While the Billy Boils - Cover

While the Billy Boils

Copyright© 2024 by Henry Lawson

He’d Come Back

The yarn was all lies, I suppose; but it wasn’t bad. A city bushman told it, of course, and he told it in the travellers’ hut.

“As true’s God hears me I never meant to desert her in cold blood,” he said. “We’d only been married about two years, and we’d got along grand together; but times was hard, and I had to jump at the first chance of a job, and leave her with her people, an’ go up-country.”

He paused and fumbled with his pipe until all ears were brought to bear on him.

“She was a beauty, and no mistake; she was far too good for me—I often wondered how she came to have a chap like me.”

He paused again, and the others thought over it—and wondered too, perhaps.

The joker opened his lips to speak, but altered his mind about it.

“Well, I travelled up into Queensland, and worked back into Victoria ‘n’ South Australia, an’ I wrote home pretty reg’lar and sent what money I could. Last I got down on to the south-western coast of South Australia—an’ there I got mixed up with another woman—you know what that means, boys?”

Sympathetic silence.

“Well, this went on for two years, and then the other woman drove me to drink. You know what a woman can do when the devil’s in her?”

Sound between a sigh and a groan from Lally Thompson. “My oath,” he said, sadly.

“You should have made it three years, Jack,” interposed the joker; “you said two years before.” But he was suppressed.

“Well, I got free of them both, at last—drink and the woman, I mean; but it took another—it took a couple of years to pull myself straight—”

Here the joker opened his mouth again, but was warmly requested to shut it.

“Then, chaps, I got thinking. My conscience began to hurt me, and—and hurt worse every day. It nearly drove me to drink again. Ah, boys, a man—if he is a man—can’t expect to wrong a woman and escape scot-free in the end.” (Sigh from Lally Thompson.) “It’s the one thing that always comes home to a man, sooner or later—you know what that means, boys.”

Lally Thompson: “My oath!”

The joker: “Dry up yer crimson oath! What do you know about women?”

Cries of “Order!”

“Well,” continued the story-teller, “I got thinking. I heard that my wife had broken her heart when I left her, and that made matters worse. I began to feel very bad about it. I felt mean. I felt disgusted with myself. I pictured my poor, ill-treated, little wife and children in misery and poverty, and my conscience wouldn’t let me rest night or day”—(Lally Thompson seemed greatly moved)—”so at last I made up my mind to be a man, and make—what’s the word?”

 
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