Peace was restored in the Clay household through my interviewing Carry and offering to teach her music and allow her the use of my piano if she would do some of Dawn's work for two days during every second week. The next irritation arose from the male portion of the family.
Now, we had all been so vigorously on political entertainment bent, that no one had given a thought to Uncle Jake and his doings or political opinions, or whether he had any, but it transpired, though a "mere man," he had been pursuing his course with as much attention to electioneering technique as the most emancipated woman among us.
On the afternoon following Carry's little difference with Mrs Bray, Ada Grosvenor called to invite us to accompany her to hear Olliver Henderson, the ministerial candidate, who was to address the women at the hall first, and the men at Jimmeny's pub. afterwards, and we all went. Next morning at breakfast, when we had set to work upon the "dosed" porridge, Andrew again catechised his grandma concerning the casting of her vote.
"I'm goin' for young Walker of course; as for thatother feller!" said she cholericly, "I was that sick of his stuttering and muttering, an' holdin' his meetin's at Jimmeny's (we all know that that means free drinks), an' after waitin' all my life fer it I'm not goin' to cast the only vote that maybe I'll live to have, for a feller that buys his votes with grog. There's precious little to choose between them. They only want the glory of bein' in parliament for theirselves, and for the time bein' have rose a flute about the country goin' to the dogs and them bein' the people to save it; but once the election's over that's all we'll hear of 'em, and though they'd lick our boots now, they're so glad to know us, they'd forget all about us then. The one who can blow the loudest will get in, and as it must be one it might as well be this feller that can talk, an' could keep up his end of the stick in parliament, as there's no doubt this talkin' an' blow has become such a great trade one has to go to the wall without it."
"Well, I'm going for Walker too, because he's something to look at," said Carry.
"The women was goin' to put incleanmen an' do strokes," sneered Uncle Jake, "an' it turns out they'd vote for the best-lookin' man,—nice state of affairs that is."
"Ah! it's all very fine for a man to buck w'en a thing treads on his own toes; it would be thought a terrible thing for a woman to vote for a good-lookin' man an' pass over merit, but that's what's been done to women all the time. The good-lookin' ones got all the honours, whether they deserved 'em or not, and those complainin' agen this was jeered at an' called 'Shrieking sisters,' but it's a different tune now."
"Uncle,darling, who are you going to vote for?" inquired Andrew.
"For Henderson, of course, an' I reckon all the women here with votes ought, too."
"And why, pray?" asked grandma, her eyes flashing a challenge, while her faithful guardswomen, Carry and Dawn, suspended work to see how the argument ended.
"For the look of the thing to start with. It don't look well to see the wimmen of the family goin' agen the men."
"No, it don't look like Nature as men make believe it ought to be, for once to see a woman have a opinion of her own, and not the man just telling that his opinion wuz hers too, without knowing anythink about it, an' women having to hold their tongue for peace' sake because they wasn't in a position to help theirselves. An' if it seems so dreadful that way, you better come over to our side, as there's more of us than you, an' majority ought to rule."
"What did you do atyourmeeting last night, uncle?" inquired Dawn.
"Old Hollis is head of the committee, an' he says the first thing for all the committee men to do was to see the women of the men goin' for Henderson was the same way," he replied.
"Oh, an' so you thought you could come the Czar on us, did you? an' the Government, accordin' to Hollis's make out, is a fool to give women a vote; like in your case instead of giving me an' Carry a vote each, it ought to have give you three."
"Oh, Mr Sorrel!" said I, "what a joke! Was he really so ignorant as that; surely he was joking too?"
Uncle Jake had sufficient wit to take this opportunity of changing his tactics.
"No," he said, "some people is terrible narrer; formy part I always believe in wimmen holdin' their own opinion."
"So long as they didn't run contrary to yours," said grandma with a sniff. "There's heaps more like you. Women can always think as much as they like, an' they could get up on a platform an' talk till they bust, as long as they didn't want the world to be made no better, an' they wouldn't be thought unwomanly. It's soon as a woman wants any practical good done that she is considered a unwomanly creature."
Uncle Jake was outdone and relapsed into silence.
"An' that's just what I would have expected of old Hollis," continued grandma, who seemed to have a knowledge of people's doings rivalling that necessary to an efficient police officer. "I'll tell you what he is," and the old dame directed her remarks to me. "He is the old chap Mrs Bray was sayin' ain't goin' to vote this time because the women has got one and the monkeys will be havin' one next. Just what the likes of him would say! He's a old crawler whose wife does all the work while he walks around an' tells how he killed the bear, an' that's the sort of man who's always to be heard sayin' woman is a inferior animal that ought to be kep' on a chain as he thinks fit. You'll never hear the kind of man like Bray (who is a man an' keeps his wife like a princess) sayin' that sort of thing—it's only the old Hollises and such. I'll tell you what old Hollis is. He got out of work here a few years back, w'en things was terrible dull, an' so his wife had to keep him, and with a child for every year they had been married. She rared chickens an' plucked 'em and sold 'em around the town, an' went without necessaries w'en she was nursin' to keep him in tobacco. That's the kind of manheis, if you want to know. Of course, bein'a animal twice her superior, he had to go about suckin' a pipe, and of course he couldn't deny hisself anythink. What do you think of that?"
"That its pathos lies in its commonness."
"I reckon you didn't hear of him goin' out an' pluckin' the fowls then an' sayin', 'Wife, a woman's place w'en she has a young family is in the house.' No fear! She worked at this poultry business, an' it was surprisin' how she got on—worked it up to a big poultry farm, till he took a hand in doin' a little of the work an' takin'allthe credit. Now they live by it altogether; an' he was interviewed by the papers a little while ago, and it was blew about the reward of enterprise,—how he had started from nothink, an' it never said a word how she started an' rared his babies an' done it all, an' does most now, while he walks about to illustrate what a superior bein' he is. That's the way with all the poultry industry. Women was the pioneers in it, an' now it's worked up to be payin', men has took it over and think they have done a stroke. Not so far back a man would consider hisself disgraced that knew one kind of fowls from another,—he would be thought a old molly-coddle. The women tried to keep a few hens an' the men always tried to kill them, an' said they'd ruin the place, an' at the same time they hunt them was always cryin' out an' gruntin' that there wasn't enough eggs to eat, an' why didn't the hens lay the same as they used w'en they was boys. They expected the women to rare them on nothink, or at odd moments, the same way as they expect them to do everythink else. Now, even the swells is gone hen mad, an' the papers are full of poultry bein' a great industry, but it was women started it."
Upon strolling abroad that morning we found a huge placard bearing the advice—"Vote for Olliver Henderson,M.L.A., the Local Candidate," decorating the post of the gateway through which we gained the highroad.
Uncle Jake was credited with this erection, so Andrew made himself absent at a time when there was need of his presence, and thereby caused a deal of friction in the vicinity of grandma, but with the result that by midday Uncle Jake's placard was covered by another, reading: "Vote for Leslie Walker, the Opposition Candidate, and Save the Country!"
At three o'clock this was obscured by a reappearance of Henderson's advertisement, which was the cause of Uncle Jake being too late to catch that evening's train with a load of oranges he had been set to pack. At the risk of leaving the milking late, Andrew was setting out to once more eclipse this by Walker's poster, only that grandma adjudicated regarding the matter.
"Jake, you have one side of the gate, an' Andrew you take the other. Put up your papers side by side and that will be a good advertisement of liberty of opinion; an' Jake, if you haven't got sense to stick to this at your time of life, I'm sorry for you; and if you haven't Andrew at yours, I'll have to knock it into you with a strap,—nowmind! An' if you don't get your work done you'll go to no more meetin's."
"Right O! I'll vote for me grandma every time," responded Andrew.
This proved an effective threat, for political meetings had become the joy of life to the electors of Noonoon. As a tallow candle if placed near can obscure the light of the moon, so the approaching election lying at the door shut out all other worldly doings. The Russo-Japanese war became a movement of no moment; the season, the price of lemons and oranges, the doings of Mrs Tinker,the inability of the municipal council to make the roads good, and all other happenings, became tame by comparison with politics. They were discussed with unabating interest all day and every day, and by everyone upon all occasions. Even the children battled out differences regarding their respective candidates on the way home from school, rival committees worked with unflagging energy, and all buildings and fences were plastered with opposing placards. This pitch of enthusiasm was reached long before the sitting parliament had dissolved or a polling day had been fixed; for this State election was contested with unprecedented energy all over the country, but in no electorate was it more vigorously and, to its credit, more good-humouredly fought than in the fertile old valley of Noonoon.
It was the only chance the unfortunate electors had of bullying the lordly M.P.'s and would-be M.P.'s, who, once elected, would fatten on the parliamentary screw and pickings without showing any return, and right eagerly the electors took their present opportunity.
Zest was added to the contest by both the contestants being wealthy men, and with youth as well as means to carry it out on expensive lines. They were equally independent of parliament as a means of living, and being men of leisure were merely anxious for office to raise them from the rank and file of nonentityism. Independent means are a great advantage to a member of parliament. The penniless man elected on sheer merit, to whom the country could look for good things, becomes dependent upon politics for a living, is often handicapped by a family who are loth to leave the society and comfort to which their bread-winner's official position has raised them, and he, held by his affection, is ready to sacrificeall convictions and principle to remain in power. To this man politics becomes a desperate gamble, and the country's interests can go to the dogs so long as he can ensure re-election.
Another advantage in the Noonoon candidates which should have silenced the pessimists, who averred there were no good clean men to enter parliament, was that these men were both such exemplary citizens, morally, physically, and socially, that it seemed a sheer waste of goodness that only one could be elected.
The newspapers went politically mad, and those not any hysterical country rags, but the big metropolitan dailies, and there was one thing to be noted in regard to their statements that seriously needed rectifying. What is the purpose of the great dailies but to keep the people correctly informed as to the progress of public affairs and events of the community at large? Most of the people are too hard at work to forage information for themselves, or even to be thoroughly cognisant of that collected in the newspapers, and therefore parliamentary candidates, if not correct in their figures and statements, should be publicly arraigned for perjury. The Ministerialists gave one set of figures dealing with national financial statistics and the Oppositionists gave widely different. How was an elector to act when the platform of the former contained nothing but a few false statements and glowing promises, and the policy of the latter was only a few counter-acting war-whoops, and there was no honesty, common-sense, or matter-of-fact business in the campaign from end to end?
In this connection that remote rag, 'The Noonoon Advertiser,' shone as a reproach to its great contemporaries. Not by their grandeur and acclamationsshall they be judged, but by the quality of their fruits.
No bias or spleen seemed to sway the mind of this journal to one side or the other. It recognised itself as a newspaper, not as a political tout for this party or that, and so kept its head cool and its honour bright and shining.
Three days after Leslie Walker's second speech he sent up a woman advocate to addressthe ladiesand start the business of house-to-house canvassing. This plenipotentiary, a person of rather plethoric appearance, made herself extremely popular by assuring every secondvote-ladyshe met that she was sure she (the vote-lady) was intended by nature for a public speaker. This worked without a hitch until the votresses began to tell each other what the great speaker had said, when it naturally followed that Mrs Dash, though she thought that Mrs Speaker had been discerning to discover this latent oratorical talent in herself, immediately had the effervescence taken out of her self-complacence on finding that that stupid Mrs Blank had been assured of equal ability.
Then the Ministerialists discovered Mrs Speaker's place of abode in Sydney, and averred her children ran about so untended as to be undistinguishable from aboriginals, and that her housekeeping was sending her husband to perdition; and such is the texture of human nature unearthed at political crises, that some even went so far as to suggest that she was a weakness of Walker's, and sneered at theladies'candidate who had to be "wet-nursed" in his campaign by women speakers. Henderson, they averred, had not to do this, but fought his own battle.
"Yes," said Grandma Clay; "he mightn't be wet-nursed,but he is bottled,brandy-bottled, by the men." And this could not be denied.
The women rallied round Walker because he was a temperance candidate, whereas the tag-rag rolled upen massefor Henderson, who shouted free drinks and carried the publican's flag.
Each candidate, while praising his opponent, wound up withbut—and after that conjunction spoke most damningly of his policy.
Underneath the ostensible war-whoops many private and personal cross-fires were at work to intensify the contest. The people on the land quite naturally had a grudge against the railway folk, who only had to work eight hours per day for more than a farmer could make in sixteen; further, the perquisites of the railway employés were inconceivable. By an unwritten but nevertheless imperative etiquette, farmers had to render them tribute in the form of a portion of whatever fruit or vegetables were consigned at Noonoon, and the townspeople also had little to say in favour of them, averring they were a floating population who had no interest in the welfare of the town in which they resided, were bad customers—patronising the publicans more than the storekeepers, and by means of their connection with the railway were able to buy their meat and other necessaries where they listed—where it was cheapest, and frequently this was otherwhere than Noonoon, and yet they were in such numbers that they could rule the political market.
Then the men on the Ministerial side were nearly gangrene with disgust, because, as one put it, "nearly all Walker's men were women," and rallied round him thick and strong, and with a thoroughness and energy worthy of their recent emancipation.
Dawn's next day for Sydney fell on another night when Leslie Walker was speaking, but she and I did not attend this meeting, the family being represented on this occasion by Andrew, and we went to bed and discussed the Sydney trip while waiting for his return.
Ernest Breslaw, it appeared, had again had urgent business in Sydney that day.
"Dawn," I said, "this is somewhat suspicious. Are you sure you are not flirting with Ernest? I can't have his wings singed; I think too much of him, and shall have to warn him that you are booked for 'Dora' Eweword." This was said experimentally, for to do Dawn justice, though she had every temptation, she had nothing of the flirt in her composition.
"I can't go and say to him, 'Don't you fall in love with me,'" said Dawn contentiously.
"Are you sure he has never in any way attempted to pay you a lover's attentions?"
"Well, it's this way," she said confidentially—"you won't think me conceited if I tell you everything straight? There have been two or three men in love with me, and I was always able to see it straight away, long beforetheyknew; but with Ernest, sometimes he seems to be like they were, and then I'm afraid he's not,—at least notafraid—I don't care a hang, only I wonder does he think he can flirt with me, when he is so nice and just waltzes round the subject without coming up to it?"
Ah! ha! In thatafraid, which she sought to recover, the young lady betrayed that her affections were in danger of leaving her and betaking themselves to a new ruler, and this sudden inability to see through another's stateof mind towards her was a further sign that they were not secure.
We are very clear of vision as to the affection tendered us, so long as we remain unmoved, but once our feelings are stirred, their palpitating fears so smear our sight that it becomes unreliable.
"Oh, well, it does not matter to you," I said; "you are not likely to think of him, he's so unattractive, but I must take care that he does not grow fond of you. If I see any danger of it, I'll tell him something about you that will nip his affections in the bud. You won't mind me doing that—just some little thing that won't hurt you, but will save him unnecessary pain?" And to this she replied with seeming indifference—
"I wish you'd tell Dora Eweword something that would shoo him off that he'd never come back, and then I would have seen the last of him, which would be a treat."
After this we were silent, and I thought she had gone to sleep, for there was no sound until Andrew came tumbling up the stairs leading from his room.
"I say!" he called, "have you got any more of that toothache stuff from the dentist?"
"Come along," I answered, "I'll put some in for you."
"I think it's the oranges that's doin' it, I eat nearly eight dozen to-day."
"Enough to give you the pip; you ought to slack off a little," I said, extending him the courtesy of his own vernacular.
"I bet I'd vote for Henderson after all if I could," he continued, in referring to the meeting, "only I'll gammon I wouldn't just to nark Uncle Jake. Henderson is the men's man, that other bloke belongs to wimmen.You should have heard 'em to-night! The fellers behind was tip-top, and made such a noise at last that Walker could only talk to the wimmen in the front. We gave him slops because he gets wimmen up to speak for him, an' we can't givethemgyp. One man asked him was he in favour of ring-barkin' thistles, and another wanted to know was he in favour of puttin' a tax on caterpillars. He thinks no end of himself, because he's one of these Johnnies the wimmen always runs after," gravely explained Andrew, aged sixteen.
"We cock-a-doodled and pip-pipped till you couldn't hear your ears. Half couldn't get in, they was climbed up an' hangin' in the windows—little girls too along with the boys. I suppose now that they're as near got a vote as we have, they'll be poked everywhere just the same as if they had as good a right as us," said the boy with the despondence of one to whom all is lost.
"It's a terrible thing they can't be made stay at home out of all the fun like boys think they ought to be. No mistake the woman having a vote is a terrible nark to the men—almost too much for 'em to bear," said Dawn, whom I had thought asleep.
"I reckon I'm goin' to every meetin', they're all right fun," continued Andrew. "At the both committee room they're givin' out tickets with the men's names on, an' whoever likes can get them an' wear 'em in their hats. Me an' Jack Bray went to this Johnny Walker's rooms and gammoned we was for him, an' got a dozen tickets, an' when we got outside tore 'em to smithereens; that's what we'll do all the time."
After this Andrew disappeared down the stairs, spilling grease, and being admonished by Dawn as he went as the clumsiest creature she had ever seen.
Silence reigned between us for some time, and in listening to the trains I had forgotten the girl till her voice came across the room.
"I say, don't tell that Ernest anything not nice about me, will you? I'll take care not to flirt with him, and I wouldn't like him to think me not nice. I wouldn't care about any one else a scrap, but he's such a great friend of yours, and as I hope to be with you a lot, it would be awkward; and you know he hassaidnothing, it might only be my conceit to think he's going the way of other men. He took me to afternoon tea to-day at such a lovely place,—he said he wanted to be good to your friends, that's why he is nice to me. I don't suppose he ever thinks of me at all any other way," she said with the despondence of love.
So this had been chasing sleep from Beauty's eyes, as such trifles have a knack of doing!
"Very likely," I said complacently, and smiled to myself. The only thing to be discovered now was if the young athlete's emotions were at the same ebb, and then what was there against plain sailing to the happy port where honeymoons are spent?
Fortune favours the persevering, and next afternoon an opportunity occurred for procuring the desired knowledge.
Ernest and Ada Grosvenor came in together, and to the casual observer seemed much engrossed with each other, but I noticed that Dawn could not speak or move, but a pair of quick dark eyes caught every detail. So far so good, but it was necessary for Dawn to think the prize just a little farther out of reach than it was to make it attractive to her disposition, so I set about attaining this end by a very simple method.
Miss Grosvenor had called to invite us to a meeting she had convened, to listen to a public address by a lady who was going to head a deputation to Walker afterwards, and we had decided to go. Mrs Bray's husband also dropped in, and to my surprise proved not the hen-pecked nonentity one would expect after hearing his wife's aggressive diatribes, but a stalwart man of six feet, with a comely face bespeaking solid determination in every line. And when one comes to think of it, it is not the big blustering man or woman that rules, but the quiet, apparently inane specimens that look so meek that they are held up as models of propriety and gentleness. Miss Grosvenor immediately nailed him for her meeting, and politics being the only subject discussed, he aired his particular bug. This was his disgust at the top-heaviness of the Labour party's demands, and the railway people's easy times as compared with that of the farmer.
"I believe," said he, "in every man, if he can, working only eight hours a-day—though I have to work sixteen myself for precious little return, but these fellows are running the country to blazes. The rules of supply and demand must sway the labour or any other market all the world over, and they'll have to see that and haul in their sails."
"Who are you going to vote for?" inquired Andrew.
"I'm goin' for Henderson, and the missus for Walker."
"It's a wonder you don't compel Mrs Bray to vote for your man."
"No fear; I'm pleased she's taken the opposite chap, just to illustrate my opinion on what liberty of opinion should be; but I won't deny," he concluded, with a humorous smile, "that I mightn't be so pleased with her going against me if I was set on either of them, butas it is neither are worth a vote, so that I'm pretty well sitting on a rail myself."
"I thought your first announcement almost too liberal to be true," laughed Miss Grosvenor.
"No, I will say that Mr Bray is a man does treat his women proper, and give 'em liberty," said grandma.
"An' a nice way they use it," sniffed Carrysotto voce.
As we set out to the meeting Miss Grosvenor mentioned to me that she was endeavouring to find suitable speakers to address her association, and asked did I know of any one. Here was an opening for a thrust in the game of parry I was setting on foot between Dawn and Ernest Breslaw.
"Ask my friend Mr Ernest to deliver an address: 'Women in Politics,'" I said, "that is his particular subject. He is a most fluent speaker, and loves speaking in public, nothing will delight him more."
"I'll ask him at once," said she.
This was as foundationless a fairy-tale as was ever spun, for Ernest could not say two words in public upon any occasion. That he was usually tendered a dinner and was called upon to make a speech, he considered the drawback of wresting any athletic honours. Whether women were in politics or the wash-house was a sociological abstrusity beyond his line of thought, and not though it cost him all his fortune to refuse could he have decently addressed any association even on beloved sporting matters. Hence his consternation when Miss Grosvenor approached him. At first he was nonplussed, and next thing, taking it as a joke on my part, was highly amused. Miss Grosvenor, on her side, thought he was joking, with the result that there was the liveliest and most laughable conversation between them.
Dawn did not know the reason of it. She could only see that Ernest and Miss Grosvenor were engrossed, and at first curious, a little later she was annoyed with the former.
"I think," she whispered to me, "it's Mr Ernest you'll have to see doesn't flirt with every girl he comes across."
"Perhaps he isn't flirting," I coolly replied.
"Notnow, perhaps," she said pointedly; "perhaps he's in earnest with one and practises with others."
Arrived at the hall, we found the women swarming around Walker like bees.
"Good Lord! Look what Les. has let himself in for," laughed Ernest; "I wouldn't stand in his shoes for a tenner."
"Go on! Surely you too are partial to ladies?"
"Yes; but—"
"But there must be reason in everythink," I quoted. He laughed.
"Yes; and reason in this sort of thing to suit my taste would be a small medium. But what a fine old sport the old dame Clay would have made—no danger of her not standing up to a mauling or baulking at any of her fences, eh?"
Dawn would not look at Ernest after the meeting and deputation came to an end, but walked home with "Dora" Eweword, laughing and talking in ostentatious enjoyment; while Ernest and the Grosvenor girl were none the less entertained.
"'Pon my soul, I couldn't make a speech to save my life," he reiterated. "My friend only laid you on for a lark, did you not?" he said, turning to me, whom he gallantly insisted upon supporting on his arm—thatsplendid arm in which the muscles could expand till they were like iron bands.
"Don't you believe him, Miss Grosvenor," I replied; "he's a born orator, but is unaccountably lazy and vain, and only wants to be pressed; insist upon his speaking, he's longing to do so." And then his merry protesting laugh, and the girl's equally happy, rang out on the crisp starlight air, as they went over and over the same ground.
As we neared Clay's I suggested that he should see Miss Grosvenor home, while I attached myself to Dawn and "Dora"; and I invited him to come and sing some songs with us afterwards, for the night was yet young.
To this he agreed, and supposed to be with the other young couple, I slipped behind, and could hear their conversation as they progressed.
"You're not struck on that red-headed mug, are you?" said Eweword, for general though political talk had become, there was still another branch of politics more vitally interesting to some of the electors.
"I'm not the style to be struck on a fellow that doesn't care for me."
"But he does!"
"Looks like it, doesn't it?" she said sarcastically.
"Yes, it does, or what would he be hanging around here so long for?"
"Perhaps to see Ada Grosvenor; I suppose she'd have him, red hair and all."
"Pooh! he never goes there; but he comes to your place though, too deuced often for my pleasure."
"He comes to see the boarder—he's a great friend of hers."
"Humph! that's all in my eye. He'd be a long timecoming to see her if you weren't there, if she was twice as great a friend. What sort of an old party is she? Must have some means."
"Oh, lovely!"
"I suppose the red-headed mug thinks so too, as she is touting for him."
"For him and Ada Grosvenor."
"Have it that way if you like it, but you know what I mean all right."
"I don't."
"Oh, don't you! I say, Dawn, just stop out here a moment will you? I want to tell you something else, I mean."
"Oh, tell it to me some other time," said she, "it's too beastly cold to stay out another minute. Come and tell it to me while we are having supper round the fire."
"I'd have a pretty show of telling it there. I don't want it put in the 'Noonoon Advertiser,' but that's what I'll have to do if you won't give me a chance. If you keep pretending you don't get my letters, I'll write all that I put in them to your grandma, and tell her to tell you," he said jokingly; but the girl took him up shortly.
"If you dare do that," said she, aroused from her indifference, "I'd never speak to you again the longest day I live, so you needn't think you'll get over me that way. You'd better tell Uncle Jake and Andrew too while you're about it, and Dora Cowper might be vexed if you don't tell her."
"Well, I bet you'd listen to what the red-headed mug said quick enough," replied "Dora" Eweword in an injured tone.
"The red-headed mug, as you call him—and his hair isn't much redder than yours, and is twice as nice," she retaliated, "he would be a gentleman anyhow, and not a bear with a scalded head."
By this time they had reached the gate, and Dawn was carelessly inviting him to enter, but he declined in rather a crestfallen tone.
"Better invite red-head, not me, if you won't listen to what I say, and pretend you never received my letters."
"Thank you for the good advice. I hope he'll accept my invitation, because he is always pleasant and agreeable," she retorted.
It was just as well that "Dora" Eweword had been too chopfallen to come in, for we found the place in what grandma termed "a uproar."
As we had gone out Mrs Bray had arrived to relate her speculations in regard to Mrs Rooney-Molyneux. Mrs Bray did not live a great distance from the latter's cottage, and as she had not seen her about during the day, wondered had she come to her travail.
Andrew decided the matter when he came home by relating what he had heard when passing the cottage; and he supplemented the statement by the deplorable information that "the old bloke is up at Jimmeny's tryin' if he can get a free drink."
"I must go to her," said grandma, rising in haste.
"I wouldn't if I was you," said Mrs Bray. "You don't never get no thanks for nothing like that, and might get yourself into a mess; I believe in leaving people to manage their own affairs."
Carry sniffed in the background.
"I'll risk all that," said grandma. "For shame's sake an' the sake of me daughters, an' every other woman, I couldn't leave one of me sex in that predicament."
"Oh, well, some people is wonderful strong in the nerve that way," said Mrs Bray, and Carry interjected in an aside—
"And others are mighty strong in the nerve of selfishness."
"Of course nothing would give me greater pleasure than to go," continued Mrs Bray, "but I would be of no use. I'm so pitiful, sensitive, and nervous that way."
"It's a grand thing, then, that some are hard and not so sensitive, or people could die and no one would help 'em," said Carry, no longer able to contain her measure of Mrs Bray.
Uncle Jake had the sulky in readiness, and grandma with a collection of requisites appeared with a great old shawl about her, Irish fashion.
"Come you, Dawn, I might want your help, I'm not as strong as I was once; and Andrew, you come too, you'll do to send for the doctor; an' who'll take care of the pony?"
I volunteered, and though a rotten stick to depend on, was accepted, and we three women rode in the sulky while Andrew ran behind. Having arrived at the little cottage half-way between Clay's and town, we found it was too sadly true that the poor little woman was alone in her trouble, and worse, she had not had the means to prepare for it, while most ghastly of all, there was no trace of her having had any nourishment that day.
These are the sad cases of poverty, when the helpless victim is not of the calibre which can beg, and suffers an empty larder in silence and behind an appearance of respectability.
The capable old grandmother had prepared herself for this possibility, and from under her capacious shawlproduced a bottle of broth which she set about warming. She may not have been at first-hand acquainted with the few silk-wrapped lives run according to the methods scheduled in first-class etiquette books, but she had a very resourceful and far-seeing grip of that style of existence into which, regardless of inclination or capability, the great majority are forced by domineering circumstance; and being competent to grapple with its emergencies, she took hold of this case without humbug and with the fortitude and skill of a Japanese general.
As though the main trouble were not enough, the poor little wife was further smitten with the two-edged mental anguish which is the experience of sensitive women whose husbands neglect them at this crisis of the maternal gethsemane. Doctor Smalley, who soon appeared after receiving Andrew's message, was not sufficiently finely strung to fully estimate the evil effect of Rooney-Molyneux's behaviour at this juncture; but not so the fine old woman of the ranks, with her quick perceptions and high and sensitive sentiment regarding the bed-rock relations of life. Calling the doctor out during an interval she discussed the matter within my hearing.
"Poor little thing, she's just heart-broke with the way her husband's carryin' on. I wish I could deliver him up to Mrs Bray to scald; he's one of 'em deserves it, pure an' simple! If Jim Clay had forsook me an' demeaned me like this I would have died, but he was always tenderer than a mother. Somethink will have to be done. I'll send Andrew to Jimmeny's with the sulky to get him; he can get Danby to help him if he can't manage him hisself, and take the old varmint down to my place and keep him there secure. Tell Jake there it's got to be done, an' I'll make up a yarn to pacify the poorthing;" and returning to her patient, to the old dame's credit, truthful though she was, I heard her say—
"Your husband's been fidgeting me, an' I never can stand any one but the doctor about at these times, so I bundled him off down to stay with Jake, and gave him strict instructions not to poke his nose back here till he's sent for."
What diplomat could have made it more kindly tactful than that?
"Quite right too," said the doctor, upholding her. "When I see it's going to be a good case like this, I always banish the man too."
"But I could have seen him, and the poor fellow I'm sure is overwhelmed with anxiety," said the hapless little martyr in the brave make-believe that is a compulsory science with most women.
"Well,weain't so anxious about him as we are about you," said the valiant old woman. "You're the chief person now. He ain't no consideration at all, an' can go an' bag his head for all we care, while we get you out of this fix."
I sat upon the verandah until Andrew passed, taking home with him the noble Rooney-Molyneux, lordly scion of an ancient and doubtless effete house, and then the doctor banished Dawn from the house, giving her into my charge, with instructions to take her home and calm her down.
Had she been the heroine of a romance she would have been a born nurse. Without any training or experience she could have surpassed Florence Nightingale, but, alas! she was merely an everyday girl in real life, and this being her first actual experience of the tragedy of birth, and the terror of it being intensified and aggravated by the pitiable surrounding circumstances, she was besideherself. She clung to me, choked with a flood of tears, and palpitating in an unbearable tumult of emotion.
This case, so pathetically ordinary that most of us are debased by acquaintance with similar, to this girl was fresh, and striking her in all its inexcusable barbarity without any extenuating gloze, made her furious with pained and righteous indignation.
I led her about by devious ways that her heart might cool ere we reached Clay's.
The cloudless, breezeless night, though not yet severely cold, was crisp with the purity of frost and sweet with the exquisite scent of flowering loquats. The only sounds breaking its stillness were the trains passing across the long viaduct approaching the bridge, and the rumble of the vehicles as they ground their homeward way along the stony road, their lights flashing as they passed, and snatches of the occupants' conversation reaching us where we walked on a path beside the main thoroughfare. The heavens were a spangled glory, and the dark sleeping lands gave forth a fresh, pleasant odour. Man provided the only discordant note; but for the jarring of his misdoings there would have been perfect peace.
Oh, the hot young heart that raged by my side! I too had forded the cruel torrent of facts that was torturing her mind; I knew; I understood. By-and-by she would arrive at my phase and have somewhat of my calmness, but to tell her so would merely have been the preaching so deservedly and naturally abhorred by the young, and except for holding her hand in a tight clasp, I was apparently unresponsive.
As she grew quieter I steered for home, and eventually we arrived at the door of the kitchen and found there Jake, Andrew, and the Rooney-Molyneux—a small manwith a large beard and the type of aristocratic face furnished with a long protruding nose and a narrow retreating forehead. Carry, up aloft like the angels, could be heard practising on my piano, and the soiled utensils scattered on the table illustrated that the gentlemen had had refreshments.
It being Dawn's week in the kitchen, she set about collecting the cups in the wash-up dish, and presently some maudlin expression of sentiment on the part of the Rooney-Molyneux reopened the vials of her indignation.
"I'm naturally anxious that it may be a son," he drivelled, "as there are so few male representatives of the old name now."
"And the sooner there's none the better. There is no excuse for the likes of you being alive. I'd like to assist in the extermination of your family by putting you in the boiling copper on washing day. That would give you a taste of your deserts," raged the girl.
She was speaking without restraint in the light of the high demands of crude, impetuous, merciless youth. I had once felt as she did, but now I could see the cruel train of conditions behind certain characters forcing them into different positions, and in place of Dawn's wholesome, justifiable, hot-headed rage against the likes of Rooney-hyphen, I felt for him a contempt so immeasurable that it almost toppled over and became pity.
Seeing the little sense of responsibility that is inculcated regarding the laws of being, instead of being shocked at the familiarity of the Rooney-Molyneux type of husband and father, I gave myself up to agreeable surprise owing to the large number of noble and worthy parents I had discovered.
"The world does soil our minds and we soil it—Time brings the tolerance that hides the truth,"
"The world does soil our minds and we soil it—Time brings the tolerance that hides the truth,"
but Dawn had not yet sunk to the apathy engendered by experience and familiarity. She adjudged the case on its merits, as it would be handled by an administrator of the law—the common law we all must keep. She did not imagine a network of exculpatory conditions or go squinting round corners to draw it into line as an act for which circumstances rather than the culprit were responsible; she gazed straight and honestly and saw a crime.
"Dawn, you shameless hussy, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," said her uncle.
"Oh yes, I'm well aware that any girl who says the straight truth about the things that concern them most in life,oughtto be ashamed of herself. They should hold their tongues except to flatter the men who trample them in the dust,—that's the proper andwomanlyattitude for a girl, I know," she said desperately.
"I'm sure this is uncalled for," simpered the hero of the act, rising and showing signs of looking for his hat.
"You'd better run and tell your wife you've been insulted, poor little dear!" said Dawn.
"Look!" said Andrew to me uneasily, "tell Dawn to dry up, will you; she'll take no notice of me, an' if that feller goes home actin' the goat I'll get the blame, an' he ain't drunk enough to be shut up. Blow him, I say!"
"I'm sure," said Mr Rooney-Molyneux, who apparently had various things mixed with politics, "that some men, though the women have taken the votes and their manhood, still have some rights; bless me, itmustbe acknowledged they have some rights in creation!"
Here he made an ineffectual grab for his hat and asprawling plunge in the direction of the door, saying, "I've never been so insulted!"
"Blow you! Sit down, Mr Mooney-Rollyno, or whatever you are," said Andrew, "you've got to stay here; and Dawn, hold your mag! You'd give any one the pip with your infernal gab."
"I'm sure it must be conceded that men have some rights?" Mr Rooney-Molyneux appealed to me. I was the most responsible person present, Uncle Jake did not count, the other three were children, and so it behoved me to take a grip of the situation.
"Rights in creation! I should rather think so! In creation men have the rights, or perhaps duties, of gods—to protect, to nurture, to guard and to love, and when as a majority men rise to them we shall be a great people, but for the present the only rights many of them wrest and assert by mere superior brute force are those of bullies and selfish cowards. Sit down immediately!"
He sat without delay.
"All that Dawn says of you is deserved. The least you can do now to repair matters is to swallow your pill noiselessly and give no further trouble until you are called upon to obstruct the way again in semblance of discharging responsibilities of which a cat would be twice as capable."
"Yes," said Dawn, "if you dare to talk of going home to worry your wife I'll throw this dish of water right on you, and when I come to think of things, I feel like throwing a hot one on every man."
As she said this she swirled her dishcloth to clean the bowl, and turning to toss the water into the drain outside the door, confronted Ernest Breslaw.
Quite two hours had elapsed since he had parted from us to conduct Miss Grosvenor to her home, where he had been long delayed in argument concerning whether he could or could not address a public meeting. I discovered later that an opportunity to gracefully take his leave from Grosvenor's had not occurred earlier, and that he had quite relinquished hope of calling at Clay's that night, but to his surprise, seeing the place lighted as he was passing, he came towards the kitchen door.
Dawn was doubtless piqued that he should have spent so much time with Miss Grosvenor, which, considering his previous attentions to her, and the rules of the game as observed in this stratum of society, gave him the semblance of flirting—perfidious action, worthy of the miscreant man in the beginning of a career which at a maturer stage should cover cruelty and cowardice equalling that of Rooney-Molyneux! Dawn lacked restraint in her emotional outbursts; the poor girl's state of nervousness bordered on hysteria; the water was nearly out of her hand in any case, and with a smack of that irritated divergence from lawful and decorous conduct of which the sanest of us are at times the victim, she pitched the dish of greasy, warm water fairly on the immaculate young athlete, accompanying the action with the ejaculation—
"That's what you deserve, too!"
"I demand—" he exclaimed, but further utterance was drowned by a hearty guffaw from Andrew which fully confirmed the outrageous insult.
"Just what I should expect of you," sneered Uncle Jake, while Mr Rooney-Molyneux, his attention thus diverted from his own affairs, gazed in watery-eyed surprise at a second victim of the retributive Dawn.
"Well, that's about what you'd expect from athing earning her living, but never of a young lady in agoodhome of her own and living withthe mother of a family," said Carry, appearing in time to witness the accident.
I said nothing to the white-faced girl, for there was more urgent work to be done in repairing the damage. Hurrying through the house, and reefing my skirts on the naked rose-bushes under Miss Flipp's window, where the dead girl's skirts had caught as she went out to die, I gained a point intercepting Ernest as he strode along the path leading to the bridge.
"Ernest!"
"You must excuse me to-night," he said, showing that my intervention was most unwelcome.
"Ernest, if you have any friendship for me, stop. I must speak to you, and I'm not feeling able for much more to-night."
Thus did I make a lever of my invalidism, and in the gentleness of his strength he submitted to be detained.
Some men would have covered their annoyance with humorous satire, but Ernest was not furnished with this weapon. He only had physical strength, and that could not avail him in such an instance. I placed my hand on his arm, ostensibly for support, but in reality to be sure of his detention, and found that he was saturated. Not a pleasant experience on a frosty night, but there was no danger of it proving deleterious to one in his present state of excitement. Being one of those natures whose emotions, though not subtle, make up for this deficiency in wholesome thoroughness, he was furious with the rage of heated youth not given to spending itself on every adventitious excuse for annoyance, and debarred by conditions from any sort of retaliation. In addition to being bitterly wounded, his sporting instinct was bruised, and he chafed under the unfairness of the blow.
The beauty of the cloudless, breezeless night had been supplemented by a lop-sided moon, risen sufficiently to show the exquisite mists hanging like great swathes of white gossamer in the hollows, and to cast the shadows of the buildings and trees in the silent river, at this time of the year looking so cold and treacherous in its rippleless flow. The wet grass was stiffening with frost, and the only sounds disturbing the chillier purity of advancing night were the erratic bell at the bridge and the far-off rumble of a train on the mountain-side. Man still afforded the discordant note, and the only heat in the surroundings was that in the burning young heart that raged by my side.
Oh, youth! youth! You must each look back and see for yourselves, in the aft-light cast by later experience, the mountains and fiery ordeals you made for yourselves out of mole-hills in the matter of heart-break. We, whose hair is white, cannot help you, though we have gone before and know so well the cruel stretches on the road you travel.
Ernest waited for me to take the initiative, and as everything that rose to my lips seemed banal, we stood awkwardly silent till he was forced into saying—
"I'm afraid you are overdoing yourself. Can I not help you to your room? You will be ill."
"The only thing that would overdo me is that you should be upset about this. It must not make any difference."
"Difference between you and me?—nothing short of an earthquake could do that," he replied.
"I mean with Dawn. It must not make any difference with her. It was only a freak."
"Certainly; I would be a long time retaliating upon alady, no matter what she did to me; but when—when—" (he could not bring himself to name it, it struck him as so disgraceful)—"she intimates to me, as plainly as was done to-night, that she disapproves of my presence in her house, well, a fellow would want pole-axing if he hadn't pride to take a hint like that."
"She did not mean anything. She will be more hurt than you are."
"Mean anything! Had it been a joke I could have managed to endure it, or an accident about which she would have worried, I would have been amused, but it was deliberate; and if it had beencleanwater—but ugh! it was greasy slop-water, to make it as bad as it could be; and if a man had done it—"
The muscles of his arm expanded under my interested touch as he made a fist of the strong brown hand.
"But being a girl I can only put up with it," he said with the helplessness of the athlete in dealing with such a delinquent.
"Did you hear what she said too? Great Scott! it is not as though I had done her any harm! I merely came here to see a friend, and made myself agreeable because you said she was good to you; and, dear me!" His voice broke with the fervour of his perturbation. He had been wounded to the core of his manlyamour propre; and to state that he was not more than twenty-five, gives a better idea of his state of mind than could any amount of laborious diagnosis.
"What can I have done?" he further ejaculated. "Can some one have told her falsely that I'm a cadin any way? She might have waited until she proved it.Iwould not have believed bad any one spoken badly ofher." (Here an inadvertent confession of the growing affection he felt for her.) "Even if I were deserving of such ignominy, it was none of her business. I only came to see you,—she had nothing to do with me."
Then I took hold of this splendidly muscular young creature wounded to the quick. I determinedly usurped a mother's privilege in regard to the situation, and glancing back over my barren life I would that I had been mother of just such a son. What a kingdom 'twould have been; and, in the order of things, being forced to surrender him to another's keeping, I could not have chosen a better or more suitable than Dawn. Entering his principality to reign as queen, while his manhood was yet an unsacked stronghold, she was of the character and determination to steer him in the way of uprightness to the end.
Wistfulness upsprung as I reviewed my empty life, but rude reality suddenly uprose and obliterated ideality. It put on the scroll a picture of motherhood, and mother-love wantonly squandered, trodden in the mire, and, instead of being recognised as a kingdom, treated only as a weakness, and traded upon to enslave women. I turned with a sigh, and we walked round a corner of the garden where, in one recent instance, appallingly common, a poor frail woman had crept out in the dead of night to pay alone the penalty of a crime incurred by two—one foolish and weak, the other murderously selfishly a coward.
I addressed Ernest Breslaw regarding the painful effect this tragedy had produced on the mind of Dawn, andhow it had been further overstrung by the later one, and concluded—
"Had I expressed my inward feelings in outward actions at Dawn's age, and being armed with a dish of water, to have thrown it on the nearest individual would have been a very mild ebullition; but I set my teeth against outward expression and let it fester in my heart, while the beauty of Dawn's disposition is that her feelings all come out. She has disgraced herself by making outward demonstration of what many inwardly feel; but understanding what I have put before you, you must not hold the girl responsible for her action."
With masculine simplicity he was unable to comprehend the complexity of feminine emotions engendered by the exigencies of the more artificial and suppressed conditions of life as forced upon women.
"I understand about old Rooney; I feel as disgusted with him as any one does, butIam not going to emulate him. I'd jolly well cut my throat first; and if I could lay my hand on the snake at the root of the drowning case, I'd make one to roast him alive! What made Miss Dawn confound me with that sort?"
"She doesn't for an instant do so. On the contrary, she would be the first to repudiate such a suggestion."
"Good Lord! then why did she throw that stuff on me? It was only fit for a criminal."
"Can you not grasp that she was irritated beyond endurance with the unwholesomeness of the whole system of life in relation to women, and that for the moment you appeared as one of the army of oppressors?"
"But that isn't fair!Iknow enough of women—some women—to make one shudder with repulsion; but therewould be no sense or justice in venting my disgust on you or the other good ones," he contended.
"Quite so; but our moral laws are such that some issues are more repulsive to a woman than a man, and you must admit there are heavy arguments could be brought in extenuation of Dawn's attitude of mind when the water slipped out of her hand."
"There's no doubt women do have to swallow a lot," he said.
"You don't feel so angry on account of the impetuous Dawn's act now, do you?"
"It doesn't look so bad in the teeth of your argument, and if she would only say something to explain, I won't mind; but otherwise I'll have sense to make myself scarce in this neighbourhood."
"I'm afraid her vanity will be too wounded for her to give in."
"I'll make it as easy for her as I can; but, good Lord! I can't go to her and apologise because she threw dirty water on me."
"Well, I'll bid you good-night. I must run in to Dawn. I expect she is sobbing her heart out by this, and biting her pretty curled lips to relieve her feelings,—her lips that were meant for kisses, not cruel usage."
"Good heavens! Do you really think she'll feel like that?" he asked in astonishment.
"I'm certain."
"But I can't see why—she might have had reason had I been the aggressor."
"If you had hurt her she would not feel half so bad. You would be a hopeless booby if you could not understand that."
"Really, now, if I thought she would take it that way, it would make all the difference in the world. But had she desired to despatch me, half that energy of insult would do," he said, drawing up, while hardness crept into his voice, but it softened again as he concluded—
"I wouldn't like her to be upset about it, though, if she didn't quite mean it."
"Well, you can be sure that in regard to you she was very far from meaning it, and that she will be dreadfully upset about it; so think of what I've said, and come and see me in the morning."
Now that he had grown calm, he was shivering with the cold, so I bade him run home.
On returning to the house I found Andrew the solitary watcher of his charge, who, covered by an old cloak, was snoring on the kitchen sofa.
"Dear me, where are they all?"
"In bed; and look at his nibbs there. I reckon I took a wrinkle from Dawn as how to manage him. Soon as every one's back was turned he began actin' the goat again an' makin' for home, an' I thought here goes, I don't care a hang if all the others roused on me like blazes, so long as grandma don't,—she's the only one makes me sit up,—so I flung water on him, not warm water but real cold. It took seven years' growth out of him, an' then I gave him a drink of hot coffee, an' undressed him, an' he was jolly glad to lay down there."
"Why, you'll give the man a cold!"
"No jolly fear. I took his clothes off. I've got 'em dryin' here. I couldn't find any of my gear, an' wasn't game to ask Uncle Jake, so I clapped him into a night-dress of grandma's. Look! he's got his hand out. Ireckon the frill looks all so gay, don't you? I bet grandma will rouse, but I'll have a little peace with him now an' chance the ducks," said the resourceful warder, whose charge really looked so absurd that I was provoked to laughter.
"How did you manage him? Was he tractable?"
"He soon dropped that there was no good in bein' nothing else. He spluttered something about me disgracin' him, because something on his crest said he was brave or something; but I told him I didn't care a hang if he had a crest the size of a cockatoo or was as bald as Uncle Jake, that I was full of him actin' the goat, an' that finished him."
"Enough too," I laughed, as I bade the Australian lad, with the very Australian estimate of the unimportance of some things sacred to English minds, the Australian parting salute—
"So long!"