Children of the Bush Part 15

I'd sooner trust some poor old devil of a clerk who'd got into the hands of a woman or racing men when he was young, and went wrong, and served his time for embezzlement; anyway, I'd take him out and give him another chance."

"And what about woman's influence?" I asked.

"Oh, I suppose there'd have to be a woman, if only to keep the doctor on the line. I'd get a woman with a past, one that hadn't been any better than she should have been, they're generally the most kind-hearted in the end. Say an actress who'd come down in the world, or an old opera-singer who'd lost her voice but could still sing a little. A woman who knows what trouble is. And I'd get a girl to keep her company, a sort of housemaid, with a couple of black gins or half-castes to help her. I'd get hold of some poor girl who'd been deceived and deserted: and a baby or two wouldn't be an objection--the kids would amuse the chaps and help humanize the place."

"And what if the manageress fell in love with the doctor?" I asked.

"Well, I couldn't provide against love," said Mitch.e.l.l. "I fell in love myself more than once--and I don't suppose I'd have been any worse off if I'd have stayed in love. Ah, well! But suppose she did fall in love with the doctor and marry him, or suppose she fell in love with him and didn't marry him, for that matter--and suppose the girl fell in love with the secretary? There wouldn't be any harm done; it would only make them more contented with the home and bind them to it. They'd be a happy family, and the Lost Souls' Hotel would be more cheerful and homelike than ever."

"But supposing they all fell in love with each other and cleared out," I said.

"I don't see what they'd have to clear out for," said Mitch.e.l.l. "But suppose they did. There's more than one medical wreck in Australia, and more than one woman with a past, and more than one broken old clerk who went wrong and was found out, and who steadied down in jail, and there's more than one poor girl that's been deceived. I could easily replace 'em. And the Lost Souls' Hotel might be the means of patching up many wrecked lives in that way--giving people with pasts the chance of another future, so to speak."

"I suppose you'd have music and books and pictures?" I said.

"Oh, yes," said Mitch.e.l.l. "But I wouldn't have any bitter or s.e.x-problem books. They do no good. Problems have been the curse of the world ever since it started. I think one n.o.ble, kindly, cheerful character in a book does more good than all the clever villains or romantic adventurers ever invented. And I think a man ought to get rid of his maudlin sentiment in private, or when he's drunk. It's a pity that every writer couldn't put all his bitterness into one book and then burn it.

"No; I'd have good cheerful books of the best and brightest sides of human nature--Charles d.i.c.kens, and Mark Twain, and Bret Harte, and those men. And I'd have all Australian pictures--showing the brightest and best side of Australian life. And I'd have all Australian songs.

I wouldn't have `Swannie Ribber,' or `Home, Sweet Home,' or `Annie Laurie,' or any of those old songs sung at the Lost Souls'

Hotel--they're the cause of more heartbreaks and drink and suicide in the bush than anything else. And if a jackaroo got up to sing, `Just before the battle, mother,' or, `Mother bit me in me sleep,' he'd find it was just before the battle all right. He'd have to go out and sleep in the scrub, where the mosquitoes and bulldog ants would bite him out of his sleep. I hate the man who's always whining about his mother through his nose, because, as a rule, he never cared a rap for his old mother, nor for anyone else, except his own paltry, selfish little self.

"I'd have intellectual and elevating conversation for those that----"

"Who'd take charge of that department?" I inquired hurriedly.

"Well," reflected Mitch.e.l.l, "I did have an idea of taking it on myself for a while anyway; but, come to think of it, the doctor or the woman with the past would have more experience; and I could look after that part of the business at a pinch. Of course you're not in a position to judge as to my ability in the intellectual line; you see, I've had no one to practise on since I've been with you. But no matter---- There'd be intellectual conversation for the benefit of black-sheep new chums.

And any broken-down actors that came along could get up a play if they liked--it would brighten up things and help elevate the bullock-drivers and sundowners. I'd have a stage fixed up and a bit of scenery. I'd do all I could to attract shearers to the place after shearing, and keep them from rus.h.i.+ng to the next shanty with their cheques, or down to Sydney, to be cleaned out by barmaids.

"And I'd have the hero squashed in the last act for a selfish sneak, and marry the girl to the villain--he'd be more likely to make her happy in the end."

"And what about the farm?" I asked. "I suppose you'd get some expert from the agricultural college to manage that?"

"No," said Mitch.e.l.l. "I'd get some poor drought-ruined selector and put him in charge of the vegetation. Only, the worst of it is," he reflected, "if you take a selector who has bullocked all his life to raise crops on dusty, stony patches in the scrubs, and put him on land where there's plenty of water and manure, and where he's only got to throw the seed on the ground and then light his pipe and watch it grow, he's apt to get disheartened. But that's human nature.

"And, of course, I'd have to have a `character' about the place--a sort of ident.i.ty and joker to brighten up things. I wouldn't get a man who'd been happy and comfortable all his life; I'd get hold of some old codger whose wife had nagged him till she died, and who'd been sold off many times, and run in for drowning his sorrows, and who started as an undertaker and failed at that, and finally got a job pottering round--gardener, or gatekeeper, or something--in a lunatic asylum. I'd get him. He'd most likely be a humorist and a philosopher, and he'd help cheer up the Lost Souls' Hotel. I reckon the lost souls would get very fond of him."

"And would you have drink at Lost Souls'?" I asked.

"Yes," said Mitch.e.l.l. "I'd have the best beer and spirits and wine to be had. After tea I'd let every man have just enough to make him feel comfortable and happy, and as good and clever, and innocent and honest as any other man, but no more. But if a poor devil came along in the horrors, with every inch of him jumping, and snakes, and green-eyed yahoos, and flaming-nosed bunyips chasing him, we'd take him in and give him soothing draughts, and nurse him, and watch him, and clear him out with purgatives, and keep giving him nips of good whisky, and, above all, we'd sympathize with him, and tell him that we were worse than he was many a time. We wouldn't tell him what a weak, selfish man he was, or harp on his ruined life. We'd try to make him out a good deal better morally than he really was. It's remorse that hurries most men to h.e.l.l--especially in the Bush. When a man firmly believes he is a hopeless case, then there's no hope for him: but let him have doubts and there's a chance. Make him believe that there are far worse cases than his. We wouldn't preach the sin of dissipation to him, no--but we'd try to show him the _folly_ of a wasted life. I ought to be able to preach that, G.o.d knows.

"And, above all, we'd try to drive out of his head the cursed old popular idea that it's hard to reform--that a man's got to fight a hard battle with himself to get away from drink--pity drunkards can't believe how easy it is. And we'd put it to him straight whether his few hours'

enjoyment were worth the days he had to suffer h.e.l.l for it."

"And, likely as not," I said, "when you'd put him on his feet he'd take the nearest track to the next shanty, and go on a howling spree, and come back to Lost Souls' in a week, raving aid worse than ever. What would you do then?"

"We'd take him in again, and build him up some more; and a third or fourth time if necessary. I believe in going right on with a thing once I take it in hand. And if he didn't turn up after the last spree we'd look for him up the scrub and bring him in and let him die on a bed, and make his death as comfortable as possible. I've seen one man die on the ground, and found one dead in the bush. We'd bury him under a gum and put `Sacred to the Memory of a Man who Died. (Let him R.I.P.)' over him.

I'd have a nice little graveyard, with gums for tombstones--and I'd have some original epitaphs--I promise you."

"And how much grat.i.tude would you expect to get out of the Lost Souls'

Hotel?" I asked.

"None," said Mitch.e.l.l, promptly. "It wouldn't be a Grat.i.tude Discovery Syndicate. People might say that the Lost Souls' Hotel was a den for kidnapping women and girls to be used as decoys for the purpose of hocussing and robbing bushmen, and the law and retribution might come after me--but I'd fight the thing out. Or they might want to make a K.C.M.G., or a G.o.d of me, and wors.h.i.+p me before they hung me. I reckon a philanthropist or reformer is lucky if he escapes with a whole skin in the end, let alone his character-- But there!-- Talking of grat.i.tude: it's the fear of ingrat.i.tude that keeps thousands from doing good. It's just as paltry and selfish and cowardly as any other fear that curses the world--it's rather more selfish than most fears, in fact--take the fear of being thought a coward, or being considered eccentric, or conceited, or affected, or too good, or too bad, for instance. The man that's always canting about the world's ingrat.i.tude has no grat.i.tude owing to him as a rule--generally the reverse--he ought to be grateful to the world for being let live. He broods over the world's ingrat.i.tude until he gets to be a cynic. He sees the world like the outside of a window, as it were, with the blind drawn and the dead, cold moonlight s.h.i.+ning on it, and he pa.s.ses on with a sour face; whereas, if he took the trouble to step inside he'd most likely find a room full of ruddy firelight, and sympathy and cheerfulness, and kindness, and love, and grat.i.tude. Sometimes, when he's right down on his uppers, and forced to go amongst people and hustle for bread, he gets a lot of surprises at the amount of kindness he keeps running against in the world--and in places where he'd never have expected to find it. But--ah, well! I'm getting maudlin."

"And you've forgot all about the Lost Souls' Hotel," I said.

"No, I haven't," said Mitch.e.l.l; "I'd fix that up all right. As soon as I'd got things going smoothly under a man I could trust, I'd tie up every penny I had for the benefit of the concern; get some `white men'

for trustees, and take the track again. I'm getting too old to stay long in one place--(I'm a lost soul that always got along better in another place). I'm so used to the track that if I was shut up in a house I'd get walking up and down in my room of nights and disturb the folk; and, besides, I'd feel lost and light-shouldered without the swag."

"So you'd put all your money in the concern?"

"Yes--except a pound or two to go on the track with--for, who knows, I might come along there, dusty and tired, and ragged and hard up and old, some day, and be very glad of a night's rest at the Lost Souls' Hotel.

But I wouldn't let on that I was old Mitch.e.l.l, the millionaire, who founded Lost Souls'. They might be too officious, and I hate fuss....

But it's time to take the track, Harry."

There came a cool breeze with sunset; we stood up stiffly, shouldered our swags and tucker-bags, and pushed on, for we had to make the next water before we camped. We were out of tobacco, so we borrowed some from one of the bullock-drivers.

THE BOOZERS' HOME

"A dipsomaniac," said Mitch.e.l.l, "needs sympathy and commonsense treatment. (Sympathy's a grand and glorious thing, taking it all round and looking at it any way you will: a little of it makes a man think that the world's a good world after all, and there's room and hope for sinners, and that life's worth living; enough of it makes him sure of it: and an overdose of sympathy makes a man _feel_ weak and ashamed of himself, and so moves him to stop whining--and wining--and buck up.)

"Now, I'm not taking the case of a workman who goes on the spree on pay night and sweats the drink out of himself at work next day, nor a slum-bred brute who guzzles for the love of it; but a man with brains, who drinks to drown his intellect or his memory. He's generally a man under it all, and a sensitive, generous, gentle man with finer feelings as often as not. The best and cleverest and whitest men in the world seem to take to drink mostly. It's an awful pity. Perhaps it's because they're straight and the world's crooked and they can see things too plain. And I suppose in the bush the loneliness and the thoughts of the girl-world they left behind help to sink 'em.

"Now a drunkard seldom reforms at home, because he's always surrounded by the signs of the ruin and misery he has brought on the home; and the sight and thought of it sets him off again before he's had time to recover from the last spree. Then, again, the n.o.blest wife in the world mostly goes the wrong way to work with a drunken husband--nearly everything she does is calculated to irritate him. If, for instance, he brings a bottle home from the pub, it shows that he wants to stay at home and not go back to the pub any more; but the first thing the wife does is to get hold of the bottle and plant it, or smash it before his eyes, and that maddens him in the state he is in then.

"No. A dipsomaniac needs to be taken away from home for a while. I knew a man that got so bad that the way he acted at home one night frightened him, and next morning he went into an inebriate home of his own accord--to a place where his friends had been trying to get him for a year past. For the first day or two he was nearly dead with remorse and shame--mostly shame; and he didn't know what they were going to do to him next--and he only wanted them to kill him quick and be done with it.

He reckons he felt as bad as if he was in jail. But there were ten other patients there, and one or two were worse than he was, and that comforted him a lot. They compared notes and sympathized and helped each other. They discovered that all their wives were n.o.ble women. He struck one or two surprises too--one of the patients was a doctor who'd attended him one time, and another was an old boss of his, and they got very chummy. And there was a man there who was standing for Parliament--he was supposed to be having a rest down the coast.... Yes, my old mate felt very bad for the first day or two; it was all Yes, Nurse, and Thank you, Nurse, and Yes, Doctor, and No, Doctor, and Thank you, Doctor. But, inside a week, he was calling the doctor 'Ol'

Pill-Box' behind his back, and making love to one of the nurses.

"But he said it was pitiful when women relatives came to visit patients the first morning. It shook the patients up a lot, but I reckon it did 'em good. There were well-bred old lady mothers in black, and hard-working, haggard wives and loving daughters--and the expressions of sympathy and faith and hope in those women's faces! My old mate said it was enough in itself to make a man swear off drink for ever.... Ah, G.o.d--what a world it is!

"Reminds me how I once went with the wife of another old mate of mine to see him. He was in a lunatic asylum. It was about the worst hour I ever had in my life, and I've had some bad ones. The way she tried to coax him back to his old self. She thought she could do it when all the doctors had failed. But I'll tell you about him some other time.

"The old mate said that the princ.i.p.al part of the treatment was supposed to be injection of bi-chloride of gold or something, and it was supposed to be a secret. It might have been water and sugar for all he knew, and he thought it was. You see, when patients got better they were allowed out, two by two, on their honour--one to watch the other--and it worked.

But it was necessary to have an extra hold on them; so they were told that if they were a minute late for `treatment,' or missed one injection, all the good would be undone. This was dinged into their ears all the time. Same as many things are done in the Catholic religion--to hold the people. My old mate said that, as far as the medical treatment was concerned, he could do all that was necessary himself. But it was the sympathy that counted, especially the sympathy between the patients themselves. They always got hold of a new patient and talked to him and cheered him up; he nearly always came in thinking he was the most miserable wretch in this world. And it comforts a man and strengthens him and makes him happier to meet another man who's worse off or sicker, or has been worse swindled than he has been. That's human nature.... And a man will take draughts from a nurse and eat for her when he wouldn't do it for his own wife--not even though she had been a trained nurse herself. And if a patient took a bad turn in the night at the Boozers'

Home and got up to hunt the snakes out of his room, he wouldn't be sworn at, or laughed at, or held down; no, they'd help him shoo the snakes out and comfort him. My old mate said that, when he got better, one of the new patients reckoned that he licked St Pathrick at managing snakes.

And when he came out he didn't feel a bit ashamed of his experience.

The inst.i.tution didn't profess to cure anyone of drink, only to mend up shattered nerves and build up wrecked const.i.tutions; give them back some will-power if they weren't too far gone. And they set my old mate on his feet all right. When he went in his life seemed lost, he had the horror of being sober, he couldn't start the day without a drink or do any business without it. He couldn't live for more than two hours without a drink; but when he came out he didn't feel as if he wanted it. He reckoned that those six weeks in the inst.i.tution were the happiest he'd ever spent in his life, and he wished the time had been longer; he says he'd never met with so much sympathy and genius, and humour and human nature under one roof before. And he said it was nice and novel to be looked after and watched and physicked and bossed by a pretty nurse in uniform--but I don't suppose he told his wife that. And when he came out he never took the trouble to hide the fact that he'd been in. If any of his friends had a drunkard in the family, he'd recommend the inst.i.tution and do his best to get him into it. But when he came out he firmly believed that if he took one drink he'd be a lost man. He made a mania of that. One curious effect was that, for some time after he left the inst.i.tution, he'd sometimes feel suddenly in high spirits--with nothing to account for it--something like he used to feel when he had half a dozen whiskies in him; then suddenly he'd feel depressed and sort of hopeless--with nothing to account for that either--just as if he was suffering a recovery. But those moods never lasted long and he soon grew out of them altogether. He didn't flee temptation. He'd knock round the pubs on Sat.u.r.day nights with his old mates, but never drank anything but soft stuff--he was always careful to smell his gla.s.s for fear of an accident or trick. He drank gallons of ginger beer, milk-and-soda, and lemonade; and he got very fond of sweets, too--he'd never liked them before. He said he enjoyed the novelty of the whole thing and his mates amused him at first; but he found he had to leave them early in the evening, and, after a while, he dropped them altogether. They seemed such fools when they were drunk (they'd never seemed fools to him before). And, besides, as they got full, they'd get suspicious of him, and then mad at him, because he couldn't see things as they could. That reminds me that it nearly breaks a man's heart when his old drinking chum turns teetotaller--it's worse than if he got married or died. When two mates meet and one is drunk and the other sober there is only one of two things for them to do if they want to hit it together--either the drunken mate must get sober or the sober mate drunk. And that reminds me: Take the case of two old mates who've been together all their lives, say they always had their regular sprees together and went through the same stages of drunkenness together, and suffered their recoveries and sobered up together, and each could stand about the same quant.i.ty of drink and one never got drunker than the other. Each, when he's boozing, reckons his mate the cleverest man and the hardest case in the world--second to himself. But one day it happens, by a most extraordinary combination of circ.u.mstances, that Bill, being sober, meets Jim very drunk, and pretty soon Bill is the most disgusted man in this world. He never would have dreamed that his old mate could make such a fool and such a public spectacle of himself. And Bill's disgust intensifies all the time he is helping Jim home, and Jim arguing with him and wanting to fight him, and s...o...b..ring over him and wanting to love him by turns, until Bill swears he'll give Jim a hammering as soon as ever he's able to stand steady on his feet."

"I suppose your old boozing mate's wife was very happy when he reformed," I said to Mitch.e.l.l.

"Well, no," said Mitch.e.l.l, rubbing his head rather ruefully. "I suppose it was an exceptional case. But I knew her well, and the fact is that she got more discontented and thinner, and complained and nagged him worse than she'd ever done in his drinking days. And she'd never been afraid of him. Perhaps it was this way: She loved and married a careless, good-natured, drinking scamp, and when he reformed and became a careful, hard-working man, and an honest and respected fellow-townsman, she was disappointed in him. He wasn't the man that won her heart when she was a girl. Or maybe he was only company for her when he was half drunk. Or maybe lots of things. Perhaps he'd killed the love in her before he reformed--and reformed too late. I wonder how a man feels when he finds out for the first time that his wife doesn't love him any longer? But my old mate wasn't the nature to find out that sort of thing. Ah, well! If a woman caused all our trouble, my G.o.d! women have suffered for it since--and they suffer like martyrs mostly and with the patience of working bullocks. Anyway it goes, if I'm the last man in the world, and the last woman is the worst, and there's only room for one more in Heaven, I'll step down at once and take my chances in Blazes."