Dawn's cheeks were scarlet from rowing on the river with "Dora" Eweword, and she spoke of her jaunt as soon as we got outside, apparently pregnant with the knowledge innate in the dullest of her sex, that the most efficacious way of giving impetus to the love of one lover is to have another.
This, however, is another art which, like good cooking, must be "done to the turn," and in this instance there was danger of it being done too soon, as Ernest's amour had not taken firm root yet; and a man, unless he be either of gigantic pluck or no honour at all, will not hurry to interfere with the secured property of another man.
They chatted in a desultory fashion while I manœuvred to relieve them of my presence. The night was lit by a million stars, paling towards the east, where behind the hills a waning moon was putting in an appearance. The electric lights of the town scintillated like artificial stars, and away down the long valley could be seen here and there the twinkle of a farmhouse light, showing where some held mild wassail or a convivial evening; for there were not many of the agriculturalists, tired from their heavy toil, who were otherwise out of bed at this ungodly hour of the night.
The crisp winter air agreed with me, and I felt unusually well.
"Let me walk behind, this night is too glorious to waste in talking politics, so you young people get out of my hearing and thresh out your candidate's merit and demerit and leave me to think," I said, for politics were in the air and they were touching upon them. They obeyed me, and soon were lost to view in the dark of the osage and quince hedges grown as breakwinds on the west of Grosvenor's orangery. Soon I could not hear their footfalls, for I stood still to watch the trains pass by. 'Twas the hour of the last division of the Western passenger mail, bearing its daily cargo of news and people to the great plains beyond the hills that loomed faintly in the light of the half moon. Haughtily its huge first-class engine roared along, and its carriage windows, like so many warm red mouths, permitted a glimpse of the folk inside comfortably ensconced for the night. It slowed across the long viaduct approaching the bridge, and crossed the bridge itself with a roar like thunder, then it swerved round a curve to Kangaroo till the window-lights gave place to its two red eyes at the rear. As it climbed the first spur of the great range, and all that could be seen was a belch of flame from the engine-door as it coaled, something of the old longing awoke within me for things that must always be far away. The throbbing engines spoke to my heart, and forgetting its brokenness, it stirred again to their measure—the rushing, eager measure of ambition, strife, struggle! I was young again, with youth's hot desire to love and be loved, and as its old bitter-sweet clamourings rushed over me I rebelled that my hair was grey and my propeller disabled. The young folks ahead had put me out of their life asyoung folks do, and, measuring the hearts of their seniors by the white in their hair and the lines around their eyes, would have been incredulous that I still had capacity for their own phase. Only the royalty of youth is tendered love in full measure; those who fail to attain or grasp it then find this door, from which comes enticing perfume and sound of luring music, shut against them for all time, and no matter how appealingly they may lean against its portals, it will rarely open again, for they have been laid by to be sold as remnants like the draper's goods which have failed to attract a buyer during the brief season they were displayed. I stood under the whispering osage and listened to the now distant train puffing its way over the wild mountains, also to be crossed by the great road first cut by those whose now long dead limbs had carried chains—members of a bygone brigade as I was one of a passing company. But probably they each had had their chance of love, and the old bitterness upsprung that mine had not fallen athwart my pathway. Fierce struggle had always shut me away from similar opportunity to that enjoyed by the young people ahead.
"Put back your cruel wheel, O Time!" I cried in my heart, "and give me but one hour's youth again—sweet, ecstatic youth with the bounding pulse, led by the purple mirage of Hope, whose sirens whisper that the world's sweets are sweet and its crowns worth winning. Let me for a space be free from this dastard age creeping through the veins, dulling the perspective of life and leadening the brain, whose carping companions draw attention to the bitters in the cups of Youth's Delights, and mutter that the golden crowns we struggle for shall tarnish as soon as they are placed on our tired brows!" Suddenly my bitter reverie was broken by the knight and the lady calling instartled tones. I replied, and presently they were upon me, Dawn very much out of breath.
"Oh, goodness, we thought you were ill again. You have given us such a shock. You should not have been left behind. I was a terrible brute that I didn't harness the pony and drive over for you;" and Ernest came in a slow second with—
"You should have taken my arm," and he wrapped my cloak about me with the high quality of gentleness peculiar to the best type of strong man.
Despite my assurance that I never had felt better, they insisted upon supporting me on either side; so slipping a hand through each of the young elbows conveniently bent, I playfully put the large hand on the right of me over the dimpling one on the left.
"There!" I said, taking advantage of the liberties extended a probable invalid, "I've made a breastwork of the hands of the two dearest young friends I have, so now I cannot fall;" and seeing I put it at that, at that they were content to let it remain, and the big hand very carefully retained the little one, so passive and warm, in its shy grasp. At the gate I dismissed Ernest, and Dawn condescended to remark that he wasn'tquitesuch a fool as usual, which interpreted meant that he had not been so guardedly stand-off to her as he sometimes was.
The trains once more entertained my waking hours that night. Under Andrew's tutorage I had learned to distinguish the rumble of a "goods" from the rush of a "passenger," a two-engine haul from a single, and even the heavy voice of the big old "shunter" that lived about the Noonoon station had grown familiar; but the haughtiest of all was a travelling engine attended only by its tender, and speeding by with lightsome action, like agovernor thankfully free from officialdom and hampered only by a valet.
Musing on what a little time had elapsed since the work of the passenger trains had been done by the coaches with their grey and bay teams of five, swinging through the town at a gallop, and with their occupants armed to the teeth against bushrangers, I dozed and dreamt. I dreamt that I was in one of the sleeping-cars which had superseded Cobb & Co.'s accommodation for travellers, and that from it I could see in a bird's-eye view not only the magnificent belt of mountains, the bluest in the world, but whirling down their westward slopes with a velocity outstripping the scented winds from sandal ridges and myall plains, I slid across that great western stretch of country where a portion of the railway line runs for a hundred and thirty-six miles without rise or fall or curve in the longest straight ribbon of steel that is known. But ere I reached its end I wakened with a start through something falling in Miss Flipp's room.
Surely I had not slept for more than half an hour, because the light which had shone in the adjoining room as we returned from Grosvenor's was still burning. Presently Miss Flipp put it out, and closing her door after her, stealthily made her way from the house. She trod cautiously and noiselessly, but her gown caught on the lower sprouts of the ragged old rose-bushes beside the walks, and though she took a long time to open the little gate opening towards the wharves and the narrow pathway running along the river-bank to the bridge, it creaked a little on its rusty hinges, so that I heard it and fell to awaiting the girl's return.
I waited and waited, and beguiled the time by counting the trains that passed with the quarter hours. Therewere so many that I soon lost count. This line carried goods to the great wheat and wool-growing west and brought its produce to the city. Many of the noisy trains were laden with "fifteen hundred" and "two thousand" lots of "fats," and the yearly statistics dealing with the sales at Homebush chronicled their total numbers as millions. From beyond Forbes, Bourke, and Brewarrina they came in trucks to cross the bridge spanning the noble stream at the mountain's base, but they never went back again to the great plains where they had basked in plenty or staggered through droughts as the fickle seasons rose and fell. The voracious, insatiable maw of the city was a grave for them all, and the commercial greed which falls so heavily on the poor dumb beasts in which it traffics, caged them so tightly for their last journey that by the time they reached Noonoon they were bruised and cramped and not a few trodden under foot. The empty trucks going west again made the longest trains, as they could be laden with nothing but a little wire-netting for settlers who were fighting the rabbits, and were easily distinguishable from other "goods," as when they clumsily and jerkily halted the clanking of their couplings and the bumping of their buffers could be heard for a mile or more down the valley. The splendid atmosphere intensified all sounds and carried them an unusual distance, and many a time at first I was wont to be aroused from sleep in the night with a notion that the thundering trains were going to run right over the house.
On the night in question I had not heard Miss Flipp return from her midnight tryst, though all the luggage trains had passed and it neared the time of the first division of the up or citywards mail from the west, which was the earliest train to arrive in town from the countrydaily. It passed Noonoon in the vicinity of 4a.m.—a radiant hour in the summer dawn, but then in winter, the time when bed is most alluring, when the passengers' breath congeals on the window-panes, they complain that the foot-warmers have got cold, and give yet one more twist to their comforters and another tug at their 'possum or wallaby rugs. This train passed with its shaking thunder, drew into Noonoon for refreshments, then on and on with noisy energy, but still Miss Flipp did not return.
I concluded that she must have decided to leave us in this fashion, or that I had missed her entry during the rumble of a passing train, or mayhap I had snoozed for a moment, or perhaps an hour, as the unsympathetic heavy sleepers aver the insomnists must do; and ceasing to be on the alert any longer, I really slept.
I hastened to appear at the half-past seven breakfast, as no excuse for non-appearance was taken, and the only concession made to Miss Flipp, who had not been present at it for some time, was that she could make herself a cup of cocoa when she chose to rise. For this meal grandma ladled out the porridge and flavoured it with milk and sugar in the usual way.
"I say, Dawn, which of them blokes, Ernest or Dora, is the best boat-puller?" inquired Andrew as he received his portion. "You were mighty stingy with the sugar, grandma!"
"Dora isn't in it," responded Carry. "Mr Ernest could get ahead of him every time."
"So he ought!" said Dawn. "His ears are the size of a pair of sails, and would pull him along."
Thus was published another defect in my knight, till I feared that it must be only my partial gaze that discerned a knight at all.
"Dear me," interposed grandma, "a man can't look or speak or walk but he's this, that, and the other. Things weren't so in my day. Of course there were some things that were took exception to, but there must be reason ineverythink, an' I don't see what difference a man's ears being a little big makes. My father's ears—your great-grandfather's—was none too small, an' he was always a good kind man."
"I don't care if my own ears were big, it wouldn't make me like them," said the irrepressible Dawn; and grandma had just finished what she termed "dosing" the last plate of porridge, when we were interrupted by the appearance of policeman Danby at the French Lights. There was nothing strange in this appearance of the embodiment of the law, even at that early hour of the morning; for the huge young man with the rollicking face and curly hair, though a good officer in attending to his work, was a better in admiring a girl, which, after all, taking matters at the base, is the chief and most vital business of life, as, were it neglected, there would be no police or populace.
Well, as I said, policeman Danby knew a pretty girl when he saw one, and there being two at Clay's, that household, in the way of the law, was very well looked after indeed; and for the purpose of escaping the annual registration fee, Andrew's little dog, "Whiskey," had remained a puppy as long as some young ladies tarry under thirty.
Carry on rising to admit the caller had the usual tussle with the door, while grandma reiterated uncomplimentary remarks about the "blessed feller" who should some time since have effected repairs, and Danby upon entering wore an extremely grave face, looked neither at Dawn nor Carry, but addressed himself straight to Mrs Martha Clay.
"I have to trouble you about a very unpleasant matter," he said, and cruelly all eyes went to poorAndrew, as it was but recently he had to be chased home for breaking the law.
"Yes," said grandma, rising actively, and though a flurried colour came to the old withered cheek, the spark of battle flashed in the stern blue-grey eye.
"Could I see you privately?" said Danby.
"Certainly," said Mrs Clay: "but I'm not fond of secrecy; things is better open, and this is the first time in my life I've had to be seen secret by the police. Come this way."
We said nothing, but dropped our feeding tools and waited in suspense, till in less than a minute grandma thrust her head in the dining-room door.
"For mercy's sake, Dawn, look in Miss Flipp's room and see is she there."
Dawn rose in a hurry and boxed Andrew's ears as she passed, because he too rose and tumbled over his chair in her way.
"Some people ought to tie themselves up to be out of the way," she ejaculated.
"Miss Flipp is not in her room," she presently called, "and her bed is smooth and made up."
"God save us, then! Mr Danby says she's drownded in the river," exclaimed her grandma. "What's to be done?"
"We'll spare you all the trouble possible, Mrs Clay," said the man, with the respect always tendered the old dame; "but I'm afraid it's a suicide. Some men going to work on the new viaduct just noticed her clothes sticking up as they crossed the bridge at daylight and reported it, and I was sent down. We've taken the body to Jimmeny's pub., and sent for the coroner, at all events."
Dawn and Andrew howled together in a frightenedmanner, while the sensible Carry, who never lost her head, admonished them—
"Don't be jackdaws. That won't mend matters. Perhaps it isn't half as bad as some make out. Things never are when you get the right hang of them."
"Things are bad enough anyhow, but the way to mend 'em ain't to be snivelling," rapped out grandma, giving Dawn and Andrew a shaking that braced them up.
Things were indeed bad enough, and nothing could mend them. They had gone beyond repair. It transpired that my senses had been correct, and poor Miss Flipp hadnotreturned that moonlit night as I lay listening to the passing trains. She had ended her ruined life by weighting her feet and dropping into the pretty stretch of water under the bridge, where the locomotives rushed by like thunder, and from where could be seen the twinkling electric lights of one of the oldest towns in Australia.
The inquest, at which we all had to appear, elicited information that fairly stood poor grandma's hair on end. It was a great blow to find that she had been harbouring a woman who was not as Cæsar's wife, and that it was fear of the penalty of her divergence from what is accepted as virtue, had driven her to take her life ere she had transmitted the tribulation of being to a nameless child.
Nothing was cleared up regarding her antecedents. The person by whom she was supposed to be recommended to Mrs Clay knew of no such individual, and no one came to claim her.
Her uncle, it was discovered, had a day or two previously sailed for America on urgent business, and after the girl's death an affectionate letter for her arrived from him. She had left nothing to fix the blame where it belonged,but with a misdirected loyalty so common in her sex had paid all the debt her frail self.
The post on the day of her death brought me a pathetic little note, in which she stated that she wished to bear the whole blame; a woman always had to in any case, and as she could not face it she had decided upon death. She had written this to me because she felt I had had an inkling of how matters had been with her, and she thanked me that I had kept silent, in conjunction with the observation that it was not usual for such as she to meet with forbearance from those who had had sense to preserve their respectability. Ah, the regret that consumed me that I had not risked the unpopularity of interference and sought her confidence. I might have been able to have saved her from such an end!
I kept my knowledge to myself. It would scarcely have hurt Mr Pornsch. Under the British Constitution property is far more sacred than women. But having a fatality in belief that there is a law of retribution in all things, I hoped to be able to sheet this crime home to its perpetrator in a way that should put him to confusion when he least expected it.
There was ample money for burial among the girl's belongings, which were taken in charge by the police, and there let the cruelly common incident rest for the present.
The affair so upset Dawn that she refused to occupy her usual room any longer, and at her suggestion she and I determined to occupy a big upstairs room, up till that time filled with rubbish. This being agreed upon we forsook the apartments opening into the river garden, and betook ourselves to an altitude from which we had even a better view of the valley, river, and trains.
Dawn so perceptibly went "off colour" that I persuadedher grandmother to let the singing lessons begin by way of diverting her mind.
The old lady would not contemplate paying more than two guineas per quarter, so I saw a six guinea teacher, arranged with him to take the pupil at four, two of which I privately paid myself, and Dawn at last set out for the city for her first lesson in the arduous and unattractive boo-ing and ah-ing that lie at the foundation of a singer's art.
In the career of a prodigy there invariably comes a time when it is compelled to relinquish being very clever for a child, and has to enter the business of life in competition with adults.
This crisis had arrived in the career of the prodigy Australia.
It is at the time of electing new or re-electing old representatives of the people to the legislature that the state of a country's affairs is more prominently before the public than at any other, and preceding the State election in which Grandma Clay was to exercise the rights of full citizenship for the first time, it was a lugubrious statement.
That the country had gone to the dogs was averred by each candidate for the three hundred a-year given ordinary State members, and each described himself as the instrument by which it could be restored to a state of paradisaical prosperity.
This is an old bogey, unfailingly revived at elections. The Ministerialists invariably roar how they have improved the public finances, while the Opposition as blatantly tries to drown them by bellowing that theretiring government has damned the country, and that the Opposition has the only recipe of satisfactory reconstruction, but in spite of this threadbare election scare the Commonwealth remained the freest and one of the wealthiest abiding-places in the world.
Just then its business affairs were undoubtedly badly managed, and mismanagement, if continued, inevitably leads to bankruptcy. Undeniably there was an unwholesome percentage of unemployed—inexcusable when there abounded vast areas of fertile territory quite unpeopled, mines as rich as any known to history all untouched; the sugar, grape, timber, and other industries crying aloud for further development, and countless resources on every hand requiring nothing but that these and men should meet on healthy and enterprising business terms. The population, instead of gaining in numbers, was foolishly leaving the country, like over-indulged, spoiled children, imagining themselves ill-treated, while others hesitated to come in because the Australian trumpet was not blown loudly enough nor in the right key.
The administration, like a young housewife tossed into an overflowing storehouse, had spent lavishly, but the bank of a multi-millionaire will come to an end in time, and so with the play-days of Australia.
The hour had arrived for her to be up and doing, to marshal her forces, advertise her wares, and take her place as a worker among the nations.
There are always old bush lawyers and city know-alls beside whom Chamberlain and Roberts are but small tomahawks as empire-builders, and these now were predicting that to make a nation of her Australia needed war and many other disasters to harden her people fromthe amusement-loving, sunny-eyed folk they were; but this was an extremist's outlook. She was in greater need of a land law that would sensibly and practically put the right people on the soil, and entice population of desirable class—independent producers—so that the development of the industries would follow in natural sequence. In short, Australia was languishing for a few patriotic sons with strong, clear, business heads to apply the science of statecraft, as distinguished from the self-seeking artifices of the mere job politician at present sapping her vitals, and all the elements for success were within her gates.
I had long had an eye open for the discernment of such an embryo statesman, and looked forward with interest to the study of the present crop of political candidates.
As soon as Leslie Walker—Ernest Breslaw's step-brother—had been elected as the Opposition candidate for Noonoon, canvassing, "spouting," war-whooping, and all manner of "barracking" began with such intense enthusiasm that fortunately Miss Flipp's sad fate was speedily driven out of our thoughts.
Dawn and Mrs Bray were on Walker's committee, and nearly every night there was an advocate of one party or the other gasconading in Citizens' Hall.
To Noonoon residents it became what the theatre is to city patrons of the drama, and more, for this was invested with the dignity of a certain amount of reality. To women being in the fray many attributed the unusual interest distinguishing this campaign, but the real cause was that public affairs had come to such a deadlock that legislature, as the medium through which they might be moved, had become a vital question tothe veriest numskull, and all were mustering to ascertain who put forth the most favourable policy.
With politics and her newly started singing lessons, Dawn was too thoroughly engrossed for thought of any knight to pierce her armour of indifference, which was the outcome of full mental occupation. I invested in a nice little piano, that was carried upstairs to our big room, and had undertaken to superintend her practising, but she was a more enthusiastic politician than a vocal student, as I pointed out to her grandmother's satisfaction. These happenings had eventuated during the first fortnight of May, and in the third week of this month Leslie Walker imported a couple of experienced ranters to renew the attack and denounce the villainy of the present government in loud and blustering vote-catching war-whoops.
In the town itself, nearly every third person was employed on the railway, and their only care in casting their vote was to secure a representative who would not in any way reduce the expenditure of the railways. Thus a parliamentary candidate in Noonoon had to trim his sails to catch this large vote or be defeated. It was the same with other factions: any man with a common-sense platform, impartially for the good of the State at large, might as well have sat down at home and have saved himself the labour of stumping an electorate and bellowing himself hoarse for all the chance he had of being returned.
We turned outen massefrom Clay's to hear the second speech of young Walker, assisted by two M.P.'s belonging to his party. Grandma and I drove in the sulky, while the girls and Andrew walked ahead, the latter under strict orders to behave with reason, and not make "a fool of hisself with the larrakins."
It was well we arrived early, as there was not sitting room for half the audience, though more than half the hall being reserved for the ladies, we got a front seat, and long before the time for the speakers to appear every corner was packed, and women as well as men were standing in rows fronting the stage. A great buzz of conversation at the front, and stampeding and cat-calling among the youths at the back, was terminated by the arrival of the three speakers of the evening, who were received amid deafening cock-a-doodling, cheering, stamping, and clapping. An old warrior of the class dressedupto the position of M.P. sat to one side, and next him was the barrister type so prolific in parliament, who had himself dresseddownto the vulgar crowd, while third sat Leslie Walker.
Surely not the first Leslie Walker who had appeared a week or two previously! His bright, restless eye, though too sensitive for that of an old campaigner, now took in the crowd with complete assurance, and there was no hint of hesitation discernible. Having once smelt powder he was ready for the fray.
"By Jove! hasn't Les. bucked up!" whispered Ernest, who sat on one side of me, where he had landed after an ineffectual attempt to sit beside Dawn.
"Yes; if he can only roar and blow and wave his arms sufficiently he may have a chance."
"But he's still nervous," said the observant Andrew from the rear. "You watch him go for that flea in the leg of his pants!"
Sitting in full view of a "chyacking" audience is a severe ordeal to an inexperienced campaigner with a sensitive temperament, and this action, indeed peculiarly like an attempt to detain an annoying insect in a foldof his lower garment, was one of those little mannerisms adopted to give an appearance of ease.
Behind the speakers came, as chairman, one of the swell class almost extinct in this region, and he, too, had rather an effete attitude and physique, as he took up his position behind the spindley table weighted by the smeared tumblers and water-bottle. He rose with the intention of flattering the speakers and audience in the orthodox way, but the electors, among whom a spirit of overflowing hilarity was at large, took his duties out of his mouth.
"Don't smoodge, old cockroach, let the other blokes blaze away, as we (the taxpayers) are paying dear for this spouting."
The barrister man M.P. burst upon them first with the latest trumpet blare with which speeches were being opened. Having been primed as to the magnitude of the railway vote in Noonoon, first move was to throw a bone to it, and, metaphorically speaking, he got down on his knees to this section of the electors, and howled and squealed that all civil servants' wages would be left as they were.
He took another canter to flatter the ladies regarding the remarkably intelligent vote they had cast in the Federal elections, and asserted his belief that they would do likewise in the present crisis, and introduce a nobler element into political life.
Creatures, a few months previously ranked lower than an almost imbecile man, and with no more voice in the laws they lived under than had lunatics or horses—it was miraculous what a power they had suddenly grown! The man at the back saw the point—
"Blow it all, don't smoodge so. It ain't long sinceyou was all rared up on yer hind legs showin' how things would go to fury if wimmen had the vote."
Having got past this prelude, he proceeded with a vigorous volley of abuse against the sitting government, and showed how Walker, the Opposition candidate, was the only man to vote for. He shook his fists, stamped and raved, and illustrated how much a voice could endure without cracking, the back people carefully waiting till he had to pull up to take a drink out of one of the glasses on the spindley table, when they got in with—
"You're mad! Keep cool! You'll bust a blood-vessel! When are you going to give Tomato Jimmy a show to blow his horn?" This being a reference to the calling of the other speaker, who was a middleman in the vegetable and fruit-market. The first speaker, however, was not nearly exhausted yet—he had to thump his fists on the unfortunate spindley table, and work off several other oratorical poses and a deal of elocutionary voice-play, ere he was finished. I fairly rolled with enjoyment of the wonderful wit and humour of the crowd at the back, which, unless it be put down as the critical faculty, is an inexplicable phenomenon. Not one of the interrupters, if drafted on to the hustings, could have given a lucid or intelligent statement of his views, or indication that he was furnished with any, and yet not one slip on the part of a candidate, one inconsistent point, personal mannerism or peccadillo, but was remarked in an astonishingly humorous and satirical style.
The barrister man having finished "spouting," the common-sense individual, who always sits half-way down the hall, and who, when he asks a question, hasto face the double ordeal of the crowd and the candidate, said—
"The speaker has shown us all the things the other fellowscan't do, we'd like another speech now stating whathe cando." The chairman rose to say this was out of order, but his voice was lost in the din.
"You sit down, old chap, we can manage this meetin' ourselves."
"But out of respect to the ladies present!"
"We'll look after the ladies too," was the good-humoured rejoinder. "Why, they're enjoyin' it as much as we are. They've got a vote now, you know, and are going to use it in an intelligent manner."
"Did you know Queen Anne was dead?" said another.
"The ladies won't be harmed. Any one that disrespects the ladies will be chucked out."
The ladies had to laugh at this, and the meeting went right merrily, and more merrily in that half the "blowing" from the stage was drowned by the interjectory din from the rear of the building, where lads and men stood chock-a-block, the former, and the latter too, making right royal use of their licence to be rowdy; but such a good-natured crowd could not often be seen. There were no altercations, only laughter and the crude repartee of such a gathering.
The first speaker having returned to his seat and sanity, the second took his place.
"Hullo, Tomatoes! What's the price of onions and spuds?"
"Now begin and tell the ladies how intelligent they are, so you'll get their vote."
"Tomatoes" did butter the ladies, next yelled that the civil servants would not be retrenched, and then upheldthe virulent attack on the government. Keeping in time with the utterances of "Tomato Jimmy," the boys at the back grew so boisterous that at one time it appeared inevitable that the meeting must break up in disorder. The chairman, the candidates, the ladies, the whole house rose, and one man towards the front made himself heard amid the babel to the effect that the ladies ought to walk out to show their resentment of the insults that had been offered their presence by this disorderly behaviour.
"Ladies, don't go.Dearladies, don't go," called some wags. "We're only educatin' you in politics,—learning you how to be like your superiors—men."
This evoked a round of laughter, and order was restored.
"That's right, ladies, don't go; if you was to turn dawg on us now, we'd be so crestfallen we couldn't think about politics and save the country at all."
Once more "Tomatoes" belched forth the infamy of the government, and louder and louder he yelled, till one marvelled at his endurance. Rougher and hotter grew his repartee till, by sheer abuse, he gained the ascendancy; but there was no sane statement of what he would propose as a remedy. Grandma Clay happened to rise as he neared the finish to see about a reticule she had dropped, and proved a target for those at the rear.
"Hello, grandma! are you going to contradict him? Give us a straight tip about women's rights while you're up;" and poor grandma sat down very precipitately with an exceedingly deep blush.
"If I could only get the chance," she gasped, "I'd give 'em a piece of me mind."
Third on the list came Leslie Walker, whose improvement was beyond belief. No notes or hesitation this time. Each sentence was crisp and clear, and in every detail he evinced the facility for enacting hisrôlewhich is supposedly a feminine accomplishment.
The chairman, in closing the meeting, rose to say—
"In reference to the interjector who said the speaker was mad—"
"Oh, that's what every one said aboutyouwhen you were in the council, and so you were too, and so are they all. Look at the roads we've got in the municipality," said a voice.
So the chairman had to let the meeting terminate with the candidates thanking the electors for the extraordinarily good hearing they had been accorded; it being part of the humour of politics that the worse a candidate is boo-hooed the more stress he lays upon thegood hearinggiven him, and the more scurrilous he is regarding his opponent the more frantically he assures one that he is a bosompersonalfriend.
Andrew and I had the distinction of going home under grandma's tutelage, while Carry and Dawn stayed behind to go to the ladies' committee rooms, and Ernest lingered to escort them.
"I say, grandma, are you goin' to vote for that bloke?" inquired Andrew.
"I'm goin' to hear the other side first, and give me opinion after. There wasn't one of the swells there, was there?"
"Dr Smalley and Dr Tinker both was."
"Yes; but I mean the wimmen: an' how on earth did old Tinker ever get away from Mrs Tinker for that length of time? You'll never see one of them kind of wimmenat anythink that makes for progress. That's the way they make theirselves superior to the likes of you an' me—by never doin' nothink only for theirselves. 'Oh, we've got all we want as it is, an' don't want the vote; a woman's place is home,' they say if you ask 'em. It's all very fine for them as has a man to keep them like in a band-box; they would have found it different if they had to act on their own like me. I'm sick of this intelligence in women they make a fuss about all of a sudden. I've rared a family and managed me business better than a man could; and what's there been all along to prevent a woman from stroking out a name on a paper I never could see. And it never seems to me much difference which name was struck out, for they're mostly a lot of impostors that only think of featherin' their own nests. You'll always hear of wimmen not bein' intelligent enough to do this and that, and these things is only what men like doin' best theirselves, and the things they make out God intended women to do is them the men don't like doin'. You don't ever hear of them thinkin' women ain't intelligent enough to do seven things at once." Grandma was in great form that night, and not only led but maintained the conversation.
"I rather like this young feller, but he ain't no sense much either. All he thinks of is buttoning for the railway people, and it's the people on the land that ought to be legislated for first. They are the foundation of everythink; other things would work right after. Every one can't live in Sydney, an' that's what they're all makin' for now. Every one is getting some little agency—parasite business. They've got sense to see the people on the land is the most despised and sat upon. You don't hear no squallin' about they'll protect the farmer. No, he'sa despised old party that them scuts of fellers on the railway would grin at and think theirselves above, and scarcely give him a civil answer if he asked a question about his business what he's payin' them fellers there to do for him, and which only for the prodoocers wouldn't be there at all. Things is gettin' pretty tight on farms now. It means about sixteen hours hard graft a-day to make not half what a railwayman makes in eight hours. If you happen to have grapes or oranges, if they manage to escape the frost, an' hail, an' caterpillar, then the blight ketches 'em, or there's a drewth, and there ain't none; an' if there's any, there's so much that there ain't no sale for 'em; and the farmer's life I reckon ought to be stopped as gamblin', for a gambler's life ain't one bit more precarious."
"Then why the jooce do you want me to go on the land?" said Andrew.
"That ain't the point."
"It's the most sticking out point to me," protested the lad. "I reckon bein' on the land is a mug's game; scrapin' like a fool when a feller could be sittin' in an office an' gettin' all they want twice as easy."
"Here, you don't know what's good. It's more respectabler bein' on the land. You get the pony out, an' make the coffee, an' hold your tongue."
Andrew and I had undertaken to make the coffee for supper, and thus give Carry, whose week in the kitchen it was, a chance to go to the meeting.
They all arrived from it after a time—Dawn and the knight together, Carry and Larry Witcom following. Oh, where was "Dora"?
"Who's that with you, Carry?" asked Andrew. "There was a young lady named Carry, who had asweetheart named Larry; at the gate they often would tarry, to talk about when they would marry."
But this remark of Andrew's to parry, Dawn good-naturedly plunged into an account of the meeting.
"What did they do?" asked grandma.
"Do?—they only blabbed. Mr Walker was there to-night. We asked that Jimmeny girl from the pub. to join, and she delivered a great parable at us, looking round all the time to see if the boot-licking tone of it was pleasing the men. She said that women ought to bring up their children to respect them—"
"The most commonest idea some people has of bringin' up their children to respect them," grandma chipped in, "is to let youngsters make toe-rags of their mother; and boys only as high as the table think they can cheek their mother because she's only a woman an' hasn't as much right to be livin' in the world as them, and when they are twenty-one the law confirms this beautiful sentiment. Leastways, until just lately," she concluded.
"And this Jimmeny piece," continued Dawn, "said women ought to treat their husbands decently, and she thinks a woman disgraces her sex by getting up on a platform to speak. I asked her if she thought they did not disgrace themselves and the other sex too by standing behind a bar and serving out drinks and grinning at a lot of goods that ought to be at home with their families,—and that was a bit of a facer. Then she said it was only the ugly old women who wanted to shriek round and get rights,—that men would give the young pretty ones all they wanted without asking! Of all the old black gin ideas, I always think that the terriblest. A nice state of affairs, if people couldn't get honest civilised rights without being young and pretty; andthe fools!" said the girl heatedly, "can't they look round and see how long the beauty and youth business will work! 'Men,' she says, 'ought to rule; they're the stronger vessel.'" And Dawn gave inimitable mimicry of Miss Jimmeny of the pub. "If you take my tip for it, those girls that sing out that men are the stronger vessel are the sort that have a dishcloth of a husband, and never let him off a string."
This attitude of mind was one of Dawn's distinctive characteristics. Having that beauty, which in the enslaved condition of women has always been an unfair asset to the possessor, to the exclusion of worthier traits, she was not like most beauties, content to sit down and trade upon it, but had wholesomer, honester, workaday ideals in regard to the position of her sex.
She was going to Sydney in the morning for her second singing lesson, and as Ernest, by a strange coincidence, happened to have business that would take him on the same journey by the same train, I accompanied him to the gate to warn him against inadvertently divulging that I had been an actress by trade.
"I want to take you into my confidence," I said, as we passed several naked cedar-trees, and halted in the shelter of some fine peppers that grew to perfection in this valley, where I related the trouble I had had to bring the old lady round to the idea of Dawn's singing lessons, and mentioned the girl's ambition regarding the stage.
"Now," I continued, "if the old dame were to discover I had been on the stage, she would think I was leading Dawn to the devil, and would not credit that no one is more anxious than I am to save her from the footlights, or that the best way to stave her off is this training. Mysecret ambition regarding her," I said, critically observing the strong knobby profile, "is that within the next five years she should marry some nice youngster with means to place her in a setting befitting her intelligence and beauty."
"Have you got any one in your eye now?" he irrelevantly inquired. And, considering he stood where he filled my entire vision, as he rose between me and the light shed by the last division of the western passenger mail as it self-importantly crossed the viaduct, I answered—
"Yes; I think I know a man who would just fill the bill."
He did not ask for further particulars, but remarked warningly—
"Decent fellows with cash are scarce. They are inclined to get into mischief if they have too much time and money on their hands."
"That's it; and I would not like to make a mess of things now that I've taken up matchmaking. You'll have to advise me when matters get out of hand; a little practice may come in handy some day when you have half a dozen daughters."
"It would come in still handier now."
"Pshaw, now! You'd only have to ask to receive, at your time of life and with your qualifications."
"I'm not so sure. You're the only one who has such an opinion of me," he said disconsolately. "Others look upon me as a red-headed fool with big ears, &c.;" and thus I knew Dawn's idle words had returned to his ears, as these things invariably do, and had stung.
"Silly-billy! I'll take you in hand when I've settled Dawn. I'm the one to advertise your wares, for could Iturn back the wheel of time eight or nine years and make us of an age, I'd make it leap-year and propose to you myself."
"I'd like to propose to you without altering the time," he gallantly responded, apparently not in such deadly fear of a breach of promise action as was Uncle Jake.
"If I don't move in the matter Dawn will be marrying that Eweword, and though he's a most handsome and worthy—"
"Soft as a turnip," contemptuously interposed Ernest; "eats too much. It would take twelve months hard training to make any sort of a man of him."
"It would be a pity to see Dawn just settling down into the dull, drudging life of a farmer's wife, going to an occasional show or tea-meeting in a home-made dress, with two or three children dragging at her skirts and looking a perfect wreck, as most of the mothers do."
"By Jove, yes!"
"She has a right to be on the lawn on Cup Day or in the front circle on first nights. She'd surprise some of the grandees, and with her vivacity and courage she'd make a furore for a time."
"She'd make a good sport if she were a man," assented Ernest. "No running stiff or jamming a jock on the post or anything like that from her—she'd always hit straight out from the shoulder and above the belt."
"Yes; she has particularly infatuated me, and I'd like to save her from Eweword."
"Marry him to the girl Grosvenor while you're about it and that will dispose of him and suit her, for she strikes me as anxious for matrimony."
"She hasn't been—" I began.
"Oh, no, I think she's a splendid woman in every way, but—"
"But, even the finest and most chivalrous man, while he thinks the only sphere for women is matrimony, yet is shocked if a woman betrays in the least way that her ambitions lie in the domestic line—strange inconsistency. However, you will not let Dawn know my ideas of disposing of her;" and with the want of perspicacity of his sex, or else with a wonderful power of covering his thoughts excelling that of women, and of which women never suspect men, Ernest promised without sensing what I had in view.
Contention arose in the Clay household next day, Dawn's singing lessons being at the root of the trouble. It was her week in the kitchen, and that she should be two days absent from the cooking, displeased Carry.
"Well, if you don't think the place fair, you can go!" said grandma. "But I think you're a fool, an' you're giving me a lot of worry. It's all very fine in other people's places, but some day w'en you have a home of your own you'll know the worry of it. Next time I make a arrangement with a girl she'll have to take a extra day in the kitchen without humbuggin'."
"I'll vote for me grandma on that bill," said Andrew, "for I've often been give the pip by who is in the kitchen an' who is out of it. Grandma, did you hear the latest? Young Jack Bray's been in another orange orchard and didn't do a get quick enough, and has got took up, and his father will have to pay money to keep him out of quod."
The old lady bristled.
"Didn't I tell you! Who knows how to receive these things best now? I've always believed in rarin' me family me own way, an' Mrs Bray is a fine woman, moraland decent, but she's got too many stones to throw at others and doesn't see to it sharp enough that less stones can't be threw at her. I thought she didn't take it serious enough. You'd have been in this too only for me dreadin' the spark. What are they goin' to do?"
"Pay the money, of course; an' Mr Bray is goin' to tan the hide off Jack."
"Some people don't get frightened of dishonesty unless it costs 'em something," said the old lady.
"Well, I'll vote for me grandma every time," said Andrew, "and Jim Clay every second time," as he went out the door, "and meself the most times of all," he concluded in the back yard.
Mrs Bray dropped in that afternoon for a chat, and grandma mentioned that we were without afternoon tea because Carry had "jacked up" about getting it, for reasons before mentioned.
"Just like her!" said Mrs Bray; "she gives herself as much side as if she was one of us. She's the sort of girl who wouldn't think twice of telling you to do a thing yourself, and you've made an awful fool of her by making so much of her. Them things of girlsearnin' their own livin'ought to be kept in their place more," was the utterance of a woman who believed herself a staunch advocate for the freedom of her sex; but when Mrs Bray spoke of sex she meant self.
"That ain't the point," said grandma; "I never think it anythink but a credit to a girl to be earnin' her living, an' would never be narrer enough to make them feel it. I always make a practice of treatin' the girls as near equal as within reason, for Carry's every bit as fine-lookin' an' good a girl as me own, an' if I wasn't here, wouldn't Dawn have to be foragin' for herself too? but there'sreason in everythink, and Carry might be a bit obligin'."
"Of course she ought to be; but what could you expect of her, took up with that Larry Witcom, an' does the ass think he really wants her? He's only got her on a string for his own amusement? He goes to see that Dora Cowper at the same time; Jack seen him there. I wonder willhebe scared off by being thought a ketch before the pot's boiled, so to speak. Good ketches, eh? I don't see nothing in none of them. They're only thought something because men is scarce here; they've all cleared out to the far out places, and West Australia. It's like a year the pumpkins is scarce, you can sell little things you'd hardly throw to the pigs another time, and that's the way it is with the few paltry fellers round here. It makes me mad to see the girls after them—the fools!and the men grinnin' behind their backs. There's that Ada Grosvenor, if Eweword just calls up and talks to her she tells you about it as if it was something, and inviting him down there, an' then the blessed fellers gets to think they're gods. It makes me sick!"
"Yes," said grandma; "I see the girls after fellers now,—there's that Danby for instance, he's a fine lump of a man, but w'en I was a girl I wouldn't have made toe-rags of a policeman."
"Yes, a blessed feller strollin' up and down the street lookin' at his toes or runnin' in a drunk. I say, did you hear the latest about old Rooney-Molyneux? He didn't believe in women having the vote, didn't consider they had intellect to vote, sohesays (not as much brain as he has, don't you see, to marry a woman, and a baby to be coming and nothing to put on its back, while he strolls round and gets drunk), but now they've got the vote, hesays (the great Lord Muck Rooney-Molyneux says it, remember) that it is theirdutyto use it, and he intends tomake(mind you,make; I'd like to hear a man say he'dmakeme do anything; I'd scald him, see if I wouldn't, and that's what wants doing with half the men anyhow, for the way they carry on to women), and he's going tomakehis wife go round canvassing,Now! Men make me sick; w'en they're boys they're that troublesome they ought to be kep' under a tub, and we'n they get older they're that cantankerous and self-important they all want killin' off."
"I'll bet Mrs Rooney won't be workin' for a different man to him. If her convictions led her that way, you'd see he'd have a flute about her not bein' fit to be out of her home," said grandma astutely.
"Yes, that's the way with 'em; first they thought the world would tumble to pieces if women stirred out of the house for a minute to vote, and now that we've got the vote in spite of them, they'd make their wives walk round after votes for their side whether they was able or not."
"They kicked agen us having the vote, and now we've got it they think we ought to vote with them like as if we was a appendage of theirs; men will be learnt different to that by-and-by, but it's best to go gradual; they've had as much as they can swaller for a time."
"Ain't it just the very devil to them to think women is considered as important as themselves now, instead of something they could just do as they like with? Old Hollis there says he won't vote this year because the women have one. Did you ever hear of an insult like that? He says the monkeys will have a vote next, and that shows you what men think of women,—like as if they was some sort of animals."
"Well, if you ask me," said grandma, "the monkeys have been havin' a vote all along in the case of old Hollis."
Any further discussion in this line was terminated by the entrance of Carry, with her good-looking face flushed and hard set, as, rolling down her sleeve and buttoning it aggressively as the finishing touch to her toilet after completing her afternoon's work, she confronted Mrs Bray, on battle bent.
"Well, Mrs Bray, I'd like to have given my opinion of you to your teeth long ago, but I held my tongue as it wasn't my house, and some people have different tastes and have folk around that I'd be a long time having anything to do with. Now, I think things do concern me, and I'm going to have my say; I couldn't have it sooner because I'm athingearning my living and had to finish my work. I haven't got a home of my own, and like some people, if I had, I'd be in it teaching my dirty rude brats not to be thieves. I wouldn't for everlasting be at other people's places scandalising people twice as good as myself. I didn't think Mrs Clay was the sort of person to go tittle-tattling—she can please herself; but it doesn't concern you if I do put on airs. I want to know what you mean by that I should be kept in my place. I'll swear I know how to carry my day as well as you do, and to keep in my place too well to be going round meddling with other people's business."
"I didn't say nothing but was correct, an' what right have you to come bullying me? It's like your impudence—you a hussy out to work for your living at a few shillings a-week, and calling yourself aladyhelp when you're a servant, that's what you are; to bullyme, a woman with a good home, and the mother of a family."
Carry snorted contemptuously.
"That old 'mother of a family' racket needn't be brought forward. It doesn't hold as much water as it used to. Women are thought just as much of now who are good useful workers in the world, and not tied up to some man and the mother of a few weedy kids that aren't any credit to king or country."
"Mercy!" exclaimed grandma. "What am I to?"
"Let 'em fight it out," I laconically advised in an aside, and she seemed disposed to take my advice.
"You dare," blustered Mrs Bray. "And what else have you got to say?"
"I want an explanation of the aspersion on my character when you said I had taken up with Larry Witcom. I'm not going to stand anything on my character in that line if Iamearning my living, and youarethe mother of one or fourteen families, all as great a credit to you as the one Jack represents. And as for me earning my living, what areyoudoing? If a man wasn't keeping you to suit himself, how would you be earning your living? I could earn my living the same way as you are doing to-morrow if I liked; but of the two, I think my present occupation is the decentest and less dependent. Apart from your bullying selfishness, a nice sensible way you have of talking! If you killed off the men, who would you have to keep you? And that's a nice civilised way to speak about your fellow creatures anyhow; whether they be men or black gins, they've just as much place in the scheme of creation as you have. We would have been a long time getting the vote or any other decent right if the men were like you. It's because you are the same stamp as so many of the men that we've been kept down so long as we have; and now, what about me taking up with Larry Witcom?"
"Well, it's well known what Larry is."
"Well, what is he?"
"You ask him about Mrs Park's divorce case."
"I hope you don't think your old man is a saint, do you? As big a fool as you are, you're surely not fool enough for that, are you? Perhaps he isn't as clean a potato as Larry if it was all brought out."
"But he's a married man this many a year, with a married daughter, and his young days are lived down long ago."
"Well, so would Larry be married many a year and have things lived down in time, and not as many to live down either as your husband has at present, if things are true; for all your everlasting shepherding he gets off the chain sometimes."
Hoity-toity! this was putting a fuse to gunpowder.
"You hussy! What have you got to say about my husband? Prove it, and I'd make short work of him; and if it's lies, I'll bring you into court for it."
"I'll leave it for you to prove; you're one of those who thinks every yarn entertaining till they touch yourself."
"Two to one on Carry every time when me grandma's the umpire," grinned Andrew round the corner.
"Carry, you've had enough to say. I forbid any more in my house," said grandma, rising to order.
"I declare this a drawn fight," said Andrew.
"You can have it out with Mrs Bray in her own house if you want, but no more of it here," continued grandma.
"Don't you dare come to my house," said Mrs Bray.
"Yourhouse! no fear; I never associate with scandal-mongers," contemptuously retorted Carry, as Mrs Bray made a precipitate departure, emitting something about a hussy who didn't know her place as she went.
"I'm surprised at you!" said grandma. "Her tongue does run on a little sometimes, but you ought to remember she's old enough to be your mother, and girls do owe somethink to women with families."
"And women with families and homes ought to remember they owe something to girls that aren't settled, because they haven't got a man caught yet to keep them."
"Well, this ain't my quarrel, an' don't you bring it up to me again. A woman that's rared a family, and two of them like I have done, has enough with her own dissensions."
It was rather a sullen party at tea that evening, so Dawn's return from Sydney immediately after, with her cheeks radiant from travel in the quick evening express, and herself brimming over with her day's adventures, formed a welcome relief.
"I had a great time coming home," said she. "Mr Ernest and Dora Eweword both went to Sydney this morning, and Mr Ernest and I raced into a carriage to escape Dora, and we did; and he must have asked the guard, for he found our carriage, but he had only a second-class ticket, and wouldn't be let in."
"And how came you to be in a first-class carriage?" inquired grandma. "I can't stand that; there's expense enough as it is, and your betters travel second."
"It wasn't my fault. Mr Ernest bought the tickets like a gentleman should (it says in the etiquette book), and I couldn't fight with him there and then,—you're always telling me to be more genteel."
"But I don't want strangers paying anything for my granddaughter."
"You needn't mind in this instance," I interposed.
"Mr Ernest probably wished to be gentlemanly to Dawn because she has been so good to me." Once more I saw the little derisive smile flit across the exquisite face, but she said—
"Yes; he said that you're looking so well it must be our nursing, and that he will try and get grandma to take him in if he falls ill."
"I wonder if he's going to get took bad—love-sick—like the other blokes," said Andrew.
Dawn cast a murderous glance at him, and covered the remark by making a bustle in sitting to her tea, and in retailing minute details of her singing lesson.
We retired early, and she produced from the basket in which she carried her music a most pretentious box of sweets and various society newspapers.
"Mr Ernest said you might like some of these, and I was to have a share because I carried them home, though he got the 'bus and brought me to the door, so I hadn't to walk a step."
"Good boy! What did he talk about to-day?"
"I asked him about all the actresses he has seen. He's going to give me the autographed photos he has of them. You wouldn't think he'd like to part with them, but he says he's tired of them all now—they're nearly all married, and are back numbers. Actresses are only thought of for a little while, he says."
"That is the natural order of things, and applies to others as well as actresses. Pretty young girls are not pretty for long. They should see to it that they are plucked by the right fingers while their bloom is attractive. The old order falls ill-fittingly on some, but is fair in the main,—we each have our fleeting hour."
"Yes; but where is there a desirable plucker?" saidthe practical girl. "There are scarcely any good matches and the few there are have so many running after them that I wouldn't give 'em the satisfaction of thinking I wanted them too."
True, good matches are few. In these luxurious times the generality of girls' ideas of a good match being very advanced—in short, a man of sufficient wealth to keep them in petted idleness. There can be no shade of reproach on women for this ambition, it is but one outcome of the evolution of civilisation, and is merely a species of common-sense on their part; for the ordinary routine of marriage, as instanced by the testimony of thousands of women ranked among the comfortably and happily married, is so trying that girls do well to try for the most comfortable berths ere putting their heads in the noose.
"And Dora, where was he all this time?" I asked.
"Oh, he brought Ada Grosvenor home; thought that would spite me. She was in town too, and you should just hear her after this. The silly rabbit can't open her mouth but she tells you what this man did and that one said to her, when all the time it's nothing but some ordinary courtesy they ought to extend to even black gins."