I cannot give Mrs Mallandane’s own words, nor can I convey her manner when telling us the story of her life. Sometimes she would talk in a subdued monotone, telling, with an absence of feeling that was infinitely pathetic, of their troubles. Sometimes she would be roused to a pitch of feeling that left her voice but a husky whisper. Once—just once—I fancied there was the faintest trace of contempt in her tone when referring to—well, not to Cassidy. If it was so, it was at any rate instantly lost in a flow of pity.
This is substantially what she told us. Mallandane and Cassidy had owned claims in the Kimberley or one of the neighbouring mines, and were in fact partners doing business together. They were both young Irishmen, and had come out on the same boat some years before—which were considered sufficient reasons for their entering into partnership. Cassidy was the one with the brains, money, and work; and, from what I gathered, there seems to have been no reason, except Cassidy’s good-nature, for the alliance with Mallandane at all. However, they prospered, and Mallandane went home for a trip, and married and brought his wife back to Kimberley.
For a couple of years all went well—in fact, until the firm began to lose money. Reverses only stimulated Cassidy to harder work and more cheery, indomitable effort. You couldn’t beat him. But it was different with Mallandane. All his wife said was that he lost heart; used to go away day after day and night after night to where he could forget his worries—drinking and gambling. When Cassidy first recognised that his partner was falling, he gave up his own house, suggesting that it would be doing him (Cassidy) a good turn if they would let him board with them. He gave himself up to a splendid effort to save his partner from ruin.
For a time it answered, but Mallandane, besides being naturally unstable, must have been bitten by drink, for he broke out again, and nothing either wife or friend could do could save him. There came scenes—brutality and insult to the wife, ingratitude and insult to the friend. She told us nothing except in pity and forgiveness of her dead husband—nothing, that is, that justice to Cassidy did not require; but it is not difficult to imagine what happened, and, indeed, I know now that it was only the pitiful helplessness of the wife and child, and the knowledge that his presence was food, and even life, to them, that held Cassidy to his partner; for in his fits of drunkenness Mallandane would have murdered both wife and child.
Cassidy worked from four in the morning until eight at night, and at times through the day he would run up from the claims to the house, to see that all was well. All he made went to keep the house going, and it was given as a matter of course. No complaint was made, although Mallandane now ceased even the pretence of work and spent the whole day in the canteens.
But the end came when least expected. Mallandane, when he did come home at all, did not get up until hours after Cassidy was at work. He used to awake drunk and dazed, and wander off at once, unshaven, dirty and half dressed, to the nearest canteen.
One morning, however, there was a change. He was grey-faced, puffy and sodden, it is true, but he fussed about the house briskly, talking to himself. He got out a clean moleskin suit, and told the servant that he could not wait for breakfast, as he had to fire the eight o’clock shots, and the holes were all charged and waiting for him.
Within a quarter of an hour Cassidy had come up for breakfast. Mrs Mallandane met him on the way and told him what the servant had in the meantime told her; and Cassidy raced back to stop his delirious partner. With a madman’s cunning and instinct he had slipped down the mine from ledge to ledge and along dangerous slopes until he reached the lowest workings, and when Cassidy, after some delay in getting a bucket on the hauling-gear to go down in, reached the spot, the boys told him that Mallandane “umtagati” (bewitched) had gone into the drive to fire the charges, and would let no one go near him.
Cassidy looked at the black mouth of the drive. He did not think of the worthless sodden wretch who had gone in there. He recalled the partner of years, the mate of good times and bad, and he recalled, too, the horror-stricken look on the face of the woman he had just left. He dashed in to the sound of a warning yell from every man in the mine.
When occasion calls there is still no lack of brave men. Heroes spring into recognition from every grade of life, from every class of material; and while the half-dozen explosions still echoed and reverberated in the circle of the mine, there were men dashing in to the rescue at the imminent risk of their lives, heedless of the deadly fumes and of possible unexploded charges.