In the township of Peterborough I secured, for the time being, the services of a decent, elderly man named Fetch--Isaiah Fetch--and together we set to work to make a garden before my little house; to fence it in against the attacks of bandicoots and wandering cattle, and to effect one or two small repairs, additions and improvements to the place. This manual work interested me, and, I dare say, bettered my health, though I was ashamed to note the poor staying power I had as compared with Isaiah Fetch, who, whilst fully ten years my senior, was greatly my superior in toughness and endurance.
VI
Wages for labour had soared and soared again since my day in Australia, even for elderly and 'down-along more than up-along 'men like Isaiah Fetch. (The phrase is his own.) And, in any case, I told myself, it was not for the likes of me to keep hired men. And so, when the garden was made, and the other needed work done, I parted with Isaiah--a good, honest, homespun creature, rich in a sort of bovine contentment which often moved me to sincere envy--and was left quite alone in my hermitage, save for the morning visit of perhaps a couple of hours, which the worthy Mrs. Blades undertook to pay for the purpose of tidying my rooms and cooking a midday meal for me. Her coming between nine and ten each morning, and going between twelve and one, formed the chief, if not the only, landmarks in the routine of my quiet days. So it was when I parted with Isaiah. So it is to-day, and so it is like to remain--while I remain.
Parting with Isaiah Fetch made a good deal of difference to me; more difference than I should have supposed it possible that anything connected with so simple a soul could have made. The plain fact is, I suppose, that while Isaiah worked about the place here, I worked with him, in my pottering way. I developed quite an interest in my bit of garden, because of the very genuine interest felt in the making of it by Isaiah. I had worked at it with him; but, once he had left it, I regret to say the ordered ranks of young vegetables tempted me but little, and soon became disordered, for the reason that the war I waged against the weeds was but a poor, half-hearted affair. And so it was with other good works we had begun together. I gave up my cow, because it seemed far simpler to let Mrs. Blades have her for nothing, on the understanding that she brought me the daily trifle of milk I needed. I left the feeding and care of my few fowls to Mrs. Blades, and finally made her a present of them, after paying several bills for their pollard and grain. It seemed easier and cheaper to let Mrs. Blades supply the few eggs I needed.
My horse Punch I kept, because we grew fond of each other, and the surrounding bush afforded ample grazing for him. When Punch began his habit of gently biting my arm or shoulder every time I led him here or there, he sealed his own fate; and now will have to continue living with his tamely uninteresting master willy nilly. Lovable, kindly, spirited beast that he is, I never could have afforded the purchase of his like but for a slight flaw in his near foreleg, which in some way spoils his action, from your horsey man's standpoint, and pleases me greatly, because it brought the affectionate rascal within my modest reach. I give him very little work, and rather too much food; but he has to put up with a good deal of my society, and holds long converse with me daily, I suppose because he knows no means of terminating an interview until that is my pleasure.
One piece of outdoor work I have continued religiously, for the reason, no doubt, that I love wood fires, even in warm weather. I never neglect my wood-stack, the foundations of which were laid for me by Isaiah Fetch. Every day I take axe and saw and cut a certain amount of logwood. My hearth will take logs of just four feet in length, and I feed it royally. The wood costs nothing; when burning it is highly aromatic, and I like to be profuse with it; I who can recall an interminable London winter, in a garret full of leaks and draught holes, in which the only warming apparatus, besides the poor lamp that lighted my writing-table, was a miserable oil-stove, which I could not afford to keep alight except for the brief intervals during which it boiled my kettle for me.
Yes, I know every speck and every cranny of my cavernous hearth, and it is rarely that it calls for any kindling wood of a morning. As a rule a puff from the bellows and a fresh log--one of the little fellows, no thicker than your leg, which I split for this purpose--is enough to set it on its way flaming and glowing for another day of comforting life. I often tell myself it would never do for me to think of giving up my hermitage and returning to England, because of Punch and my ever-glowing hearth; even if there were no other reasons, as of course there are.
For, whilst the comparative zestfulness of the first months, when I worked with Isaiah Fetch to improve my rough-hewn little hermitage, may not have endured, yet are there many obvious and substantial advantages for me in the life I lead here, in this little bush back-water, where the few human creatures who know of my existence regard me as a poor, harmless kind of crank, and no one ever disturbs the current of my circling thoughts. Never was a life more free from interruptions from without. And if disturbance ever emanates from within, why, clearly the fault must be my own, and should serve as a reminder of how vastly uneasy my life would surely be in more civilised surroundings, where interruptions descend upon one from without, thick as smuts through the window of a London garret--save where the garreteer cares to do without air. Here I sit with a noble fire leaping at one end of my unlined, wooden room, and wide open doors and windows all about me. As regards climate, in New South Wales a man may come as near as may be to eating his cake and having it too.
And, for that long-sought mental restfulness, content, peace, whatever one may call it, is not my present task a long step towards its attainment? A completed record of the fitful struggle one calls one's life, calmly studied in the light of reason untrammelled by sentiment, never interrupted by the call of affairs; surely that should bring the full measure of self-comprehension upon which peace is based! To doubt that contentment lies that way would be wretchedness indeed. But why should I doubt what the world's greatest sages have shown? True, my own experience of life has suggested that contentment is rather the monopoly of the simplest souls, whose understanding is very limited indeed. A stinging thought this, and apt to keep a man wakeful at night, if indulged. But I think it should not be indulged. To doubt the existence of a higher order of content than that of the blissfully ignorant is to brush aside as worthless and meaningless the best that classic literature has to offer us, and--such doubts are pernicious things.
Living here in this clean, sweet air, so far removed from the external influences which make for fret and stress, my bodily health, at all events, has small excuse for failure one would suppose. And, indeed, at first it did seem to me that I was acquiring a more normal kind of hardihood and working efficiency in this respect. But I regret to say the supposition was not long-lived. Four or five months after my arrival here I took to my bed for a fortnight, as the result of one of the severest attacks I have ever had; and in the fifteen months which have elapsed since then, my general health has been very much what it was during the years before I left London, while the acute bouts of neuritis and gastric trouble, when they have come, have been worse, I think, than those of earlier years.