XX
A Tramp Royal

Joyous he was and merry. Paid his shot
  With song and laughter as he went his round.
Had he no other virtues? He had not;
  Yet passed no bogus cheque above a pound.

"How much are we to believe of that chap?" I asked.

"Exactly as much as you please," was the reply.

But the man in question was an amusing and companionable fellow, and we later entertained each other very happily for a fortnight. He had turned up one night, casually, as was the custom, but on foot, which was unusual, at a runholder's house, which I happened to be visiting on the other side of the Bay. My host and his brother, not knowing quite what to make of him, had kept him in the smoke-room apart from the family, and had found him good company. I did not make his acquaintance till bedtime, when, as we had to share the same room, we talked pleasantly for a long time of the people he had stayed with on his long tramp through the bush, and of page 143certain settlers on whom he proposed to call further on.

Weeks later, having called at our family station and borrowed a pony of mine from my brother, he arrived up country. In those days you turned up unasked, unannounced, even quite unacquainted, and stayed till you wanted to go. Visitors were rare with me, and consequently welcome; and as it was a slack time on the run, we proceeded to yarn and sing and shoot, to do odd jobs, and to enjoy ourselves. I was papering my new quarters. The ends of the main room required in the centre very long strips, and the paper, of a bold design, had to be very carefully adjusted at the joints. When you see a skilled paper-hanger at work, how easy it all seems; but we were new at it. We would get one of those long strips properly trimmed and well pasted at the back, and have started fixing it at the bottom. By the time we were on the ladder, and half way up, we would find it either out of plumb or out of register, and it would be necessary to begin again. When at last it seemed well on, nearly to the top, the whole length of limp wet paper—by this time pretty well pasted on both sides— would come flopping down all over the two of us, sometimes tearing softly in pieces in the page 144general collapse. We stuck at it to a finish, but never in my life have I heard anyone swear like our dubious friend, during the messy and agitating progress of that work. He said he had been in the navy, and I was inclined to believe him. His story was that he had left the sea after being nearly killed in a boat expedition, pirate hunting on the China station, and he certainly had terrible wound scars on his body to show for it.

Navy or no, he had assuredly never been in the cavalry, for on a horse he was naught. I remember once when we were climbing up an exceedingly steep razor-back ridge, he, riding a big horse, found it impossible to hold on, and, wildly struggling, came off over the tail, in a thick murk of impassioned profanity, down, whop, at my horse's feet. Though a heavy man, he was unhurt, and soon quite calm again—he was never out of temper for more than half a minute. He never had to ride down that track in wet weather, as we often did, when our horses put all four feet together and slid the forty yards at one shoot, with a most unpleasant drop yawning on either side. (Plate XX.)

The papering finished, we went eeling in the rapid, bush-edged river, and he taught me to cook the big white-bellied river eels page 145so that they became the most delicate fish I have ever tasted. He split and salted them, smoked them in an old tar drum, cut them in lengths, and grilled them in their skins. To make a long story short, after a fortnight of such delights, he borrowed a fiver, and went down to the little coast township for a couple of nights. Returning, much changed for the worse, rather maudlin and besotted, and not feeling quite so comfortable with me as before, he soon started off the way he had come to return my horse to my brother. He avoided our run, however, and went direct to Gisborne, our seaport. There, being recognised by a publican, he thought best to make no stay, but rode on out of the district, down the coast.

Reaching town the following week I heard all about this, and was advised to let well alone, as people would laugh at me, and my fine friend, and my lost fiver. "Don't care a tinker's damn for that," I said. "I've done nothing I'm ashamed of, and I want my pony back."

So they sent off on a great powerful charger a little trooper of the Mounted Constabulary, carrying a photo I had taken (Plate XVIIa), who in a couple of days overtook and identified the runaway and invited him to return.

Now little Tietripe, my piebald pony, had some good points; a good fast walk, for example, a not uncomfortable amble, and any quantity of spirit, but her gallop left all your longer "innards" tied in inextricable knots. The little trooper told me on his return that he had had to canter a good deal to make up time, and that this, for the pony, meant galloping, and continuous howls and curses and yells for mercy from poor Blakeney. So when I had attended court, and received back in good order my pony and saddle, I felt I was quite square with the absconder, and bore him no longer any sort of malice.

They appointed a man to defend him, who, looking through the indictment, at once pointed out that there was no such crime as therein particularised—"attempted larceny of a horse." Prisoner was forthwith discharged, and I went back to the club. Presently the police sergeant came along with an amended charge for me to sign. "Oh, no you don't," says I. "I've got my pony and saddle. I bear no grudge to Blakeney, whose company was worth my fiver, and I'm not going into your bally old court to be made a fool of for nothing; not likely. It's no longer my funeral. Now have a drink and get out of this."

From the publican who had recognised him, and from occasional stories chucklingly told me by people from other districts, I later on arrived at a pretty fair notion as to the way of life of my fortnight's companion.

Making himself very pleasant all round in one district, he would carefully treasure up any scraps of information he could casually come by as to the settlers in the next. When he moved on, these details, cleverly used, soon put him on easy terms with his surroundings, and so, changing from one place to another, he had lived on the country quite happily for years. His amusing company, when he kept off liquor, was usually well worth his keep, and he schemed neither to cheat nor rob, but only to live in peace. Never, as far as I could gather, had he ever cashed a bogus cheque for more than a pound, and that only in a case of urgent necessity. Very seldom did he leave any bitterness or real ill feeling behind him, and never at all in the minds of people with any sense of humour. Looking back to his stay with me, I could see that he had, in avoiding awkward subjects, the tact of a long-whiskered cat in the dark. I remember chaffing him as to the possibility of the police being on the lookout for him, and on page 148other uncomfortable matters, but he always came out of such conversations quite unperturbed and smiling. He had picked up some information as to my own folk in England which he used with effect; how he could have got it I have never been able even to imagine.

By long practice he could judge character almost at first sight. On leaving Gisborne, he put up at a station where his hostess was a very sentimental lady. She told me later, with tears of sympathy in her eyes, that he had been looking at a picture in an illustrated paper of a garden party at Buckingham Palace, when he had suddenly risen and gone to the window, where she could see, she said, by his back and shoulders that he was convulsed with emotion. He had seen, prominent in that distinguished throng, the figure of his brother, and family affection and the thought of his now so fallen state had quite mastered him! He was made very comfortable at that station!

Me he had pleased with a very subtle form of flattery. He put on no great airs; he was just a poor navy man, invalided out of the service, stony broke until should fall due the next instalment of his very meagre pension.

I would have given much to have known his real history, but I never learnt it.

In the South Island, some years before, page break

Plate XIX
Lambs at Kiore Station

Plate XIX
Author as Architect

page 149when times were bad, and most of the runholders eager to sell out, he had appeared in a rather out of the way district as Lord Something or other, Abney, let us say, and had put up at the best hotel. He managed somehow to fool the local bank manager, a cringing snob, and giving out that he wanted to buy a run, had a royal time of it. He was taken all over the country to lunches and dinners, and dances and country races galore, the bank manager often in subservient attendance. One day, when the wagonette pulled up, this man rushed forward before everyone with an "Allow me, my lord," to give him the help of his shoulder to descend. The echoes of that unfortunate remark pursued him for the rest of his life. But that is by the way.

This happy state of things had gone on for some time, when, feeling it could not last for ever, Lord Abney sent for the land-lord of the hotel. "Look here, Tompkins," he said. "I've been receiving a lot of hospitality round here lately, and it's getting time for me to do something in return. Arrange me a real first-class lunch for a large party of my friends on such a day, everything to be done as well as you can possibly do it." The hotel was agreeable, and spread itself to do him proud.

On the night before the great occasion he called the landlady and told her that he was rather out of sorts with all this social racket, and needed complete rest so as to be at his best next day. "Let me," he said, "have a perfectly quiet night. Don't let a soul come into my part of the house; let there be absolute silence here till I am called at eleven o'clock to-morrow."

When the guests came to town there was no Lord Abney, but a shepherd reported having met at dawn, ten miles out, someone very like him, footslogging towards the next district. In his big box were bricks.

And that bank manager had a very unhappy time.