t I know it! Todd an’ his cobbers will be starting out early, each seeing the other wan keeps sober. An’ it’ll be: ‘All right. Only one now.’ An’ they’ll say it that many times that they’ll get as drunk as me uncle at a wake. Lor’ bless you! He got that drunk he daren’t lie down for fear he’d drown.”
“Humph! Might be as well for me to go along and shepherd Todd,” Feng conceded, a trifle grimly. “We are due at the sergeant’s office at one o’clock. When you have completed your shopping, return here. The wedding breakfast is timed to start immediately we return to the hotel from the police-station.”
“The weddin’ breakfast! An’ who’ll be giving that?”
“I shall, of course, Mary. The giver of the bride always provides a breakfast.”
“You will! Oh!” For three seconds of time Mary gazed at him before her lips began to tremble. At last she said: “I–I never ’ad no weddin’ breakfast afore.”
And thus Feng Ching-wei came to understand that Mary O’Doyle never had become used to accepting kindness, and that, perhaps for the first time in her life, she was feeling the feminine comfort of leaning on one of the supposedly stronger sex. Her obvious and childlike gratitude delighted him. He felt both pleased and thankful that at great expense he had, over the telephone, induced a friend to bring that morning from Broken Hill a present for the bride and the largest wedding-cake procurable.
Breakfast finished, he parted from Mary O’Doyle, and, after completing arrangements with the landlady for the wedding breakfast, sought and found the bridegroom-elect drinking to his future happiness with Ten Pot Dick and several cronies in the bar of the Menindee Hotel. At his call Todd Gray came out to the veranda, where he was firmly invited to be seated on the long bench. Said Feng sternly:
“I am told, Todd, that you intend to marry Mary O’Doyle this morning. Is that correct?”
“You bet, Mr. Feng,” Todd replied, grinning sheepishly.
“Excellent, Todd! Let us discuss details. Mary told me that the arrangements for the ceremony have been made.. Pardon my inquisitiveness, but I am to give away the bride. I suppose you were very drunk last night?”
Again that sheepish grin. Todd Gray’s usually fierce grey eyes were flecked with red, but he was newly shaved and appeared clean and natty in a new suit.
“Well, old Ten Pot Dick and me did have a few,” was his admission.
“That I do not doubt. Still, as last night was your last as a benedict, over-indulgence was excusable. But to-day you owe it to Mary to keep perfectly sober.” Todd found himself being regarded by blue-black eyes boring inward to the secret recesses of his being. He began to fidget–which was not remarkable. Feng’s voice had grown steely in tone. “I want you to understand, Todd, that I take a great interest in your wife-to-be. I will not have you do anything to spoil the day for her. I am very serious about this. You will not take another drop till you are about to start for the sergeant’s office, if then. Let Ten Pot Dick do as he likes. Who is to be your best man?”
“Old Ten Pot Dick, Mr. Feng.”
Feng noted the flash of shame come and go in the other’s eyes. He was aware that in the long ago Gray was well-circumstanced.
Constant association with men of a lower educational level had slurred his speech, but never had vanquished a love for good books.
“I’ll play the game,” Todd said, and Feng knew that he would.
The rest of that morning Feng spent in the lounge of his hotel. He saw Mary come in and pass along to her room. His friend from Broken Hill arrived in a dust-covered, powerful car, when an enormous wedding cake was placed in the care of the landlady. At half-past twelve Ann Shelley drove up in her single-seater.
“Feng, you are a dear to ’phone me about this,” she exclaimed when he greeted her in the hall. “But you did not give me much time, did you?”
Holding both her hands in his, smiling blandly into her expressive face, his pulses raced at the touch of her. If only he had the right to take her in his arms! If only it were his wedding day, and this lovely, fresh and pure woman was to be his bride! But thoughts forbidden! Master of himself, he pushed them down into oblivion with the punt-pole of pain.
“I did not know myself till Sunday morning, and did not think to invite you until this morning,” he told her, now smiling in his inscrutable fashion. “Mary is in her room. It is number six. Some day I will recite her history, when you will, I know, agree with me that she is entitled to any little happiness we can secure for her.” He glanced at his watch. “It is now twenty minutes to one. Will you go to her and talk to her nicely, and then bring her here for a glass of wine before we step over to the sergeant’s office?”
Surprised, he watched her eyes blanketed in mist. Her voice was low when she said:
“Of course, old boy! Your wife will be a lucky woman.”
His wife! Turning, he watched her walking swiftly along the passage to Mary’s room. His wife! If only–if–oh, hell–hell–hell!
Ten minutes, fifteen minutes slipped by whilst he lounged by the main entrance. He saw Todd Gray, wearing a bright-green trilby hat, accompanied by the wild-whiskered Ten Pot Dick, arrayed in new brown moleskin trousers and a coat of violent brown and black check, walk from the Menindee Hotel and trudge over the sand waste to the police-station.
For be it understood that Menindee’ is a police-controlled town, and that the senior police officer is the registrar for births, marriages, and deaths.
Ann Shelley called him softly at last, and, turning, he found her beside Mary O’Doyle, Mary wearing now a fashionable hat and smart brown shoes.
“All ready, Mary?”
“Yes, Mr. Feng.”
“Good! We will have a glass of wine before we go.”
Mary O’Doyle tried to speak again, but failed. For a moment she clung to Ann Shelley as she might have clung to the mother she never had known.
3
The invasion of his office by the bridal party gave Sergeant Brown quite a shock. Even though dressed in uniform, Sergeant Brown appeared more like a colonel in the Indian Army than the policeman he was. Matching his appearance were his duties, which were far more those of an administrator than an ordinary policeman.
The uniting of Todd Gray, whom he had known for many years, with Mrs. Mary Johnston, which was Mary’s last married name, was an affair of no interest to him. The social position of the bridal couple was much lower than his own, and he was prepared to rush the ceremony through as quickly as possible. The appearance of Ann Shelley and Feng Ching-wei in company with a woman, obviously a bride, raised the importance of this affair many degrees, and his official austerity promptly melted.
He shook hands with the bride and the bride’s escort. He actually smiled at the bridegroom and at Ten Pot Dick, whom the night before he had felt tempted to lock up and charge with the usual d. and d. formula. His front door and windows wanted painting, anyway. He placed the couple side by side before his desk, behind which he stood stiffly erect, and read portions of the marriage service. It went through with only one hitch, and that occurred when the sergeant put the question:
“Will you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?”
“Me! My bloomin’ oath!” Todd Gray responded.
“Say ‘yes’,’ commanded Sergeant Brown, with quick sternness.
“Yes,” said the groom with less fervour.
When they had signed the register, when the sergeant had presented Mary with the marriage certificate, Feng suggested that he would be a welcome guest at the breakfast. Realizing now the interest that Ann Shelley and Feng-Ching-wei were taking in Mary Gray, he at once accepted, and, with Todd Gray on his one hand and Feng on the other, and with Ten Pot Dick, all hot and flustered, bringing up the rear, they followed the bride and Ann Shelley across the sand to the road and thence to the Albemarle Hotel. Several men on the veranda of the Menindee Hotel cheered; but, being in company with the elite, Todd Gray refrained from any sign of acknowledgment. Ten Pot Dick, however, believing it to be his duty as the groom’s best man, opened his mouth for a responsive roar, caught himself in time, shut his mouth, and in silence wildly waved both his arms.
Within the spare dining-room of the Albemarle Hotel everyone was surprised at the sumptuous breakfast provided by Feng. Mary O’Doyle–I shall continue to call her by her maiden name, because she always insisted on it–tightened her grip on Ann Shelley’s arm, and drew in her breath sharply. Todd Gray’s under-jaw dropped, whilst sotto voce Ten Pot Dick said: “Cripes!”
His face, aflame as that of a Dutch cheese, became suffused with the inner light of keen expectation, of fierce desire, quickly to be gratified. Abnormal distance of face surface separated each dirty grey whisker, whilst the twin red bottom lids of his eyes sagged away from the bridge of his nose. His washed-out, colourless eyes grew round at sight of the beer and wine bottles on a side-table. To the wedding-cake, however, he was blind.
The company became seated. Feng occupied the head of the table. The bride sat on his right with the groom next her. On his left sat Ann Shelley, with the Broken Hill friend beyond her, and beyond him the sergeant. Ten Pot Dick sat on Todd’s right. The feast proceeded with mounting gaiety, and at last the maid brought in a huge carving knife, which was handed to Mary, who cut the cake with the delight of a child. Feng rose to speak.
“Friends, before we drink the health of the bridal couple, I wish to make them a small gift in token of my esteem. When you smoke one of these pipes, Todd, remember your oath to love and cherish your wife Mary, which oath you have made to-day.” Laying before the groom a handsome case of pipes, he began to remove the wrapping from a small box, eventually revealing an expensive gold watch attached to a long gold chain. Slipping the chain over her head, he added in his soft tones: “Mary, may you have all the happiness you deserve! Now, please, drink to the bride and the groom.”
They drank in silence. Then the sergeant, like a true sportsman, struck up:
“For they are jolly good fellows!”
The chorus came to an end. Mary O’Doyle was weeping without sound. Big tears trickled slowly down her weather-beaten cheeks. With difficulty she said:
“Todd–a speech.”
“Wot, me?” gasped Todd.
“You–speak,” and in Mary’s voice was the brittle hardness of cast-iron.
“Well, ladies and gents,” Todd began, having struggled to his feet, “I’m no speaker, silent water running deep, but on behalf of my wife and myself I beg to thank you all for your kindness, and the honour you have done us to-day.”
Apparently Todd Gray found it less difficult to sit down than to stand up, but when he sat down Ten Pot Dick rose abruptly.
“As the best man I’d like to say a few words,” he said, visibly refraining from expectorating through the open window. Pointing an accusing finger at the groom, he went on: “Todd ’ere sez ’e ain’t no speaker. Don’t you go and believe it. Last night he cornered me in the bar of the Menindee an’ he talked stars and suns and universes for three solid hours. He kep’ it up till he got stone sober. Talk! He make a kookaburra fall off’n a branch. Don’t ask him to talk no more, ’cos he might start on the stars and things again. Well, ’ere’s ’ow to all of yous! I ’ope as how yous all have enjoyed theirselves as much as I have done.” And alone he drank two glasses of beer with astounding celerity.
The breakfast was over. Mary O’Doyle impulsively kissed Ann Shelley and almost kissed Feng Ching-wei. The sergeant strolled away to his office. Ten Pot Dick disappeared into the bar. Ann Shelley and Feng stood on the porch watching the broad figure of Mary O’Doyle and the short, slight figure of her husband walk slowly to the Menindee Hotel. Ann’s voice was husky.
“lt has been glorious, Feng,” she said softly.
“I am very glad, Ann. Thank you for being so nice to Mary O’Doyle.”
“Why not? You were nice to her.”
“Mary is my cook,” he countered, smiling at her with eyes masking the ache in his heart.
4
The newly-wed stayed three days in Menindee. It was a perfectly glorious time. Todd Gray and Ten Pot Dick removed successfully the accumulated alkaloids and other poisons contained in the water they had been drinking for many months, by the introduction of the counteracting poison of alcohol, and found the process pleasurable; whilst Mary O’Doyle, having decided to defer her husband’s reclamation till their return to Atlas, made many friends in Menindee, and met several people who remembered her driving her bullock team and wagon to the river wharf, there to unload the huge bales of wool.
Came inevitably the day they were to start the return journey in Todd Gray’s spring cart. Knowing that the journey of fifty miles to Atlas would occupy two long days, the first stage being at least twenty-two miles, Mary had everything in readiness to be packed on the cart first thing in the morning.
A dear father and two beloved husbands had given her a thorough insight into the psychology of Man at the moment Man has to leave the hotel that cheers for a further long period of dry privation. She gave neither her husband nor her husband’s extraordinary friend any leisure after breakfast had been eaten, but kept them busy harnessing the horse and loading the cart with the many purchases she had made, besides food for the journey.
“Well, everything’s on board, eh?” Todd remarked to no one in particular.
“That’s so,” agreed Ten Pot Dick absently.
“Well,” Todd Gray repeated, looking slyly at Ten Pot Dick, “we better have a last drink and get on. Come on, Mary! A glass of wine will fortify you for the road.”
In poor Mary’s defence it must be stated that her husband had behaved himself very well that morning, that both he and his best man were then quite sober, and that her heart was as soft as a bride’s heart should be. It was at this precise instant that Mary fatally weakened. She consented, and the three entered the private room at the rear of the bar. The drinks were served.
“One more!” Ten Pot Dick urged desperately. “’ave another small glass of wine, Mrs. Gray. It won’t hurt you.”
Mary O”Doyle glared and consented reluctantly.
Then Todd said that Mary would have to “shout”. Mary who, in the old days, had done much “shouting”, relaxed from stern morality and did “shout”. Anyway, it would not happen again, once she got the “runt” safely away from Menindee.
The horse harnessed to the spring-cart went to sleep. It slept for nearly an hour, and was violently aroused by Ten Pot Dick lurching into it. There was no need for him to grasp the bridle convulsively and hold it with great determination to prevent the horse bolting, since the horse was beyond the bolting age; yet he manfully did so whilst Todd Gray and two friends pushed Mary O’Doyle into the back of the cart, when she at once fell asleep on the several rolled swags. Those horrible men then slipped back into the bar, where they remained a further hour.
When eventually seated on the cross-board laid from side to side of the cart, with Mary O’Doyle sleeping peacefully behind them, Todd Gray urged the horse forward, and encouraged it whilst it strained and pulled the cart over the deep sand to the harder downriver track leading to Atlas.
Once clear of the town, the horse needed no driving. He knew the way home, knew that home was a desirable place. He lowered his head, pushed hard into the collar, and plodded, plodded ever southward.
The reaction of the human brain to alcohol is varied in a hundred interesting ways. The clever captain of a South Seas trading schooner made it a rule to get any new hand thoroughly drunk before permitting the new man to sail with him. He knew that alcohol will make visible the indulger’s secret personality; and, therefore, by getting his new man drunk, the captain was able really to gauge the man’s character. We may think we know a person thoroughly, but really we know only what that person chooses to reveal. Alcohol is the acid test of human character. It will bring out a person’s evil or good, to be noted by those interested. A wise man accepts for a friend only him who has been so tested by alcohol, and found not wanting.
Alcohol will at first exhilarate most minds. Its action then will begin to vary. Some it will make lethargic, others will react with laughter and song, or with violence, whilst a few will find their minds stimulated to heights never reached without its aid.
The effect of half a dozen glasses of wine on Mary O’Doyle was to send her to sleep. Four times as many pots of beer produced the same effect on Ten Pot Dick. But, unlike fortunate Mary O’Doyle, Ten Pot Dick was unable to sleep because he was not permitted to sleep by Todd Gray, whose brain was fired by a mixture of beer and whisky. In his case alcohol cleared from his mind all the clogging veils of forgetfulness, so it had unbarred access to the vast store of knowledge gained from the books he had read and studied.
He began to talk about the stars. His voice now was clear, cultured, forceful, his real personality swamping the one superimposed on it by his life in the bush.
“There are millions of men like you, Ten Pot’“ he said. “Millions of men like you who live their little futile lives, blessed by ignorance–for, after all, ignorance is a blessing–and content to eat and swill, swill and eat, like pigs in their sties. Now hear me–don’t go to sleep! I would like to show you a famous picture depicting an old man raking the muck in search of a lost jewel, while behind him hovers an angel offering a crown blazing with far better jewels. You and those other millions are like the man with the muck-rake. You never think to look upwards from the muck in which you stand, to gaze at the glories of our solar system, our universe about it, and the hundreds of universes beyond ours. Do you know how many stars have been actually photographed by the Americans with their great telescopes?”
“No,” mumbled Ten Pot Dick.
“They have photographed a thousand million stars. One thousand millions. Hey! Get down and open the gate.”
“Gate! Which gate?”
“You poor blind idiot! The gate you are looking at. There is only one gate.”
Still undecided which gate to open, Ten Pot Dick managed to reach one of them, and was astonished to observe that when he pushed it open the other ninety-and-nine automatically opened at the precise instant.
“Have a look, and see if the girth-strap wants tightening,” Todd commanded.
The wild-whiskered man fumbled among countless girth-strap buckles, and made sure each was in order, by unfastening the one. The result was that immediately Todd Gray urged the horse forward the shafts of the cart flew upward, and he, with Mary O’Doyle and all the loading, slipped out on the ground because he had previously forgotten to fasten up the tail-board.
It was an occurrence unsuited to the temperament of the horse, old though he was, and he was stopped only by the lightning spring Todd made to grasp his bridle.
“Pull down the shafts, you sot!” he shouted, and when Ten Pot Dick had obeyed he himself made sure that the girth-strap was securely buckled. His mind still fired by imagination and full of stars and universes, anxious to continue his discourse, he climbed into the cart via the step immediately in front of the wheel, and then urged the horse through the gateway and pulled up for his companion to rejoin him. Ten Pot Dick gazed around with a puzzled expression, closed the one hundred gates at the same time, grunted whilst he clawed his way to the cart seat, whereupon the horse was again urged forward and went on plodding, plodding along the downriver track.
“Missus––” said Ten Pot Dick.
“She’s all right,” countered Todd Gray impatiently. “As I was saying, Dick, the Americans have actually photographed a thousand million stars. And when they get their new two-hundred-inch telescope erected, they will be able to photograph another thousand million stars. Do you know how many stars there are reckoned to be by the latest calculations?”
“No,” murmured Ten Pot Dick with closed eyes. Then his eyes opened wide for an instant, when he said: “Missus is––”
“I am not discussing my wife,” interrupted Todd Gray grandly. “You keep awake now and listen to me. The latest estimate of the total number of stars is thirty thousand millions. The universe in which is our solar system contains only three million stars. The whole universe revolves on a mysterious axis at the rate of two hundred miles a second, and completes an entire vast circle every three hundred million years. Other universes are travelling through space at like speeds, universes beyond ours, comprising thousands of millions of stars, and beyond them are yet other universes.
“Your mind cannot grasp the number of the stars, and the distances each from the other. My mind cannot grasp it, nor can any mortal mind. The farthest star from us that we can see with the naked eyes is but a stone’s throwaway compared with the distance of the farthest star between it and that seen by the biggest telescopes. Do you understand?”
“No,” Ten Pot Dick admitted sleepily. Then: “Er–yes, I mean. Your missus––”
“Leave my wife out of the conversation, please. To continue. I will honour you by revealing to you the secrets of space and time which Sir James Jeans, who wrote Problems of Cosmogony and Stellar Dynamics, which you should read, Ten Pot; Dr. A. S. Eddington, who wrote Space, Time, and Gravitation, a work a little beyond you; and the Master, Einstein, who states quite accurately that there is no straight line anywhere in Nature, have not been able to discover. They are men who have resolutely refused to admit imagination to their science. Their brains are fed by facts and figures. They do not drink like we do, Ten Pot, for they decline to permit their minds to become stimulated, fearing that under stimulation imagination will creep upon them. If anyone of those brilliant men got scientifically drunk, he would see at once the secret of Space and the secret of Time at the bottom of a pint pot. For, like all great problems, the solution of these seemingly insoluble secrets is absurdly simple.”
“You don’t say!” muttered Ten Pot Dick, with a quick flash of interest.
“I do say, Ten Pot. Now listen attentively. Hermes Trismegistus said of the universe: ‘What is above is like what is below; what is below is like what is above.’ If we take up a piece of rock we find that it comprises millions of electrons, some with attendant satellites, and space between them exactly in proportion to the space between the star worlds. In simple words, we have in our piece of rock a miniature universe.
“Now the astronomers, the mathematicians, and the philosophers all ask: What is beyond the farthest star? I can tell them. Beyond the farthest star, on and on, we come to the same star again. There is no end to the universes. Now, pay attention! Also there is no end to the atoms comprising this planet. Imagine an astronomer on one of the atoms in our piece of rock. He invents an enormously powerful telescope. With it he can see all the atoms in the earth. There is no straight line. To the man of intelligence that is definitely proved. Even vision is not straight. The astronomer on the atom, peering through his gigantic telescope, circles the whole world, and, if there is no atom of matter within his line of vision, he would see the back of his own head. It is, or would be, the same if an earth astronomer could use a million times supertelescope, and peered through it at the universe. Provided that no celestial matter blocked his line of vision, he would see the opposite side of the earth, because his line of vision would go out into space on a giant curve which would end at the back of his head, did not the earth on which he stood form the fatal blot of matter which would cut short his line of vision. Do you understand?”
“You bet! Go on!” Ten Pot responded in his sleep.
“The theologians are just as much at sea regarding the secret of life as the astronomers and others are regarding space,” continued Todd Gray. “Yet the secret is as simple of solution as the others. The nearest approach to the secret of life, before I discovered it, was the Jewish conception of heaven: seven heavens, one above the other. When a scientist says: ‘There can be no life after death because there is no proof’, it merely indicates that he has not lived to see the bottom of a pint pot. You have observed the bottoms of many pint pots, but, like the man with the muck-rake, you are too ignorant to hold it against the light, as it were, and read. The secret of life is this. At birth a man’s soul has arrived on earth from life on one of the atoms with which it is crammed. At death a man’s soul goes on to the mighty universal world which is formed by the, to us, countless stars, which to that universal world are atoms. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” stated the atrocious liar.
“Well then, when those facts have become thoroughly established in your shrunken brain, get down and open the gate.”
“Wot! Another one?”
“Exactly. We have arrived at the three-mile gate from Menindee.”
“The
missus––”
“Why harp on the missus? Open the gate.”
With care Ten Pot Dick reached the heaving ground. With greater care he negotiated the distance between the cart-step and the several gates. The gate he grasped he opened wide, and then leaned against it and closed his eyes. Horse, cart, and driver passed through. Carefully Ten Pot Dick closed the gate. As carefully he completed the voyage to the cart-step. Todd Gray gazed down on his upturned, flaming face.
“The missus––” Ten Pot Dick managed to say, and stopped at that, because now he was becoming used to being cut short after he had spoken those two words. Todd Gray sighed.
Well, what about the missus?” he said with the calmness of desperation. “We left ’er back at the last gate.” Todd Gray turned round and looked down into the completely empty cart. His eyes winked, and, surprisingly, he came sober at that instant.
“Strike me dead!” he said with the sibilant hiss of the astounded.
“I bin trying to tell yous for hours that she fell out when the shafts went up,” Ten Pot Dick wailed. Todd groaned loudly. The secrets of space and time no longer occupied his mighty brain. He said:
“Open the blasted gate! We gotta go two miles for the missus, them stores, and that bottle of rum I slipped inside a swag roll.”