THE news that there was to be a fight between myself and Milligan, or the Tipperary Boy, as he was more often called, soon spread through the township, and, in consequence, by the time we faced each other in the centre of the floor, from which the furniture had been removed, as I have already described, the large room was packed to the point of suffocation, and the air was rank with the odour of stale smoke, drink, and wet clothes. I glanced at the landlord, who was still industriously polishing his tumblers, and noticed the look of encouragement on his face. He had his own reasons, and they were not a few, for desiring that someone should “cut the comb” of this notorious bully, who whenever he came to the township had an unpleasant habit of making himself objectionable to almost everyone with whom he was brought in contact. In fact, to such an extent did he carry this practice that during the period he remained in the place the majority of the usual frequenters of the house betook themselves and their custom elsewhere, naturally not a little to my friend’s chagrin. To expostulate with him was only so much waste of time; to threaten him with expulsion would have been as idle as to attempt to stop the wind from whistling round the corners of the house or the stars from shining. Hitherto, with one lamentable exception, in which, by the way, a man was well-nigh killed, no one had attempted to use force with him. Now, so it appeared, I was about to try the experiment. He had deliberately and maliciously insulted Miss Moira, and I was determined to make him pay for it, if it cost me my life. At last I had found someone upon whom to work off my rage. The task was likely to be a big one, but I was only the more content. As I took off my coat and rolled up my sleeves, I took careful stock of my adversary; he was at least a man worth fighting: his muscles stood out on his arms as thick as bananas, to use a Queensland parallel, while the expression on his face showed that it was his firm intention to give me a sound thrashing in return for my insulting treatment of him.
The partisans of either side were noisily arranging as to who should act as timekeeper and who as referee, when the swing-doors leading into the verandah opened, and a newcomer, such as is not often seen in the Bush, entered the bar. That he was a swell and a new chum admitted of no doubt. He was tall, handsome, with a long wavy moustache, slimly built, wore English riding breeches, that is to say, tight at the knees and baggy above, and sported an eyeglass in his left eye. What was more extraordinary still, he actually wore gloves, just for all the world as if he were doing the block in Collins Street on a summer afternoon. He strolled across the floor without apparently noticing what was going on, and approached the counter. The landlord rose to greet him, whereupon the stranger inquired whether he could be accommodated with a room for the night. On being answered in the affirmative, he called for a glass of whisky, lit a cigarette, and turned to watch what was going forward between Milligan and myself. Though it has taken some time to tell all this, in reality it occupied only a few minutes. It was sufficient, however, to distract the attention of the company for the time being from my enemy and myself, and you may be sure this was not at all to Milligan’s liking. To adopt a theatrical expression, he was playing to the gallery, and liked to “have the limelight full upon himself.”
However interesting it might prove to some people, it is not my intention to give a detailed description of what occurred during the ensuing quarter of an hour. Let it suffice that if our respective supporters wanted a fight for their money, they got it and to spare. We were both fully aware that our future peace and comfort depended entirely on the issue of the struggle, and that the vanquished would have to sing small for the remainder of his residence in the neighbourhood. That at least was enough to make each of us do his utmost to come out on top, as they say in the Bush.
That the Tipperary Boy was wanting in pluck no one, not even his bitterest enemy, could have said. He fought, if not with skill, at least with dogged determination. He had a fist like a sledge hammer, but he lacked science. At the end of ten minutes he was out of breath, and at the end of a quarter of an hour he lay like a log on the floor, and several of his most enthusiastic supporters, who had championed his cause through fear, were hastening to assure me that they had only done so in order to insure his getting the licking he had so long deserved. That is the way of the world. Had I come out underneath, doubtless my so-called friends would have behaved in exactly the same way to my antagonist.
Having put on my coat, I walked across to where my late opponent was seated and held out my hand to him. “Shake hands, Milligan,” I said; “let bygones be bygones. If you are willing, I am quite sure I am.”
“Good for you,” he answered promptly, and took my hand as he spoke. “What’s more, since you take it this way, I don’t mind owning up that I was wrong to speak of the lady the way I did. If there’s any man hereabouts who thinks otherwise, just let him step out and say so, and I’ll show him that the Tipperary Boy can give a beating as well as take one. Where is he now?”
There was no answer to his question, which seemed to prove that the justice of his assertion was admitted by all. He thereupon invited me to drink with him, and needless to say I did not refuse. Since he took the matter so well, it would have been the most foolish policy possible on my part to have done so. We accordingly drank with the customary “here’s luck,” and here the matter ended to our own and everybody else’s complete satisfaction--always excepting those who had their own private grudges against myself, and who, doubtless for that reason, would very willingly have seen me vanquished.
At last that extraordinary evening came to an end, and one by one the company dispersed to their various homes. The storm still continued with increased rather than abated violence, and as I had done more than once before that night, I thanked my good fortune that I was not camped out in it.
When old Dick Grebur, the principal storekeeper, who was invariably the last to take his departure, had bade us good-night and gone out, we, the landlord, the stranger, and I, drew our chairs up to the fire and relit our pipes. It was then that I had the first real opportunity of observing the newcomer. In view of the story I have to tell, a short description of him may not be amiss. I have already said that there could be no sort of doubt as to the fact of his being a new chum. It was written on his face, his clothes, and more than all on his manners. Among other characteristics, he was the possessor of a curious drawl, combined with a strange clipping of his terminal “g’s,” which I have since been told is considered correct in a certain section of English society.
His face was in a measure handsome; the forehead, however, was perhaps scarcely as broad as it might have been, while the eyes were set a trifle too close together to be really pleasing. A heavy moustache hid his mouth. His hands, I remember noticing, were long from wrist to knuckle, but were spoilt by the fingers, which were short almost to the verge of deformity. They were also coarse and thick, and I noticed that the left hand had been broken at some time or other.
“Do you often have these little affairs of honour, may I ask?” he inquired when the door had closed on Grebur and we had settled down to our pipes. “I had an idea that this eminently satisfactory way of settling one’s differences of opinion had quite ceased to exist. Gone out, in fact, with the citizens of Roarin’ Camp, Sandy Bar, Jack, and all that Old Tenessee sort of thing, don’t you know? I never thought I should have the good fortune to come across it in Australia. I had an idea that you contented yourselves with kangaroo huntin’, ridin’ buck jumpers, and all that sort of thing.”
For the life of me I did not quite know how to take this speech. It seemed as if he were slyly poking fun at me, and yet his face was all seriousness, his manner as courteous as I had any right to expect it to be. From some remark he let fall, I discovered that his name was Vandergrave, and that he had come to Australia from England, via America and Japan. He had always had a longing to see something of the Australian Bush, he said, and he had been advised that Northern Queensland would show it to him as no other part of the Island Continent could do. After a time he began to ask questions concerning our own particular neighbourhood, the size and number of the various stations, and their owners’ names. Before I could do or say anything to prevent him, the landlord had informed him that I was part owner of two of the largest properties in the district, which he described after his own fashion as being “out and away tip-top, and don’t you forget it.” Queensland hospitality, and indeed for that matter of the Bush generally, is proverbial, so that under the circumstances I had no option but to inform him that if he should chance to be in our neighbourhood it would give both my partner and myself great pleasure to put him up, and to show all there was to be seen.
“Your partner’s name I think you said was--?”
“Flaxman,” I replied, though I could not for the life of me remember having mentioned it before.
“Ah! yes! Flaxman, of course--a rather unusual name,” he replied. “Well, it’s really very kind of you to offer me your hospitality, and if fortune should bring me in your direction I shall avail myself of the chance of seeing your runs. Like most Globe trotters, I am writing an account of my travels, and information obtained first hand is, of course, very valuable and occasionally hard to obtain. And now, if you will excuse me, I think I will bid you ‘goodnight.’ I have had a long day in the saddle, and I am not so accustomed to it as you Australians are.”
Having knocked the ashes out of his pipe, he left the bar, and the landlord and I very soon followed his example. My head was still ringing from one of Milligan’s blows, and as I contemplated myself in the little glass on my dressing table (an old packing-case draped with gaudy chintz), I reflected that I should probably have a very fair sample of a bruise to exhibit to my friends on the morrow.
The storm had continued raging all the day, and as night set in it became worse than ever, and the wind howled and shrieked around as if it were anxious to tear the ramshackle wooden building to pieces. Again I thanked my luck that I had a roof over my head, to say nothing of a nice warm bed to curl myself up in. I blew out my candle and composed myself for slumber, but sleep would not come. I began to think of Moira and of my love for her--where she was, what she was doing? Had she, as I supposed, gone out of my life for ever, and was the man whom I had looked upon as my best friend the traitor? Whether my fight with Milligan had knocked sense into me or not, I could not say; I only know that to my great surprise I found myself thinking of Flaxman in a more kindly spirit than I had done for a long time past. I remembered his gentle ways and his undoubted affection for my unworthy self. It had seemed scarcely anything at the time; now, however, it produced a very different effect upon me. Could it be that I had been mistaken after all, and that Moira had left Montalta for some other reason? The more I thought of this, the more it seemed borne in upon me that it behoved me to make some attempt to repair the breach that my own stupidity had made between us. Then, working together, we could surely arrange some scheme for Moira’s future welfare and happiness.
The rubicon once passed, I was able to look at the matter from a point of view that only a few hours before I should have considered impossible. Any way I regarded it, one thing was as clear as noonday, and that was the fact that Flaxman was a thousand times better fitted to make her happy than I was. On that score there could be no sort of doubt.
How long I lay thinking of this I cannot say, it may have been an hour, it may possibly have been more. At any rate I fell asleep over it. I could not have slumbered very long before I was awakened by someone shaking me violently by the shoulder. With the instinct of self-preservation, I hit out with all my strength, and was rewarded by hearing a loud crash and the sudden extinction of a light which had just begun to break upon my half-opened eyes.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered,” remarked a voice in the darkness, that I instantly recognised as my landlord’s. “Here I come to call him an’ to tell him there’s a friend to see him, and he knocks me head over heels on to my own crockery. Seven an’ six won’t pay for what you’ve broke, my beauty.”
I struck a match and set my own candle going. If I had not been angry at his disturbing me, the picture would have been an amusing one, for my companion and host was seated, clad only in his night apparel, in a pool of water on the floor, caressing what remained of the broken pitcher and surrounded by fragments of assorted china ware. There was an expression of indignation on his usually placid countenance.
“What on earth is the matter?” I inquired, sitting up in bed to look at him. “Have you taken leave of your senses that you come and wake me up at this time of night?”
“Leave of my senses be hanged,” he retorted. “I was only doing you a kindness. Here’s your partner, Mr. Flaxman, turned up looking for you. By the state he’s in I should say he’s been bushed. I thought, maybe, you’d like to know it, but it seems I was mistaken.”
“Flaxman here?” I cried, scarcely able to believe my own ears. “What the deuce does this mean?”
“You’d best get up and find out,” was the landlord’s laconic reply. “Meantime, look out where you tread, for the floor’s just covered with pieces. If folks would think before they hit out there wouldn’t be so much mischief done in the world. That’s the way I look at it myself.”
Before he had finished speaking I was out of bed, pulling ............