by my memories of a tea shop in the Old Kent Road, I at once set to work and wrote on white cards, “Genuine Pekoe Ceylon Tea, 2/ per pound,” and underneath, in very bold letters, “The cup that cheers but does not inebriate.” Of course, in those days I knew nothing whatever of the Australian Bushman’s temperament; had I done so I should, of course, have written, “The cup that inebriates and cheers!”
Ah, how I remember my pride as I stood on the slope and gazed at my solitary shop window. Sunset was once more sinking into its saffron sea out westward, and sent over the hills a dying beam that touched as though with tenderness those words, written in big chalk letters over the doorway of my shop, “Middleton & Co., Tea Merchants.” As I gazed up at it I climbed once more on the old tub and added this after-thought, “late of London,” and the sunbeam died away as my eyes instinctively turned westward. I knew that that same sun was stealing round the world and those beams would steal likewise over the lattice windows of my sleeping parents, my brothers and my sisters, all dreaming and snoring in velvet comfort, and I wondered if they dreamed of me, and whether their wildest dreams could picture my shop and my heroic ignorance as the shadow of the Australian night crept over me and the parrots stirred in the leafy gums, and the innumerable frogs and locusts in the swamps hard by chanted a fit accompaniment to my retrospective dreams.
I tell you, I felt pretty lonely in that old place. I would stand at the shop door and watch the fleets of parrots and magpies sail away into the sunset, day after day. And oh, the lonely nights! I often would climb up to the extreme tip of a hill near by and stare across the scrub to catch the last gleam of the old Agent’s house; its slim brows far off would twinkle with good comradeship and cheered me up wonderfully.
Well, I think it was just about three weeks after my first opening of the shop that I was standing one evening at the door feeling pretty downcast; the sun was setting over the blue hills and the thickening shadows made the landscape look for all the world like a dried-up primeval ocean bed, and the weird scattered gums like the masts of old sunken wrecks, that through some strange freak of nature had burst into leaf. Suddenly on the distant range I saw a moving speck; my astonished eyes gazed steadily and then brightened with enthusiasm; it was a lonely horseman! Surely he would not pass by my shop without buying a pound of tea, thought I. What on earth could I do to attract him? A happy thought struck me. I rushed to my old sea-chest, out came my old bugle-horn, and placing it to my lips, I stood at that lonely shop door and gave three tremendous blasts, then watched. To my huge delight, as the echoes reverberating faded away over the silent steppes, the horseman altered his course; he was coming towards me!
He was a burly, brick-coloured, dusty-looking fellow, and as he sat astride by my shop door gazing first at me, then at my shop, and then again on the surrounding country, he coughed twice and spat over his shoulder. I felt extremely riled by his manner. Then he said, “How’s biz?” With good business forethought I replied, “Pretty good the last two days!” Then suddenly making a bold effort I asked, “Would you like to try a pound of my Pekoe?”
With a kindly look in his grey eyes he said, “Good tea I ’spose?” “Nothing to beat it,” I answered quickly.
Looking quietly across the country he remarked, “No complaints about its quality round these parts I bet.” Without another word he gave me two shillings, took the tea and galloped away.
I think it was about four days after selling that pound of tea that I spotted the Agent coming down the hill-side track right opposite my shop. The month was up, and the rent due!
“Well,” he said as I stood at the door and boldly faced him, “I’ve called for the rent.”
For a moment I fumbled in my pocket. I knew, to be an honourable citizen, I should pay my way and let all earthly considerations of sustaining existence and thoughts of the future go to the winds, but I had only fifteen shillings in the world, and the month’s rent was four pounds, and the cost of the agreement two pounds ten shillings. Pulling myself together I said, “Can you give me another month?”
“Not a day,” he answered hotly, and then looking up quickly asked, “Where’s the agreement money?”
Then I saw that my first boyish instincts were to be relied upon—the man was a hard-hearted scoundrel. I answered quickly, “Where’s the Township you spoke of?” At this he almost spat with rage, and thrusting his pointed whiskered chin in my face said, “Do you expect me to supply you with a Town as well as with a shop?”
I pretended to see some fine logic in that remark, quieted myself down, and then said, “Parrots, magpies, ’possums and mosquitoes do not buy tea, so how can I pay the rent?”
His temper now got the upper hand of him. “You’ve taken the shop,” he snarled; “where the hell’s your capital?”
On hearing him say this, the sudden inspiration that has stood me in such good stead in the sorrows and joys which I am going to tell you of, flashed in my brain, and I quickly answered, “You cannot supply a Town, and yet you expect me to supply capital. Put your Township here and I’ll soon show you the capital.” And then I trembled and forced a smile to my lips. He looked so dangerous that I did not know what might occur to me in those lonely parts. But he was only a bully after all. For a moment he looked me up and down with interest, and then said, “Can you pay me to-morrow?”
Pointing my trembling hand to my rows of empty tea-chests, I said, “Look here, I’ll go to Brisbane to-morrow, sell that tea at cost price, and you shall have your rent and the agreement money.” At this he turned and went away. That night I hastened off to Brisbane, hired a van, got my sea-chest out of that wretched shop and was never seen in any shop in those parts or anywhere else on earth again.
III
No Money—Sleeping Out—Bushed!—The Stockman’s Shanty
Stranded in Brisbane without a cent I slept down on the wharfs and sometimes curled my half-starved body up by the warm funnel of the deep-sea tramp boats. I will not weary you with the details of those days and nights, excepting to tell you that hundreds of English boys, and the pluckiest boys of your country too, go through all that I went through in the land of the Golden Fleece. I was soon in rags, sunburnt and miserable. I mixed with English and Colonial tramps, some good men and some no good; most of them wore shaggy beards and others tried to keep shaved and had forgotten their names in the attempt to lose their identity—sad “ne’er-do-wells” of the civilised world, who had hurried across the world to save their necks or preserve their liberty!
It is wonderfully easy to sink into the depths of Failure’s Hell. The human relics that make up the sad side of existence are fascinating folk, full of sarcastic wit and most of them of a sentimental turn of mind, and strange as it may seem, deep in their hearts better men than those who climb the heights of ambition on one leg—instead of crawling up on all-fours and dying of old age half-way up.
I remember one night while we were all sitting huddled in our rags round the funnel of the English Mail Boat, one old chap (at least he seemed old to me as I was only fifteen years of age) would sit by moonlight reading and writing poetry. He had fine eyes, and he and I got interested in each other, and I found out gradually that he was a University man, who in a moment of mental aberration had signed a cheque and passed it. He had travelled the South Seas, lived in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, could quote all the poets and as far as I was able to judge wrote beautiful poems. When he read one of them to me, inspired by memories of his boyhood, I was quite touched and he noticed it by my eyes, and I with my impulsive temperament could have kissed that sad old mouth as the beautiful words trembled out of it and his face
