Mr Jelly's Business. Arthur W. Upfield
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“Hi, Mrs Wallace!” he shouted. “Wot erbout a drink? Two pots, please, Leonard—’e wants ter go to bed.”
As a mantle might fall, so wrath fell upon Mrs Wallace. She swept aside her husband as though he were a fowl. She snatched up their tankards and with mighty arm worked the pump. The amber liquid fell into one pot and filled it to the brim. It half filled the second pot, when from the pump there came only white froth and a sound of hissing air. It was with an obvious effort that Mrs Wallace controlled herself sufficiently to say to her husband without stuttering:
“Go down and put on another barrel.”
“Fill ’em up, missus,” boomed the Spirit of Australia.
“Just a minute, Mr Garth.”
“Slowest pub I ever bin in,” muttered Mr Garth loudly.
“Get a wriggle on, Leonard, or you’ll turn into a real creepy toad,” urged Mrs Wallace with icicles behind her false teeth.
“The slowest pub I ever bin in,” reiterated the Spirit of Australia.
The company laughed, and to Bony there was a hint of expectancy in the rolling sound.
Mr Wallace had now opened the trapdoor leading to the cellar. With an angry face but with a dignified air he descended the flight of six steps and, still maintaining the quickness of the expert, proceeded to tap a full barrel. Mrs Wallace was standing between the open trap and the parlour counter eagerly listening to one of “the upper class” retailing a questionable story. Someone near Bony asked for cigarettes, but the woman’s attention was held fast.
Once again the Spirit of Australia vented his opinion of the Burracoppin Hotel in the matter of service. The cigarette smoker became insistent. Unable not to hear the end of the story, yet her full appreciation of it marred by the impatience of her customers and the apparent slowness of Mr Wallace, she at last swung round as a liner at anchor moved by the tide. Mr Wallace then was ascending, important work having been importantly done. His wife saw him emerge from the darkness of the cellar, and when he stood on the middle step, when his head was between floor and counter top, she cried in a loud voice:
“Lazarus, come forth!”
The hush of a moment fell upon the crowd. Slowly above the counter rose the pale, deathly face of Mr Wallace, his black eyes gleaming with an unholy light, his grey hairs entangling a ribbon of cobweb.
Roaring laughter bellowed out through the open doors and drifted far beyond the railway. It drowned the fall of the trapdoor. Laughing men beheld husband and wife standing face to face, the mighty woman with her hands on her bovine hips, the insignificant husband with his hands clenched behind his back.
“Murderer!” sneered Mrs Wallace.
“She-bull!” hissed her husband.
At this point either the little man’s courage evaporated or experience had revealed to him the precise moment when to retreat successfully, because, with astonishing agility, he vaulted the counter, slipped between the customers, and disappeared through the main door.
Mrs Wallace threw the contents of a beer pot after her husband with exceeding poor aim considering the long practice she must have had. The beer descended in a shower over the Spirit of Australia, whose interest was captured by the darting Mr Wallace.
Now, an ordinary man would have wiped away the liquor from his whiskers, perhaps with an oath or two. But Mr Garth’s experience of life would have been incomplete without a long course of bar-room education over all the Western Australian goldfields. To many present that evening it was unfortunate that Mr Garth did not know who was responsible for that deluge of beer. The Spirit of Australia, impatient as is the youth of the country, deemed the easiest way of finding the offender was to manhandle everyone within doors. Man after man was gripped with vicelike hands, lifted off his feet, and rushed to one of the doors, from which point he was propelled ten or twelve feet to the gritty roadway. Bony had his turn with the rest: but whereas the rest were content, being personally acquainted with Mr Garth, to arise in good humour, for really Mr Garth was not in one of his rough moods, Bony’s black ancestry flashed to the surface of his dual nature, his white father’s more civilized restraint submerged entirely.
Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte returned to the bar, his blue eyes like twin blue flames.
Standing on the step of the hotel door, Bony was confronted by a spectacle which so much surprised him that he went in no farther. In the very centre of the bar the Spirit of Australia faced Mrs Wallace, and the Spirit of Australia was most subdued. He was asking in pleading tones for “just one more”.
“No!” thundered the lady, slowly advancing.
“Just one, marm.”
“Get out!”
“Gimme a drink, and I’ll go quiet.”
“I don’t care how you go, but get out.”
Mrs Wallace was now like a liner steaming slowly out of harbour. Mr Garth was, indeed, a big man, but Mrs Wallace, if not quite so tall, was wider and deeper. Bony could see her face, and never before had he dreamed there could be such fury revealed in the human countenance. Mr Garth was unwise. He should have retreated gracefully. As he had rushed Bony out of the hotel, so was he rushed out by Mrs Wallace, his instincts inhibiting his exerting his strength against her.
The door was slammed. The other bar door was slammed with equal viciousness. Footsteps thundered along a passage, and yet other doors were slammed and bolted. Mrs Wallace was the triumphant victor holding the fort.
“She’s a trimmer,” announced the Spirit of Australia, chuckling dryly, in his voice no trace of his recent violence and anger. “Who heaved that pot at me?”
“She did,” Mr Thorn said, as one who is bereaved.
“Then why didn’t someone tell me?” Mr Garth asked with pained astonishment.
“We had a lot of spare time, didn’t we?” a voice in the darkness pointed out succinctly.
Silence, broken presently by Mr Garth’s dry chuckle.
“Well—well! We all enjoyed ourselves, so what’s the odds? I’m off to feed me horses. Good night!”
With wonderful good humour, considering their rough handling, the small crowd dispersed to their homes, Bony walking towards the Rabbit Department Depot. Arriving at the gate, however, he changed his mind about going to bed and sauntered south along the straight road hemmed in by the silent, brooding scrub.
He was feeling ashamed at his failure to control the flash of temper engendered by Mr Garth’s assault, but when this wore away he began to enjoy retrospectively the human characters he had met that night. The circumstances of the evening he neither liked nor approved in general. He was not a drinker, not because he disliked alcoholic liquor, but because he hated to feel his senses dulled even for a short space of time.
It was not the want of human company or the craving for stimulants which had urged him to the hotel. His visit there was made for a quite different reason. He was aware—who is not?—that the masculine life of an Australian bush community centres about the hotel and the feminine life about the hall. Men accustomed to semi-solitary lives and performing open-air work are not naturally loquacious, but will become so when in the company of their fellows and mellowed by alcohol; while women from the lonely farms, when gathered inside a brightly lit hall at a dance or other social function, place no restraint upon their tongues.
Therefore, at the hotel and in the hall the real life of the community is to be seen in its nakedness for observant eyes to study with profit. As Bony knew, the essence of human aspirations, the virtues and the vices, are found in the humblest of the people. To Bony, thinker and student, the Spirit of Australia was of profounder interest than possibly could have been a member of royalty, for no king in history, who lived beyond eighty years, possessed Mr Garth’s strength, freedom from diseases, and cleanness of mind which had guaranteed both. And surely the man clothed,