In the middle of the Dry Season that followed the collapse of the cotton-boom, one day while Oscar was in the midst of drafting an account of Red Ochre’s stock-in-trade for presenting to a man named Burywell who was contemplating taking on the lease, a naked blackfellow brought him a message from Differ.
Messages from Differ were by no means rare just then. The man was ill again and poorer than ever, and, knowing that Oscar was going away, was desperately snatching at whatever crumbs of charity remained. He had lately become an utter pest to Oscar. First Oscar had been forced to take care of Constance again while he returned to the hospital for an operation. Fortunately his treatment cost nothing. As it was, other expenses he incurred cost Oscar a pretty penny. It was impossible to refuse him. He made Oscar feel that he would have a death on his conscience if he did not help him. After all, the operation did him more harm than good. He returned to say that it had been decided that he must undergo special treatment necessitating his going to a hospital in the South, in order to do which he asked Oscar for the loan of £150. He offered as security the manuscript of a novel and a stack of poems and short stories he had written, which, according to him, were worth a fortune. Oscar did not discredit the man’s literary ability; in fact he considered him a very clever fellow in an unpractical way; but he had little faith in the value of literary ability in Australia, having been thoroughly taught by Differ himself that Australian editors and publishers did not know what literary ability was; so he suggested that Differ should cash the securities himself. Poor Differ had tried that long ago. They were dog-eared by the hands of many a publisher’s-reader and postman. Next Differ asked for £100 without security, and when that was refused asked for £50, and finally £33 10s.—the bare second-class fare for two to Flinders. Oscar refused.
Still Differ was not silenced. When he learnt that Oscar was contemplating going South he begged to be allowed to manage the Station, first asking a small salary for his services, finally offering them for the mere right to live in a comfortable home and eat free beef. That would have suited Oscar admirably at the time, because it had looked as though he could not find anyone fool enough to take the place off his hands; but last of all the careless caretakers he could easily have found would he have chosen drunken Differ; while the wretched man was pleading he was thinking how his cattle would be butchered wholesale for hides that Chinese storekeepers would take in exchange for a few shillings’ worth of grog.
At length Differ gave up begging favours for himself and concentrated on begging for Constance. Already up to the time of his last message he had four times begged Oscar to take Constance with him down to Batman, where he desired to have her placed in a convent. This latter line of begging was done by means of flowery letters that said much about Oscar’s unparalleled kindness to Norman and stated that the writer was at death’s door. Thrice Oscar sent back apologetic refusals. The fourth time he gave the messenger a stick of tobacco and told him to go to hell.
When the naked blackfellow handed him the latest letter, Oscar snorted with anger, pitched the missive into the litter of papers on his table, and went on with the drafting. He was working in the dining-room. He looked up but once during the next half-hour, and then only to bawl at the blackfellow for lounging on the back veranda near the door. At last he picked up the letter. It consisted of five sheets of rough brown paper rolled into a cylinder and tied with string. The writing had been done with a wet ink-pencil by a shaky hand. It was scarcely readable. As Differ usually wrote with care, Oscar at once assumed that he had written shakily to lend colour to the cause he surely would be pleading. He sneered as he smoothed out the paper. Yes—sure enough Differ was dying again. Pity that wolf would not come!
The letter ran:
Dear Friend,
I am dying. My course is run. For God’s sake help me. The haemorrhage I told you about is much worse. I’ve scarcely any blood left in my miserable body.
I’ve been a burden to you for years. Forgive me for a poor weak fool. Soon you’ll be freed of me for ever. I ask but one more favour, friend of years, my only friend. Take my child with you to the convent. You can’t refuse me. On your charity, think of my little girl and what will happen to her when I am gone. The Compound, humiliation, prostitution, at last a place by the camp-fire in the bush, and always the unutterable debasement of being coloured and an outcast.
It will cost you so little to do this—£16, and a few shillings for clothing. At present she’s in rags. Oh my darling, my sweet sweet child, just budding into beautiful womanhood, my Javan Princess—in rags!
My friend, come to me at once so that I might not have to die alone. I can’t come to you. I’m too weak to ride. I’d have to ride, because for one thing the white-ants have eaten the wheels of my buckboard, and my one cart-horse has gone bush with the brumbies. Laughable, isn’t it! I feel I can laugh now, even in the shadow of death. I am happy. For I know you won’t fail me. Oh you can’t—you can’t—Heaven would surely strike you if you did—And I—I would die mocking you for your meanness.
Forgive me, my friend. Understand my anguish. Please come at once with the buckboard and take me to the rail. If I can make the journey I’ll go up to the hospital. Oh I don’t care about dying. I’ve suffered enough. Really I think I’d be disappointed if I recovered.
If I should die before you come, I shall send Constance across to you. I bequeath her innocence to your care. And I bequeath to you my literary work. Useless though these might be commercially, they are the attar-drops distilled from the long and futile ebullience of my life.
Consider my darling’s peril, Oscar. It is real—so terribly real. Her peril, from which no hand but yours can save her. Then, on your charity, come to me. Yours, PETER.
For some minutes Oscar stared before him, seeing Differ dying, and while dying striving to write what he called the Perfect Phrase—poor devil! And seeing Constance, the ragged Javan Princess, the sweet bud of womanhood. And seeing the rubbish-heap on to which the flower would be cast if his hand were not put out to help. And thinking that if he did not help he would be a fiend.
Then suddenly he remembered something Differ had often talked about, what he called the Suggestive Power of the Written Word, the making, by means of arrangement of word and phrase, of mesmeric passes as it were before the reader’s mind in order to convince—that was Differ’s word, Convince!—Convince Against All Reason. Ah!—here was Differ trying to mesmerise him with an ink-pencil—and succeeding! He shuddered, searched among the papers for his pipe. Was Differ mad, or extremely cunning? he wondered. Cunning. Yes—he had been using him for years. He had never been anything but an Old Man of the Sea. And he had got pretty nearly everything he had ever wanted from him. Mesmerism—yes!
He picked up the letter and read it again, then again. With each reading it lost its power. No, he decided, the wolf had not come; and Constance was not a Javan Princess; nor would he be a fiend if he left her to her fate, which would surely not be as bad as Differ said. And Differ? Well, perhaps he would abandon beggary when there was no poor fool about to beg from.
He rose and went outside. The naked blackfellow was leaning against a veranda post, watching Marigold and Norman playing with their toys. He noticed for the first time that the fellow was naked. He had taken little notice of him in the darkened room, and afterwards had seen him only through the fly-wire door. He snapped at him, “You dirty myall—what name you no-more gottim trouser?”
The blackfellow grinned and said, “Me number-one poor-man, Boss.”