CHAPTER XII.

LOVE AND LUST.

The picnic party had moved on while they talked, but a multitude of

sitters and walkers were now everywhere, particularly as they climbed the

slope to the level. There the Sunday afternoon meetings were in full

swing.

On platforms of varying construction, mostly humble, the champions of

multitudinous creeds and opinions were holding forth to audiences which

did not always greet their utterances approvingly. They stood for a while

near a vigorous iconoclast, who from the top of a kitchen chair laid down

the Law of the Universe as revealed by one Clifford, overwhelming with

contumely a Solitary opponent in the crowd who was foolish enough to

attempt to raise an argument on the subject of "atoms." Near at hand, a

wild-eyed religionary was trying to persuade a limited and drifting

audience that a special dispensation had enabled him to foretell exactly

the date of the Second Coming of Christ. Then came the Single Tax

platform, a camp-stool with a board on it, wherefrom a slender lad,

dark-eyed and good-looking, held forth, with a flow of language and a

power of expression that was remarkable, upon the effectiveness of a land

tax as a remedy for all social ills.

Ned had never seen such a mass of men with such variegated shades of

thought assembled together before. There was a well-dressed bald-headed

individual laying down the axioms of that very Socialism of which Geisner

and he had been talking. There was an ascetic looking man just delivering

a popular hymn, which he sang with the assistance of a few gathered

round, as the conclusion of open-air church. There was the Anarchist he

had seen at Paddy's Market, fervidly declaring that all government is

wrong and that men are slaves and curs for enduring it and tyrants for

taking part in it. There was the inevitable temperance orator, the rival

touters for free trade and protection, and half-a-dozen others with an

opinion to air. They harangued and shouted there amid the trees, on the

grass, in the brilliant afternoon sunshine that already threw long

shadows over the swaying, moving thousands.

It was a great crowd, a good many thousands altogether, men and women and

children and lads. It was dressed in its Sunday best, in attire which

fluctuated from bright tints of glaring newness to the dullness of

well-brushed and obtrusive shabbiness. There were every-looking men you

could think of and women and girls, young and old, pretty and plain and

repulsive. But it was a working-people crowd. There was no room among it

for the idlers. Probably it was not fashionable for them to be there.

And there was this about the crowd, which impressed Ned, everybody seemed

dissatisfied, everybody was seeking for a new idea, for something fresh.

There was no confidence in the Old, no content with what existed, no

common faith in what was to come. There was on many a face the same

misery that he had seen in Paddy's Market. There was no happiness, no

face free from care, excepting where lovers passed arm-in-arm. There was

the clash of ideas, the struggling of opinions, the blind leading the

blind. He saw the socialistic orator contending with a dozen others. Who

were the nostrum vendors? Which was the truth?

He turned round, agitated in thought, and his glance fell on Geisner, who

was standing with bent head, his hands behind him, ugly, impassive.

Geisner looked up quickly: "So you are doubting already," he remarked.

"I am not doubting," answered Ned. "I'm only thinking."

"Well?"

"It is a good thought, that Socialism," answered Ned slowly, as they

walked on. "There's nothing in it that doesn't seem fit for men to do.

It's a part with Nellie kissing that woman in the wet. What tries to make

us care for each other and prevent harm being done to one another can't

be very far wrong and what tries to break down the state of affairs that

is must be a little right. I don't care, either, whether it's right or

wrong. It feels right in my heart somehow and I'll stand by it if I'm the

only man left in the world to talk up for it."

Geisner linked his arm in Ned's.

"Remember this when you are sorrowful," he said. "It is only through Pain

that Good comes. It is only because the world suffers that Socialism is

possible. It is only as we conquer our own weaknesses that we can serve

the Cause."

They strolled on till they came to the terraced steps of the Gardens.

Before them stretched in all its wondrous glory the matchless panorama of

grove and garden, hill-closed sea and villa'd shore, the blue sky and the

declining sun tipping with gold and silver the dark masses of an inland

cloud.

"What is Life that we should covet it?" said Geisner, halting there.

"What is Death that we should fear it so? What has the world to offer

that we should swerve to the right hand or the left from the path our

innermost soul approves? In the whole world, there is no lovelier spot

than this, no purer joy than to stand here and look. Yet, it seems to me,

Paradise like this would be bought dearly by one single thought unworthy

of oneself."

"We are here to-day," he went on, musingly. "To-morrow we are called

dead. The next day men are here who never heard our names. The most

famous will be forgotten even while Sydney Harbour seems unchanged. And

Sydney Harbour is changing and passing, and the continent is changing and

passing, and the world is changing and passing, and the whole universe is

changing and passing.

"It is all change, universal change. Our religions, our civilisations,

our ideas, our laws, change as do the nebulae and the shifting continents

we build on. Yet through all changes a thread of continuity runs. It is

all changing and no ending. Always Law and always, so far as we can see,

what we call progression. A man is a fool who cares for his life. He is

the true madman who wastes his years in vain and selfish ambition.

"Listen, Ned," he pursued, turning round. "There, ages ago, millions and

millions of years ago, in the warm waters yonder, what we call Life on

this earth began. Minute specks of Life appeared, born of the sunshine

and the waters some say, coming in the fitness of Time from the All-Life

others. And those specks of Life have changed and passed, and come and

gone, unending, reproducing after their kind in modes and ways that

changed and passed and still are as all things change and pass and are.

And from them you and I and all the forms of Life that breathe to-day

have ascended. We struggled up, obedient to the Law around us and we

still struggle. That is the Past, or part of it. What is the Future, as

yet no man knows. We do more than know--we feel and dream, and struggle

on to our dreaming. And Life itself to the dreamer is as nothing only the

struggling on.

"And this has raised us, Ned, this has made us men and opened to us the

Future, that we learned slowly and sadly to care for each other. From the

mother instinct in us all good comes. This is the highest good as yet,

that all men should live their life and lay down their life when need is

for their fellows. With all our blindness we can see that. With all our

weakness we can strive to reach nearer that ideal. It is but Just that we

should live so for others since happiness is only possible where others

live so for us."

He turned again and gazed intently across the sail-dotted harbour.

"There is one thing I would like to say." He spoke without turning. "Man

without Woman is not complete. They two are but one being, complete and

life-giving. Love when it comes is the keystone of this brief span of

Life of ours. They who have loved have tasted truly of the best that Life

can give to them. And this is the great wrong of civilisation to-day,

that it takes Love from most and leaves in us only a feverish, degrading

Lust. It is when we lust that Woman drags us down to the level of that

Lust and blackens our souls with the blackness of hell. When we love

Woman raises us to the level of Love and girds on us the armour that

wards our own weakness from us.

"Love comes to few, I think. Society is all askew and, then, we have

degraded women. So they are often well-nigh unfit for loving as men are

often as unfit themselves. Physically unfit for motherhood, mentally

unfit to cherish the monogamic idea that once was sacred with our people,

sexually unfit to rouse true sex-passion--such women are being bred by

the million in crowded cities and by degenerate country life. They match

well with the slaves who 'move on' at the bidding of a policeman, or with

the knaves who only see in Woman the toy of a feeble lust.

"There are two great reforms needed, Ned, two great reforms which must

come if Humanity is to progress, and which must come, sooner or later,

either to our race or to some other, because Humanity must progress. One

reform is the Reorganisation of Industry. The other is the Recognition of

Woman's Equality. These two are the practical steps by which we move up

to the socialistic idea.

"If it ever comes to you to love and be loved by a true woman, Ned, let

nothing stand between you and her. If you are weak and lose her you will

have lost more than Life itself. If you are strong and win her you can

never lose her again though the universe divided you and though Death

itself came between you, and you will have lived indeed and found joy in

living."

"Should one give up the Cause for a woman?" asked Ned.

Geisner turned round at last and looked him full in the face.

"Lust only," he answered, "and there is no shame to which Woman cannot

drag Man. Love and there is nothing possible but what is manly and true."

As he spoke, along the terraced path below them came Nellie, advancing

towards them with her free swinging walk and tall lissom figure,

noticeable even at a distance among the Sunday promenaders.

"See?" said Geisner, smiling, laying his hand on Ned's arm. "This is

Paradise and there comes Eve."

PART II. HE KNEW HIMSELF NAKED.

In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's,

Out of sight though they lie of to-day,

There have been and there yet shall be sorrows

That smite not and bite not in play.

The life and the love thou despisest,

These hurt us indeed and in vain,

O wise among women, and, wisest,

Our Lady of Pain.--SWINBURNE.

CHAPTER I.

THE SLAUGHTER OF AN INNOCENT.

Mrs. Hobb's baby was dying.

"It had clung to its little life so long, in the close Sydney streets, in

the stuffy, stifling rooms which were its home; it had battled so

bravely; it was being vanquished at last.

"The flame of its life had flickered from its birth, had shrunk to a

bluish wreathing many a time, had never once leapt upward in a strong red

blaze. Again and again it had lain at its mother's breast, half-dead;

again and again upon its baby face Death had laid the tips of its

pinching fingers; again and again it had struggled moaning from the verge

of the grave and beaten Lack the grim Destroyer by the patient filling of

its tiny lungs. It wanted so to live, all unconsciously. The instinct to

exist bore it up and with more than Spartan courage stood for it time and

again in the well-nigh carried breach. Now, it was over, the battling,

the struggling. Death loitered by the way but the fight was done.

"The poor little baby! Poor unknown soldier! Poor unaided heroic life

that was spent at last! There were none to help it, not one. In all the

world, in all the universe, there was none to give it the air it craved,

the food it needed, the living that its baby-soul faded for not having.

It had fought its fight alone. It lay dying now, unhelped and helpless,

forsaken and betrayed."

* * * * *

So thought Nellie, sitting there beside it, her head thrown back, over

her eyes her hands clasped, down her cheeks the tears of passionate pity

streaming.

* * * * *

"What had its mother done for it? The best she could, indeed, but what

was that? The worst she could when she gave it life, when she bore it to

choke and struggle and drown in the fetid stream that sweeps the children

of the poor from infancy to age; the life she gave it only a flickering,

half-lighted life; the blood she gave it thin with her own weariness and

vitiate from its drunken sire; the form she gave it soft-boned and

angle-headed, more like overgrown embryo than child of the boasted

Australian land. Even the milk it drew from her unwieldy breasts was

tainted with city smoke and impure food and unhealthy housing. Its

playground was the cramped kitchen floor and the kerb and the gutter. Its

food for a year had been the food that feeds alike the old and the young

who are poor. All around conspired against it, yet for two years and more

it had clung to its life and lived, as if defying Fate, as if the impulse

that throbbed in it from the Past laughed at conditions and would have it

grow to manhood in spite of all. In the strength of that impulse, do not

millions grow so? But millions, like this little one, are crushed and

overborne.

"It had no chance but the chance that the feeble spark in it gave it. It

had no chance, even with that, to do more than just struggle through.

None came to scatter wide the prison walls of the slum it lived in and

give it air. None came to lift the burden of woe that pressed on all

around it and open to it laughter and joy. None came to stay the robbery

of the poor and to give to this brave little baby fresh milk and

strengthening food. In darkness and despair it was born; in darkness and

despair it lived; in darkness and despair it died. To it Death was more

merciful than Life. Yet it was a crime crying for vengeance that we

should have let it waste away and die so."

* * * * *

So thought Nellie, weeping there beside it, all the woman in her aching

and yearning for this poor sickly little one.

* * * * *

"It was murdered, murdered as surely as if a rope had been put round its

neck and the gallows-trap opened under it; murdered as certainly as

though, dying of thirst, it had been denied a sup of water by one who had

to spare; murdered, of sure truth, as though in the dark one who knew had

not warned it of a precipice in the path. It had asked so little and had

been denied all; only a little air, only a little milk and fruit, only a

glimpse of the grass and the trees, even these would have saved it. And

oh! If also in its languid veins the love-life had bubbled and boiled, if

in its bone and flesh a healthy parentage had commingled, if the blood

its mother gave it had been hot and red and the milk she suckled it to

white and sweet and clean from the fount of vigorous womanhood! What

then? Then, surely it had been sleeping now with chubby limbs flung wide,

its breathing so soft that you had to bend your ear to its red lips to

hear it, had been lying wearied with dancing and mischief-making and

shouting and toddling and falling, resting the night from a happy to-day

till the dawn woke it betime for a happy to-morrow. All this it should

have had as a birthright, with the years stretching in front of it, on

through fiery youth, past earnest manhood, to a loved and loving old age.

This is the due, the rightful due, of every child to whom life goes from

us. And that child who is born to sorrow and sordid care, pot-bound from

its mother's womb by encircling conditions that none single-handed can

break, is wronged and sinned against by us all most foully. If it dies we

murder it. If it lives to suffer we crucify it. If it steals we

instigate, despite our canting hypocrisy. And if it murders we who hang

it have beforehand hypnotised its will and armed its hand to slay."

* * * * *

So Nellie thought, the tears drying on her cheeks, leaning forward to

watch the twitching, purpled face of the hard-breathing child.

* * * * *

"Is there not a curse upon us and our people, upon our children and our

children's children, for every little one we murder by our social sins?

Can it be that Nemesis sleeps for us, he who never slept yet for any, he

who never yet saw wrong go unavenged or heard the innocent blood cry

unanswered from the ground?

"Can it be that he has closed his ears to the dragging footfalls of the

harlot host and to the sobs of strong men hopeless and anguished because

work is wanting and to the sighing of wearied women and to the

death-rattle of slaughtered babes? Surely though God is not and Humanity

is weak yet Nemesis is strong and sleepless and lingers not! Surely he

will tear down the slum and whelm the robbers in their iniquity and

visit upon us all punishment for the crime which all alike have shared!

Into the pit which we have left digged for the children of others shall

not our own children fall? Is happiness safe for any while to any

happiness is denied?

"It is a crime that a baby should live so and die so. It is a villainy

and we all are villains who let it be. No matter how many are guilty,

each one who lives with hands unbound is as guilty as any. It were better

to die alone, fighting the whole world single-handed, refusing to share

the sin or to tolerate it or to live while it was, than with halting

speech to protest and with supple conscience to compromise. He is a

coward who lets a baby die or a woman sink to shame or a fellow-man be

humbled, alone and unassisted and unrighted. She is false to the divinity

of womanhood who does not feel the tigress in her when a little one who

might be her little one is tossed, stifled by unholy conditions, into its

grave. But where are the men, now, who will strike a blow for the babies?

Where are the women who will put their white teeth into the murderous

hands of the Society that throttles the little ones and robs the weak and

simple and cloaks itself with a 'law and order' which outrages the

Supreme Law of that Humanity evolving in us?

"Surely we are all tainted and corrupted, even the best of us, by the

scrofulous cowardice, the fearsome selfishness, of a decaying

civilisation! Surely we are only fit to be less than human, to be slave

to conditions that we ourselves might govern if we would, to be criminal

accomplices in the sins of social castes, to be sad victims of inhuman

laws or still sadder defenders of inhumanity! Oh, for the days when our

race was young, when its women slew themselves rather than be shamed rid

when its men, trampling a rotten empire down, feared neither God nor man

and held each other brothers and hated, each one, the tyrant as the

common foe of all! Better the days when from the forests and the steppes

our forefathers burst, half-naked and free, communists and conquerors, a

fierce avalanche of daring men and lusty women who beat and battered Rome

down like Odin's hammer that they were! Alas, for the heathen virtues and

the wild pagan fury for freedom and for the passion and purity that Frega

taught to the daughters of the barbarian! And alas, for the sword that

swung then, unscabbarded, by each man's side and for the knee that never

bent to any and for the fearless eyes that watched unblenched while the

gods lamed each other with their lightnings in the thunder-shaken storm!

Gone forever seemed the days when the land was for all, and the cattle

and the fruits of the field, and when, unruled by kings, untrammelled by

priests, untyrannised by pretence of 'law,' our fathers drank in from

Nature's breast the strength and vigour that gave it even to this little

babe to fight its hopeless fight for life so bravely and so long. Odin

was dead whose sons dared go to hell with their own people and Frega was

no more whose magic filled with molten fire the veins of all true lovers

and nerved with desperate courage the hand of her who guarded the purity

of her body and the happiness of her child. The White Christ had come

when wealth and riches and conquests had upheaped wrongs, upon the heads

of the wrongers, the cross had triumphed over the hammer when the fierce

freedom of the North had worn itself out in selfish foray; the

shaven-pated priest had come to teach patience as God-given when a

robber-caste grew up to whom it seemed wise to uproot the old ideas from

the mind of the people whose spent courage it robbed. Alas, for the days

when it was not righteous to submit to wrong nor wicked to strike tyranny

to the ground, when one met it, no matter where! Alas, for the men of the

Past and the women, their faith and their courage and their virtue and

their gods, the hearts large to feel and the brains prompt to think and

the arms strong to do, the bare feet that followed the plough and trod in

the winepress of God and the brown hands that milked cows and tore kings

from their thrones by their beard! They were gone and a feebler people

spoke their tongue and bore their name, a people that bent its back to

the rod and bared its head to the cunning and did not rise as one man

when in its midst a baby was murdered while all around a helpless

kinsfolk were being robbed and wronged.

"For the past, who would not choose it? Who would not, if they could,

drop civilisation from them as one shakes off a horrid nightmare at the

dawning of the day? Who would not be again a drover of cattle, a follower

of the plough, a milker of cows, a spinner of wool-yarn by the fireside,

to be, as well, strong and fierce and daring, slave to none and fearing

none, ignorant alike of all the wisdom and all the woes of this hateful

life that is?

"For only one moment of the past if the whole past could not be! Only to

be free for a moment if the rest were impossible! Only to lose one's hair

and bare one's feet and girdle again the single garment round one's waist

and to be filled with the frenzy that may madden still as it maddened our

mothers when the Roman legions conquered! Only to stand for a moment,

free, on the barricade, outlawed and joyous, with Death, Freedom's

impregnable citadel, opening its gates behind--and to pass through, the

red flag uplifted in the sight of all men, with flaming slums and smoking

wrongs for one's funereal pyre!"

* * * * *

So Nellie thought in her indignation and sorrow, changing the wet cloth

on the baby's head, powerless to help it, uncomforted by creeds that

moulder in the crimson-cushioned pews. She knew that she was unjust,

carried away by her tumultuous emotions, knew also, in her heart, that

there was something more to be desired than mere wild outbreaks of the

despairing. Only she thought, as we all think, in phases, and as she

would certainly have talked had opportunity offered while she was in the

mood, and as she would most undoubtedly have written had she just then

been writing. The more so as there was a wave of indignation and anger

sweeping over Australia, sympathetic with the indignation and anger of

the voteless workers in the Queensland bush. The companions of her

childhood were to be Gatling-gunned because of the squatters, whose

selfish greed and heartless indifference to all others had made them

hateful to this selector's daughter. Because the bushmen would not take

the squatters' wage and yield his liberty as a workman to the squatter's

bidding and agree to this and to that without consultation or discussion,

the scum of southern towns and the sifted blacklegs of southern 'estates'

were to be drafted in hordes to Queensland to break down the unionism

that alone protected the bushman and made him more of a man than he had

been when the squatter could do as he would and did. From the first days

she could remember she had heard how the squatters filched from the

bushmen in their stores and herded the bushmen in vile huts and preferred

every colour to white when there were workers wanted; and how the

magistrates were all squatters or squatters' friends and how Government

was for the squatters and for nobody else on the great Western plains;

and she knew from Ned of the homeless, wandering life the bushmen led and

how new thoughts were stirring among them and rousing them from their

aimless, hopeless living. She knew more, too, knew what the bushman was:

frank as a child, keeping no passing thought unspoken, as tender as a

woman to those he cared for, responsive always to kindly, earnest words,

boiling over with anger one moment and shouting with good humour the

next, open-handed with sovereigns after months and years of lonely

toiling or sharing his last plug of tobacco with a stranger met on the

road. His faults she knew as well: his drunkenness often, his looseness

of living, his excitability, all born of unnatural surroundings; but his

virtues she knew as well, none better, and all her craving for the scent

of the gums and to feel again the swaying saddle and to hear again the

fathomless noon-day silence and to see again the stock rushing in

jumbling haste for the water-hole, went out in a tempestuous sympathy for

those who struggled for the union in the bush. And Ned! She hardly knew

what she thought about Ned.

She was unjust in her thoughts, she knew, not altogether unjust but

somewhat. There had been heroism in the passive struggle of six months

before, when the seamen left the boats at the wharves for the sake of

others and when the "lumpers" threw their coats over their shoulders and

stood by the seamen and when the miners came up from the mines so that no

coal should go to help fight comrades they had never seen. Her heart had

thrilled with joy to see so many grip hands and stand together, officers

and stewards and gasmen and lightermen and engine-drivers and cooks and

draymen, from Adelaide to far-off Cooktown, in every port, great and

small, all round the eastern coast. As the strike dragged on she lived

herself as she had lived in the starving hand-to-mouth days of her bitter

poverty, to help find bread for the hungry families she knew. For

Phillips and Macanany were on strike, while Hobbs, who had moved round

the corner, had been sacked for refusing to work on the wharves; and many

another in the narrow street and the other narrow streets about it were

idling and hungering and waiting doggedly to see what might happen, with

strike pay falling steadily till there was hardly any strike pay at all.

And Nellie's heart, that had thrilled with joy when New Unionism uprose

in its strength and drew the line hard and fast between the Labour that

toiled and the Capitalism that reaped Labour's gains, ached with mingled

pride and pain to see how hunger itself could not shake the stolid

unionism about her. She saw, too, the seed that for years had been sown

by unseen, unknown sowers springing up on every hand and heard at every

street corner and from every unionist mouth that everything belonged of

right to those who worked and that the idle rich were thieves and

robbers. She smiled grimly to watch Mrs. Macanany and viragoes like her

pouring oil on the flames and drumming the weak-kneed up and screaming

against "blacklegging" as a thing accurst. And when she understood that

the fight was over, while apparently it was waxing thicker, she had

waited to see what the end would be, longing for something she knew not

what. She used to go down town, sometimes of an evening, to watch the

military patrols, riding up and down with jingling bits and clanking

carbines and sabres as if in a conquered city. She heard, in her

workroom, the dull roar of the angry thousands through whose midst the

insolent squatters drove in triumphal procession, as if inciting to

lawlessness, with dragoon-guarded, police-protected drays of blackleg

wool. Then the end came and the strike was over, leaving the misery it

had caused and the bitter hatreds it had fostered and the stern lesson

which all did not read as the daily papers would have had them. And now

the same Organised Capitalism which had fought and beaten the maritime

men and the miners, refusing to discuss or to confer or to arbitrate or

to conciliate, but using its unjust possession of the means of living to

starve into utter submission those whose labour made it rich, was at the

same work in the Queensland bush, backing the squatters, dominating

government, served by obsequious magistrates and a slavish military and

aided by all who thought they had to gain by the degradation of their

fellows or who had been ground so low that they would cut each other's

throats for a crust or who, in their blind ignorance, misunderstood what

it all meant. And there were wild reports afloat of resistance brooding

in Queensland and of excited meetings in the bush and of troops being

sent to disperse the bushmen's camps. Why did they endure these things,

Nellie thought, watching and waiting, as impotent to aid them as she was

to save the baby dying now beside her. Day by day she expected Ned.

She knew Ned was in the South, somewhere, though she had not seen him. He

had come down on some business, in blissful ignorance of the nearness of

the coming storm, but would be called back, she knew, now this new

trouble had begun. And then he would be arrested, she was sure, because

he was outspoken and fearless and would urge the men to stand out till

the last, and would be sent to prison by legal trickery under this new

law the papers said had been discovered; all so that the unions might

break down and the squatters do as they liked. Which, perhaps, was why

her thoughts for the time being were particularly tinged with pessimism.

If the vague something called "law and order" was determined to be broken

so that the bush could be dragooned for the squatter it seemed to her as

well to make a substantial breakage while men were about it--and she

did not believe they would.

She placed a cool damp cloth on the baby's head, wishing that its mother

would come up, Mrs. Hobbs having been persuaded to go downstairs for some

tea and a rest while Nellie watched by the sick child and having been

entangled in household affairs the moment she appeared in the dingy

kitchen where Mrs. Macanany, to the neglect of her own home, was "seeing

to things." The hard breathing was becoming easier. Nellie brought the

candle burning in a broken cup. The flushed face was growing paler and

more natural. The twitching muscles were stilling. There was a change.

One unused to seeing Death approach would have thought the baby settling

down at last to a refreshing, health-reviving sleep. Nellie had lived for

years where the children die like rabbits, and knew.

"Mrs. Hobbs!" she called, softly but urgently, running to the stairs.

The poor woman came hastily to the foot. "Quick, Mrs. Hobbs!" said

Nellie, beckoning.

"Oh, Mrs. Macanany! The baby's dying!" cried poor Mrs. Hobbs, tripping on

her dragging skirts in her frantic haste to get upstairs. Mrs. Macanany

followed. The children set up a boohoo that brought Mr. Hobbs from the

front doorstep where he had been sitting smoking. He rushed up the stairs

also. When he reached the top he saw, by the light of the candle in

Nellie's hand, a little form lying still and white; its mother crouched

on the floor, wailing over it.

It was a small room, almost bare, the bedstead of blistered iron, the

mattress thin, the bedding tattered and worn. A soapbox was the chair on

which Nellie had been sitting; there was no other. Against the wall,

above a rough shelf, was a piece of mirror-glass without a frame. The

window in the sloping roof was uncurtained. On the poor bed, under the

tattered sheet, was the dead baby. And on the floor, writhing, was its

mother, Mrs. Macanany trying to comfort her between the pauses of her own

vehement neighbourly grief.

Nellie closed the dead baby's eyes, set the candle on the shelf and moved

to the door where Mr. Hobbs stood bewildered and dumbfoundered, his pipe

still in his hand. "Speak to her!" she whispered to him. "It's very hard

for her."

Mr. Hobbs looked hopelessly at his pipe. He did not recollect where to

put it. Nellie, understanding, took it from his fingers and pushed him

gently by the arm towards his wife. He knelt down by the weeping woman's

side and put his hands on the head that was bent to the ground. "Sue," he

said, huskily, not knowing what to say. "Don't take on so! It's better

for 'im."

"It's not better," she cried in answer, kneeling up and frantically

throwing her arms across the bed. "How can it be better? Oh, God! I wish

I was dead. Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

"Don't, Sue!" begged Mr. Hobbs, weeping in a clumsy way, as men usually do.

"It's not right," cried the mother, rolling her head, half-crazed. "It's

not right, Jack. It's not right. It didn't ought to have died. It didn't

ought to have died, Jack. It wouldn't if it had a chance, but it hadn't a

chance. It didn't have a chance, Jack. It didn't have a chance."

"Don't, Sue!" begged Mr. Hobbs again. "You did what you could."

"I didn't," she moaned. "I didn't. I didn't do what I could. There were

lots of things I might have done that I didn't. I wasn't as kind as I

might have been. I was cross to it and hasty. Oh, my God, my God! Why

couldn't I have died instead? Why couldn't I? Why don't we all die? It's

not right. It's not right. Oh, my God, my God!"

And she thought God, whatever that is, did not hear and would not answer,

she not knowing that in her own pain and anguish were the seeds of

progression and in her cries the whetting of the sickle wherewith all

wrongs are cut down when they are ripe for the reaper. So she wept and

lamented, bewailing her dead, rebellious and self-reproachful.

"Take the baby, dear?" quoth Mrs. Macanany, reappearing from a descent to

the kitchen with a six months' infant squalling in her arms. "Give it a

drink now! It'll make you feel better."

Poor Mrs. Hobbs clutched the baby-in-arms convulsively and sobbed over

it, finding some comfort in the exertion. To Mrs. Macanany's muttered

wrath Nellie intervened, however, with warnings of "fits" as likely to

follow the nursing of the child while its mother was so excited and

feverish. Mr. Hobbs loyally seconded Nellie's amendment and with

unexpected shrewdness urged the mother to control her grief for the dead

for the sake of the living. Which succeeding, to some extent, they got

the poor woman downstairs and comforted her with a cup of tea, Nellie

undressing and soothing the crying children, who sobbed because of this

vague happening which the eldest child of 11 explained as meaning that

"Teddy's going to be put in the deep hole."

It was after 10 when Nellie went. Mrs. Hobbs cried again as Nellie kissed

her "good-night." Mr. Hobbs shook hands with genuine friendship. "I don't

know whatever we'd have done without you, Miss Lawton," he said,

bashfully, following her to the door.

"I don't know what they'll do without you, Mr. Hobbs," retorted Nellie,

whose quick tongue was noted in the neighbourhood.

He did not answer, only fumbled with the door-knob as she stood on the

step in the brilliant moonlight.

"Give it up!" urged Nellie. "It makes things worse and they're bad enough

at the best. It's not right to your wife and the children."

"I don't go on the spree often," pleaded Mr. Hobbs.

"Not as often as some," admitted Nellie, "but if it's only once in a

life-time it's too often. A man who has drink in him isn't a man. He

makes himself lower than the beasts and we're low enough as it is without

going lower ourselves. He hurts himself and he hurts his family and he

hurts his mates. He's worse than a blackleg."

"I don't see as it's so bad as that," protested Mr. Hobbs.

"Yes, it is," insisted Nellie, quickly. "Every bit as bad. It's drink

that makes most of the blacklegs, anyway. Most of them are men whose

manhood has been drowned out of them with liquor and the weak men in the

unions are the drunkards who have no heart when the whisky's out of them.

Everybody knows that. And when men who aren't as bad feel down-hearted

and despairing instead of bracing up and finding out what makes it they

cheer up at a pub and imagine they're jolly good fellows when they're

just cowards dodging their duty. They get so they can't take any pleasure

except in going on the spree and if they only go on once in a month or

two "--this was a hit at Hobbs--"they're the worse for it. Why, look

here, Mr. Hobbs, if I hadn't been here you'd have gone to-night and

brought home beer and comforted yourselves getting fuddled. That's so,

you know, and it wouldn't be right. It's just that sort of thing "--she

added softly--"that stops us seeing how it is the little ones die when

they shouldn't. If everybody would knock off drinking for ten years,

everybody, we'd have everything straightened out by then and nobody would

ever want to go on the spree again."

She stood with her back to the moonlight, fingering the post of the door.

Mr. Hobbs fumbled still with the door-knob and looked every way but at

her. She waited for an answer, but he did not speak.

"Come," she continued, after a pause. "Can't you give it up? I know it's

a lot to do when one's used to it. But you'll feel better in the end and

your wife will be better right away and the children, and it won't be

blacklegging on those who're trying to make things better. No matter how

poor he is if a man's sober he's a man, while if he drinks, no matter if

he's got millions, he's a brute."

"You never drink anything, Miss Lawton, do you?" asked Mr. Hobbs,

swinging the door.

"I never touched it in my life," said Nellie.

"Do you really think you're better for it?"

"I think it has kept me straight," said Nellie, earnestly. "I wouldn't

touch a drop to save my life. Some people call us who don't drink fools

just because a few humbugs make temperance a piece of cant. I think those

who get drunk are fools or who drink when there's a prospect of

themselves or those they drink with getting drunk. Drink makes a man an

empty braggart or a contented fool. It makes him heartless not only to

others but to himself."

There was another pause.

"If you won't for the sake of your wife and your children and yourself

and everybody, will you do it to please me?" asked Nellie, who knew that

Mr. Hobbs regarded her as the one perfect woman in Australia and,

woman-like, was prepared to take advantage thereof.

"You know, Miss Lawton, I'm not one of the fellows who swear off Monday

mornings and get on the spree the next Saturday night. If I say I'll turn

temperance I'll turn." So quoth the sturdy Hobbs.

"I know that. If you were the other sort do you think I'd be bothering

you?" retorted Nellie.

"Well, I'll do it," said Mr. Hobbs. "So help me----"

"Never mind that," interrupted the girl. "If a man's a man his word's his

word, and if he's not all the swearing in the world won't make any

difference. Let's shake on it!" She held out her hand.

Mr. Hobbs dropped the door-knob and covered her long, slender hand with

his great, broad, horny-palmed one.

"Good night, Mr. Hobbs!" she said, the "shake" being over. "Get her to

sleep and don't let her fret!"

"Good night, Miss Nellie!" he answered, using her name for the first

time. He wanted to say something more but his voice got choked up and he

shut the door in her face, so confused was he.

"Hello, Nellie!" said a voice that made her heart stand still, as she

crossed the road, walking sadly homewards. At the same time two hands

stretched out of the dense shadow into the lane of moonlight that shone

down an alley way she was passing and that cut a dazzling swath in the

blackness made still blacker by the surrounding brilliancy. "I've been

wondering if you ever would finish that pitch of yours."

It was Ned.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE ROAD TO QUEENSLAND.

While Nellie had been talking temperance to Mr. Hobbs, Ned had been

watching her impatiently from the other side of the street. For an hour

and more he had been prowling up and down, up and down, between the

Phillipses and the Hobbses, having learned from Mrs. Phillips, who looked

wearier than ever, where the Hobbses lived now and why Nellie had gone

there after hardly stopping to swallow her dinner. At seven he had

acquired this information and returned soon after nine to find Nellie

still at the house of sickness, now, alas, the house of death. So he had

paced up and down, up and down, waiting for her. He had seen the Hobbs'

door open at last and had watched impatiently, from the shadow opposite,

the conversation on the door step. His heart gave a great leap as she

stopped across the road full in the moonlight. He saw again the sad stern

face that had lived as an ideal in his memory for two long eventful

years. There was none like her in the whole world to him, not one.

The years had come to her in this stifling city, amid her struggling and

wrestling of spirit, but the strong soul in her had borne her up through

all, she had aged without wearying, grown older and sadder without

withering from her intense womanhood. Broader of hip a little, as Ned

could see with the keen eyes of love, not quite so slender in the waist,

fuller in the uncorsetted bust, more sloping of shoulder as though the

pillared neck had fleshed somewhat at the base; the face, too, had

gathered form and force, in the freer curve of her will-full jaw, in the

sterner compression of fuller lips that told their tale of latent

passions strangely bordering on the cruel, in the sweeter blending of

Celt and Saxon shown in straight nose, strong cheek-bones and well-marked

brows. She trod still with the swinging spring of the bill-people, erect

and careless. Only the white gleam of her collar and a dash of colour in

her hat broke the sombre hue that clothed her, as before, from head to

foot.

Ned devoured her with his eyes as she came rapidly towards him,

unconscious of his presence. She was full grown at last, in woman's

virgin prime, her mind, her soul, her body, all full and strong with pure

thoughts, natural instincts and human passions. Her very sadness gave her

depths of feeling that never come to those who titter and fritter youth

away. Her very ignoring of the love-instincts in her, absorbed as her

thoughts were in other things, only gave those instincts the untrammelled

freedom that alone gives vigorous growth. She was barbarian, as her

thoughts had been beside the dying baby: the barbarian cultured, as

Shakespeare was, the barbarian wronged, as was Spartacus, the barbarian

hating and loving and yearning and throbbing, the creature of her

instincts, a rebel against restrictions, her mind subject only to her own

strong will. She was a woman of women, in Ned's eyes at least. One kiss

from her would be more than all other women could give, be their

self-abandonment what it might. To be her lover, her husband, a man might

yield up his life with a laugh, might surrender all other happiness and

be happy ever after. There was none like her in the whole world to Ned,

not one--and he came to say good-bye to her, perhaps for ever.

In the black shadows thrown by the high-rising moon, the crossing

alley-way cut a slice of brilliancy as if with a knife. From the shadow

into the moonshine two hands stretched towards her as Ned's voice greeted

her. She saw his tall form looming before her.

"Ned!" she cried, in answer, grasping both his hands and drawing him

forward into the light. "I was expecting you. I've been thinking of you

every minute for the last week. How tired you look! You're not ill?"

"No! I'm all right," he answered, laughing. "It's those confounded

trains. I can't sleep on them, and they always give me a headache. But

you're looking well, Nellie. I can't make out how you do it in this

stuffed-up town."

"I'm all right," She replied, noticing a red rose in his coat but saying

nothing of it. "Nothing seems to touch me. Did you come straight

through?"

"Straight through. We rushed things all we could but I couldn't get away

before. Besides, as long as I get Saturday's boat in Brisbane it'll be as

soon as it's possible to get on. That gives me time to stay over to-night

here. I didn't see you going down and I began to wonder if I'd see you

going back. You can do a pitch, Nellie. When a fellow's waiting for you,

too."

Nellie laughed, then sobered down. "The baby's dead," she said, sadly.

"You recollect it was born when you were here before, the day we went to

the Strattons."

"I don't wonder," he answered, looking round at the closed-in street,

with its dull, hopeless, dreary rows of narrow houses and hard roadway

between. "But I suppose you're tired, Nellie. Let's go and get some

oysters!"

"I don't care to, thanks. I feel like a good long walk," she went on,

taking his arm and turning him round to walk on with her. "I'm thirsting

for a breath of fresh air and to stretch myself. I'm a terrible one for

walks, you know."

"Not much riding here, Nellie;" walking on.

"That's why I walk so. I can go from here right down to Lady Macquarie's

Chair in under half-an-hour. Over two miles! Not bad, eh, Ned?"

"That's a good enough record. Suppose we go down there now, Nellie, only

none of your racing time for me. It's not too late for you?"

"Too late for me! My word! I'm still at the Phillipses and they don't

bother. I wouldn't stay anywhere where I couldn't come and go as I liked.

I'd like to go it you're not too tired."

"It'll do me good," said Ned, gleefully. So they set off, arm in arm.

After they had walked a dozen yards he stopped suddenly.

"I've brought you a rose, Nellie," he exclaimed, handing it to her. "I'm

so pleased to see you I forgot it."

"I knew it was for me," she said, fondly, pinning it at her throat. "How

ever did you recollect my colour?"

"Do you think I forget anything about you, Nellie?" he asked. She did not

answer and they walked on silently.

"Where is Geisner?" he enquired, after a pause. "I don't know. Why?"

"Oh, nothing. Only he'd advise us a little."

After a pause: "What do you think of things, Ned?"

"What do I think? We couldn't get any wires through that explained

anything. There was nothing on but the ordinary strike business when I

came down. I suppose some of the chaps have been talking wild and the

Government has snapped at the chance to down the union. You know what our

fellows are."

"Yes. But I don't quite see what the Government's got to gain.

Proclamations and military only make men worse, I think."

"Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't," answered Ned. "A crowd

that's doing no harm, only kicking up a bit of a row, will scatter like

lambs sometimes if a single policeman collars one of them. Another time

the same crowd will jump on a dozen policemen. The Government thinks the

crowd'll scatter and I'm afraid the crowd'll jump."

"Why afraid?" enquired Nellie, biting her lips.

"Because it has no chance," answered Ned. "These are all newspaper lies

about them having arms and such nonsense. There aren't 500 guns in the

whole Western country and half of them are old muzzle-loading shot guns.

The kangarooers have got good rifles but nineteen men out of twenty no

more carry one than they carry a house."

"But the papers say they're getting them!"

"Where are they to get them from, supposing they want them and naturally

the chaps want them when they hear of military coming to 'shoot 'em

down'? You can reckon that the Government isn't letting any be carried on

the railways and, even if they did I don't believe you could buy 500

rifles in all Queensland at any one time."

"Then it's all make-up that's in the papers? It certainly seemed to me

that there was something in it."

"That's just it, there is something in it. Just enough, I'm convinced, to

give the Government an excuse for doing what they did during the maritime

strike without any excuse and what the squatters have been planning for

them to do all along."

"One of the Queensland men who was here a week or two ago was telling me

about the maritime strike business. It was the first I'd heard of that.

Griffith didn't seem to be that way years ago," said Nellie.

"Griffith is a fraud," declared Ned, hotly. "I'd sooner have one of the

Pure Merinoes than Griffith. They do fight us out straight and fair,

anyway, and don't cant much about knowing that things aren't right, with

Elementary Property Bills and 'Wealth and Want' and that sort of wordy

tommy-rot. I like to know where to find a man and that trick of Griffith

at the maritime strike in Brisbane showed where to find him right

enough."

"Was it Griffith?" asked Nellie.

"Of course it was Griffith. Who else would it be? The fellows in Brisbane

feel sore over it, I tell you. When they'd been staying up nights and

getting sick and preaching themselves hoarse, talking law and order to

the chaps on strike and rounding on every man who even boo'd as though he

were a blackleg, and when the streets were quieter with thousands of

rough fellows about than they were ordinary times, those shop-keepers and

wool-dealers and commission agents went off their heads and got the

Government to swear in 'specials' and order out mounted troopers and

serve out ball cartridges. And all the time the police said it wasn't

necessary, that the men on strike were perfectly orderly. Who'd ever do

that but Griffith? And what can we expect from a government that did such

a thing?"

"The Brisbane men do seem sore over that," agreed Nellie. "The man who

told me vowed it would be a long time before he'd do policeman's work

again. He said that for him Government might keep its own order and see

how soon it got tired of it."

"Well, it's the same thing going on now. I mean the Government and the

squatters fixing up this military business between them just to

dishearten our fellows. Besides, they've got it into their heads,

somehow, that most men are only unionists through fear and that if

they're sure of 'protection' they'll blackleg in thousands."

"That's a funny notion," said Nellie. "But all employers have it or

pretend to have it. I fancy it comes through men, afraid of being

victimised if they display independence, shifting the responsibility of

their sticking up for rules upon the union and letting the boss think

they don't approve of the rules but are afraid to break them, when

they're really afraid to let him know they approve them."

"That's about it, Nellie, but most people find it easy to believe what

they want to believe. Anyway, I've got it straight from headquarters that

the squatters expect to get blacklegs working under enough military

protection to make blacklegging feel safe, as they look at it, and then

they think our unions will break right down. And, of course, what maddens

our crowd is that blacklegs are collected in another part of the world

and shipped in under agreements which they can be sent to prison if they

break, or think they can, which amounts to the same, and are kept guarded

away from us, like convicts, so that we can't get to them to talk to them

and win them over as is done in ordinary strikes in towns."

"That's shameful!" said Nellie. "The squatter governments have a lot to

answer for."

"And what can we do?" continued Ned. "They won't let us have votes. There

are 20,000 men in the back country altogether and I don't believe 5000 of

them have votes and they're mostly squatters and their managers and

'lifers' and the storekeepers and people who own land. I've no vote and

can't get one. None of the fellows in my lot can get votes. We can't

alter things in Parliament and the law and the government and the

military and the police and the magistrates and everything that's got

authority are trying to down us and we can't help ourselves. Do you

wonder that our chaps get hot and talk wild and act a little wild now and

then?"

Nellie pressed his arm answeringly.

"I feel myself a coward sometimes," went on Ned. "Last drought-time some

of us were camped 'way back at a water-hole on a reserve where there was

the only grass and water we could get for hundreds of miles. We had our

horses and the squatter about wanted the grass for his horses and tried

to starve us away by refusing to sell us stores. He wouldn't even sell us

meat. He was a fool, for we took his mutton as we wanted it, night-times,

and packed our stores from the nearest township, a hundred and eighty

miles off. I used to think that the right thing to do was to take what we

wanted off his run and from his store, in broad daylight, and pay him

fair prices and blow the heads off anybody who went to stop us. For we'd

a better right to the grass than he had. Only, you see, Nellie, it was

easier to get even with him underhand and we seem to do always what's

easiest."

"They've always acted like that, those squatters, Ned," said Nellie.

"Don't you recollect when they closed the road across Arranvale one

drought 'cause the selectors were cutting it up a bit, drawing water from

the reserve, and how everybody had to go seven miles further round for

every drop of water? I've often wondered why the gates weren't lifted and

the road used in spite of them."

"They'd have sent for the police," remarked Ned. "Next year Arranvale

shed was burned," he added.

"It's always that way," declared Nellie, angrily. "For my part I'd sooner

see the wildest, most hopeless outbreak, than that sort of thing."

"So would the squatters, Nellie," retorted Ned, grimly. "I feel all you

do," he went on. "But human nature is human nature and the squatters did

their level best, ignorantly I admit, to make the men mere brutes, and

the life alone has made hundreds mad, so we can't wonder if the result

isn't altogether pleasant. They've made us hut in with Chinese and

Malays. They've stuck up prices till flour that cost them tuppence a

pound I've seen selling us for a shilling. They've cut wages down

whenever they got a chance and are cutting them now, and they want to

break up our unions with their miserable 'freedom of contract' agreement.

Before there were unions in the bush the only way to get even with a

squatter was by some underhand trick and now we've got our unions and are

ready to stand up manly and fight him fair he's coming the same dodge on

us that the shipowners came on the seamen, only worse. Going to use

contract labour from the South that we can't get near to talk to and that

can't legally knock off if we did talk it over, and going to break up the

camps and shoot down unarmed men just to stop the strike. How can you

wonder if a few fires start or expect the chaps to be indignant if they

do? Besides, half the fires that happen at times like this are old

shanties of sheds that are insured above their value. It's convenient to

be able to put everything down to unionists."

"It worries me," said Nellie, after a few minutes' silence.

"Me too," said Ned. "We've got such a good case if both sides could only

be shown up. We've been willing to talk the whole thing over all along

and we're willing yet or to arbitrate it either. We're right and lots of

these fellows know it who abuse us. And if our chaps do talk a bit rough

and get excited and even if they do occasionally carry on a bit, it's not

a circumstance to the way the other side talk and get excited and carry

on. Only all the law is against us and none against them. Our chaps are

so hot that they don't go at it like lawyers but like a bull at a gate,

when they talk or write. And so the Government gets a hold on us and can

raise a dust and prevent people from seeing how things really are!"

"Ned," she said, after a pause. "Tell me honestly! Do you thing there

will be any trouble?"

"Honestly, I don't, Nellie. At least nothing serious. Some of the fellows

may start to buck if the Government does try to break up the camps and it

might spread a little, but there are no guns and so I don't see how it

could. There seems to be a lot of talk everywhere but that's hard fact.

Ten thousand bushmen with rifles wouldn't have much trouble with the

Government and the Government wouldn't have much trouble with ten

thousand bushmen without rifles. Besides, we're trying to do things

peacefully and I don't see why we shouldn't win this round as things

stand and get votes soon into the bargain!"

"But if there is trouble, Ned?" she persisted. "Supposing it does start?"

"I shall go with the chaps, of course, if that's what you mean."

"Knowing it's useless, just to throw your life away?" she asked, quietly,

not protestingly, but as one seeking information.

"I've eaten their bread," answered Ned. "Whatever mad thing is done,

however it's done, I'm with them. I should be a coward if I stood out of

it because I didn't agree with it. Besides----"

"Besides what?"

"I believe in Fate somehow. Not as anything outside bossing us, you know,

but as the whole heap of causes and conditions, of which we're a part

ourselves. But I don't feel that there'll be any real trouble though some

of us'll get into trouble just the same."

"The Government will pick the big thistles, you mean."

"Those they think the big thistles, I suppose. Of course the Government

is only the squatters and the companies in another shape and they only

want to break down the strike and are glad of any excuse that'll give

them a slant at us. They have a silly idiotic notion that only a few men

keep the unions going and that if they can get hold of a dozen or two the

others will all go to work like lambs just as the squatter wants The

fellows here have heard that the Government's getting ready to make a lot

of arrests up there. I'm one."

Nellie squeezed his arm again; "I've heard that. I suppose they can do

anything they like, Ned, but surely they won't dare to really enforce

that old George the Fourth law they've resurrected?"

"Why not? They'll do anything, Nellie. They're frantic and think they

must or the movement will flood them out. They'd like nothing better than

a chance to shoot a mob of us down like wild turkeys. They have squatter

magistrates and squatter judges--you know we've got some daisies up in

Queensland--and they'll snap up all the best lawyers and pack the jury

with a lot of shopkeepers who're just in a panic at the newspaper yarns.

The worst interpretation'll be put on everything and every foolish word

be magnified a thousand times. I know the gentry too well. They'll have

us sure as fate and all I hope is that the boys won't be foolish enough

to give them an excuse to massacre a few hundred. It'll be two or three

years apiece, the Trades Hall people have heard. However, I suppose we

can stand it. I don't care so long as the chaps stick to the union."

"Do you think they will?" asked Nellie, after another pause.

"I'm sure they will. They can rake a hundred of us in for life and knock

the union endways and in a year there'll be as much fight in the boys as

there is now, and more bitter, too. Why they're raising money in Sydney

for us already and I'm told that it was squeezed as dry as a bone over

the maritime strike. The New South Wales fellows are all true blue and so

they are down Adelaide way, as good as gold yet. The bosses don't know

what a job they tackled when they started in to down unionism. They fancy

that if they can only smash our fellows they'll have unionism smashed all

over Australia. The fun will only just have started then."

"What makes you so sure the men will stick, Ned?" enquired Nellie.

"Because they all know what the squatter was before the union and what

he'll be the minute he gets another chance. The squatters will keep the

unions going right enough. Besides everybody's on for a vote now in the

bush and, of course, the Government is going to keep it from them as long

as possible. Without unionism they'll never get votes and they know it."

They had reached the path by Wooloomooloo Bay. Ned took off his hat and

walked bareheaded. "This is lovely!" he remarked, refreshed.

"What a fool Griffith is!" cried Nellie, suddenly.

"He's not as cunning as he ought to be," assented Ned. "But why?"

"Do you know what I'd do if I were him?" answered Nellie. "I'd send all

the military and all the police home and go up into the bush by myself

and have a chat with the committee and the men at the camps and find out

just how they looked at the thing and ask them to assist in keeping order

and I'd see that they got justice if Parliament had to be called together

specially to do it."

"He's not smart enough to do that," answered Ned. "Besides, the squatters

and the capitalistic set are the Parliament and wouldn't let him. I

suppose he believes every lie they stuff him with and never gives a

minute's thought to our having a side."

"He didn't use to be a bad man, once," persisted Nellie.

"I suppose he's not a bad man now," cried Ned, boiling over. "He's not on

the make like most of them and he fancies he's very patriotic, I imagine,

but what does he know of us or of the squatter? He sees us at our worst

and the squatter at his best and we've got different ways of talking and

when we get drunk on poisoned rum that the Government lets be sold we

aren't as gentlemanly as those who get drunk on Hennessy and champagne.

We don't curse in the same gentlemanly way and we splash out what we

think and don't wear two faces like his set. And so he thinks we're

ruffians and outlaws and he can't feel why the bushmen care for the

unions. The squatter has taken up all the land and the squatter law has

tied up what hasn't been taken and most of us are a lot of outcasts,

without homes or wives or children or anything that a man should have

barring our horses. We've got no votes and every law is set against us

and we've no rights and the squatter'd like to throw us all out to make

room for Chinese. There's nothing in front of the bushman now unless the

union gets it for him and they're trying to break up our union, Griffith

and his push, and, by God, they shan't do it. They haven't gaols enough

to hold every good unionist, not if they hang a thousand of us to start

with."

"What does it matter, after all, Ned?" said Nellie, gently. "The Cause

itself gains by everything that makes men think. There'll never be peace

until the squatter goes altogether and the banks and the whole system.

And the squatter can't help it. I abuse him myself but I know he only

does what most of our own class in his place would do."

"Of course he can't help it, Nellie," agreed Ned. "They're mostly

mortgaged up to the neck like the shopkeepers and squeeze us partly to

keep afloat themselves. It's the system, not the squatters personally. A

lot of them are decent enough, taking them off their runs and some are

decent even on their runs. Even the squatters aren't all bad. I don't

wish them any harm individually but just the same we're fighting them and

they're fighting us and what I feel sorest about is that it's just

because the New Unionism is teaching our chaps to think and to be better

and to have ideas that they are trying so hard to down it."

"They don't know any better," repeated Nellie.

"That's what Geisner says, I recollect. I mind how he said they'd try

sending us to prison here in Australia. They're beginning soon."

They were right at the point now.

"There's only one thing I'd like to know first, Nellie."

"What is it, Ned?" she asked, unconsciously, absorbed in her fear for

him.

CHAPTER III.

A WOMAN'S WHIM.

"Nellie!"

It was a husky whisper. His throat was parched, his lips dry, his mouth

also. His heart thumped, thumped, thumped, so that it sickened him. He

shook nervously. His face twitched. He felt burning hot; then deadly

cold. He turned his hat slowly round and round in his trembling fingers.

It was as though he had turned woman. He did not even feel passion. He

dared not look at her. He could feel her there. He did not desire as he

had desired so often to snatch her to him, to crush her in his arms, to

smother her with kisses, to master her. All his strength fled from him in

an indescribable longing.

He had dreamed of this moment, often and often. He had rehearsed it in

his mind a thousand times, when the reins dropped on his horse's neck,

when he lay sleepless on the ground, even as he chatted to his mates. He

had planned what to say, how to say it, purposing to break down her

stubborn will with the passionate strength of his love for her, with mad

strong words, with subtle arguments. He had seen her hesitating in his

dreaming, had seen the flush come and go on her cheeks, her bosom heaving

beneath the black dress he knew so well. He had made good his wooing with

the tender violence that women forgive for love's sake, had caught her

and kissed her till her kisses answered and till she yielded him her

troth and pledged herself his wife. So he had dreamed in his folly. And

now he stood there like a whipped child, pleading huskily:

"Nellie!"

He had not known himself. He had not known her. Even now he hardly

understood that her glorious womanliness appealed to all that was highest

in him, that in her presence he desired to be a Man and so seemed to

himself weak and wicked. It was not her body only, it was her soul also

that he craved, that pure, clear soul of hers which shone in every tone

and every word and every look and every gesture. Beautiful she was,

strong and lithe and bearing her head up always as if in stern defiance;

beautiful in her cold virginity; beautiful in the latent passion that

slumbered lightly underneath the pale, proud face. But most beautiful of

all to him, most priceless, most longed for, was the personality in her,

the individuality which would have brought him to her were she the

opposite, physically, of all she was. He had wondered in reading

sometimes of the Buddhist thoughts if it were indeed that she was his

mate, that in re-incarnation after re-incarnation they had come together

and found in each other the completed self. And then he had wondered if

there were indeed in him such power and forcefulness as were in her and

if he were to her anything more than a rough, simple, ignorant bush

fellow, in whom she was interested a little for old acquaintance sake and

because of the common Cause they served. For to himself, he had been

still the same as before he ate from her hands the fruit of the Tree of

Knowledge. Absorbed in his work, a zealot, a fanatic, conscious of all

she had and of all he lacked, he had not noticed how his own mind had

expanded, how broader ideas had come to him, how the confidence born of

persistent thought gave force to his words and how the sincerity and

passion that rang in his voice reached if but for a moment the hearts of

men. When he thought of her mentality he doubted that she would be his,

she seemed so high above him. It was when he thought of her solely as a

Woman, when he remembered the smile of her parting, the hand-clinging

that was almost a caress, the tender "Come back to me again, Ned!" that

he felt himself her equal in his Manhood and dreamed his dream of how he

would woo and win her.

And now! Ah, now, he knew himself and knew her. He realised all that he

was, all that he might have been. He would have wooed her and Nemesis

struck him on the mouth, struck him dumb.

There come moments in our lives when we see ourselves. For years, for a

generation, till dying often, we live our lives and do not know except by

name the Ego that dwells within. We face death unflinchingly, as most men

do, and it never speaks. We love and we hate, with a lightness that is

held civilised, and it never stirs. We suffer and mourn and laugh and

sneer and it lies hidden. Then something stirs us to the very base of our

being and self-consciousness comes. And happy, thrice happy, in spite of

all sorrow and pain, no matter what has been or what awaits him, is he to

whom self-consciousness does not bring the self reproach that dieth not,

the remorse that never is quite quenched. He would have wooed and he was

dumb. For with a flash his life uprose before him. He saw himself naked

and he was ashamed.

Tremblingly, shaken with anguish, he saw himself--unfit to look into

the eyes of a woman such as this. Like loathsome images of a drunkard's

nightmare scenes that were past came to him. Upon his lips were kisses

that stung and festered, around his neck were the impress of arms that

dragged him down, into his eyes stared other eyes taunting him with the

evil glances that once seemed so dear. What had he of manhood to offer to

this pure woman. It seemed to him a blasphemy even to stand there by her.

His passion fled. He only felt a pitiful, gnawing, hopeless,

indescribable longing.

What he had been! How he had drunk and drunk and drunk again of the

filthy pools wherewith we civilised peoples still our yearnings for the

crystal spring of Love, that the dragon of Social Injustice guards from

us so well! His sins rose in front of him. They were sins now as they had

never been before. The monogamy of his race triumphed in him. For men and

for women alike he knew there was the same right and the same wrong.

His soul abhorred itself because of his unfitness to match with this

ideal woman of his people. He could feel her purity, as he stood there by

her. He could feel that her lips still waited for the lover of her life,

that round her waist the virgin zone still lay untied, that she could

still give herself with all the strength of unsullied purity and

unweakened passion. And he, who had thought in his miserable folly that

at least he was as much Man as she was Woman? He could only give her the

fragments of a life, the battered fragments of what once had been well

worth the having.

He knew that now. He saw himself naked and he knew what he was and what

he had been. He had feared comparison with her intellectually and he

towered above her, even now; he knew it. He knew now that to him it had

been given to sway the thoughts of men, to feel the pulse of the great

world beat, to weld discontent into action, to have an idea and to dare

and to give to others faith and hope. That came to him also, without

conceit, without egotism--with a rush of still more bitter infinitely

more unbearable, pain. For this, too, he had wasted, flung away, so it

seemed to him in his agony of degradation: because he had not been true

to his higher self, because he had not done as a true Man would. And so,

he had been blind. He saw it plainly, now, the path he should have trod,

trampling his weaknesses down, bending his whole life in one strong

effort, living only for the work at hand. And to him it came that,

perchance, on him was this great punishment that because of his

unworthiness the Cause must wait longer and struggle more; that because

he had not been strong little children would sob who might have laughed

and men would long for death who might have joyed in living. And he knew,

too, that had he but been what he might have been he would have stood

fearlessly by her side at last and won her to cast in her lot with his.

For there was a way out, indeed, a way out from the house of bondage, and

none had been so near to it in all time as he had all his life, none had

had their feet pointed so towards it, none had failed so strangely to

pick up the track and follow it to the end. Years ago, as he thought,

sleepless, under the stars, he had touched on it, Geisner had brought him

near to it. And still he had not seen it, had not seen as he saw now that

those who seek to change the world must first of all show the world that

change is possible, must gather themselves together and go out into the

desert to live their life in their own way as an example to all men. Who,

could do this as the bushmen could, as he and his houseless, homeless,

wandering mates could? If he only could lead them to it, Geisner helping

him! If another chance might be his as the chance had been! Now, life

seemed over. He had a prescience of misfortune. A Queensland gaol would

swallow him up. That would be the end of it all.

He did not think that he was much the same as others, more forceful

perhaps for evil as for good but still much the same. He did not think

that social conditions had been against him, that Society had refused him

the natural life which gives morality and forced upon him the unnatural

life which fosters sin. What did that matter? The Puritan blood that

flowed in his veins made him stern jury and harsh judge. He tried himself

by his own ideal and he condemned himself. He was unworthy. He had

condemned those who drank; he had condemned those who cursed and swore

meaninglessly; he had looked upon smoking as a weakness, almost a fault.

Now, he condemned himself, without reservation. He had sinned and his

punishment had begun. He had lived in vain and he had lost his love. It

never occurred to him that he might play a part before her--he was too

manly. Yet his great longing grew greater as he realised everything. All

the loneliness of his longing spoke in that hoarse whisper:

"Nellie?"

And Nellie? Nellie loved him.

She had held him as a brother for so long that this love for him had

crept upon her, little by little, inch by inch, insidiously, unperceived.

She remembered always with pleasure their school days together and their

meetings since, that meeting here in Sydney two years before most of all.

She had felt proud of him, of his strength and his fiery temper, of his

determined will, of the strong mind which she could feel growing and

broadening in the letters he had sent her of late. She could not but know

that to him she was very much, that to her he owed largely the bent of

his thinking, that to her he still looked as a monitress. But she lulled

herself with the delusion that all this was brotherliness and that all

her feelings were sisterliness. His coming that night, his gift of the

rose, had filled her with a happiness that mingled strangely with the

pain of her fears.

Coming along, arm in arm with him, she had been thinking of him, even

while she spoke earnestly of other things. Would she ever see him again,

she wondered with a sinking of the heart, would she ever see him again.

Never had he thought or care for himself, never would he shrink from fear

of consequences if it seemed to him that a certain course was "straight."

She would not have him shrink, of course. He was dear to her because he

was what he was, and yet, and yet, it pained her so to think that she

nevermore might see him. Seldom she saw him it was true, only now and

then, years between, but she always hoped to see him. What if the hope

left her! What should she do if she should see him again nevermore?

The kaleidoscope of her memories showed to her one scene, one of the

episodes that had gone to make up her character, to strengthen her

devotion: the whirring of a sewing machine in a lamp-lit room and a

life-romance told to the whirring, the fate of a woman as Geisner's was

the fate of a man. A romance of magnificent fidelity, of heroic sacrifice

illumined by a passionate love, of a husband followed to the land of his

doom from that sad isle of the Atlantic seas, of prison bars worn away by

the ceaseless labour of a devoted woman and of the cruel storm that beat

the breath from her loved one as freed and unfettered he fled to liberty

and her! She heard again the whirr of the machine, saw again the

lamplight shine on the whitening head majestic still. For Ned, while he

lived, no matter where, she would toil so. Though all the world should

forget him she would not. But supposing, after all, she never saw him

more. What should she do? What should she do? And yet, she did not know

yet that she loved him.

They walked along, side by side, close together, through the dull weary

streets, by barrack-rows of houses wrapped in slumber or showing an

occasional light; through thoroughfares which the windows of the shops

that thrive, owl-like, at night still made brilliant; down the long

avenue of trim-clipped trees whereunder time-defying lovers still sat

whispering; past the long garden wall, startling as they crossed the road

a troop of horses browsing for fallen figs; along the path that winds,

water-lapped, under the hollowed rocks that shelter nightly forlorn

outcasts of Sydney. She saw it all as they passed along and she did not

see it. Afterwards she could recall every step they took, every figure

they passed, every tree and seat and window and lamp-post on the way.

At one corner a group of men wrangled drunkenly outside a public-house.

Down one deserted street another drunkard staggered, cursing with awful

curses a slipshod woman who kept pace with him on the pavement and

answered him with nerveless jeers. Just beyond a man overtook them,

walking swiftly, his tread echoing as he went; he turned and looked at

her as he passed; he had a short board and wore a "hard hitter." Then

there was a girl plying her sorry trade, talking in the shadow with a

young man, spruce and white-shirted. They had to wait at one street for a

tram to rush past screeching and rattling. At one crossing Ned had seized

her arm because a cab was coming carelessly. One of the lovers in the

avenue was tracing lines on the ground with a stick, while her sweetheart

leaned over her. Down under the rocks she saw the forms of sleepers here

and there; from one clump of bushes came a sound of heavy snoring. She

saw all this, everything, a thousand incidents, but she did not heed

them. She was as one in a daze; or as one who moves and thinks and sees,

sleep-walking.

So they reached the point by Lady Macquarie's Chair, paused for a moment

at the turn, hesitated, then together, as of one accord, went down the

grassy slope by the landing stairs and out upon the rough wave-eaten

fringe of rock to the water's edge. They were alone together, alone in

Paradise. There were none others in the whole world.

Above them, almost overhead, in the starry sky, the full round moon was

sailing, her white glare falling upon a matchless scene of mingling land

and water, sea and shore and sky. Like a lake the glorious harbour

stretched before them and on either hand. In its bosom the moon sailed as

in a mirror; on it great ships floated at anchor and islets nestled down;

all round the sheltering hills verily clapped their hands. In the great

dome of the universe there was not a cloud. Through the starless windows

of that glorious dome they could see into the fathomless depths of

Eternity. Under the magic of the moon not even the sordid work of man

struck a discordant note. At their feet the faint ripplings of this

crystal lake whispered their ceaseless lullaby and close behind them the

trees rustled softly in the languid breathings of the sleeping sea. Of a

truth it was Paradise, fit above all fitness to gladden the hearts of

men, worthy to fill the soul to overflowing with the ecstasy of living,

deserving to be enshrined as a temple of the Beautiful wherein all might

worship together, each his own God.

The keen sense of its loveliness, its perfect beauty, its sublime

simplicity, stole over Nellie as she stood silently by Ned's side in the

full moonlight and gazed. Over her angry soul, tortured by the love she

hardly knew, its pure languor crept, soothing, softening. She looked up

at the silvery disc and involuntarily held out her hands to it, its

radiance overpowering her. She wrenched her eyes away from it suddenly, a

strange fearfulness leaping in her who knew no fear; the light at the

South Heads flashed before her, the convent stood out in the far

distance, a ferry-house shone white, the towers and roofs of Sydney

showed against the sky, the lights on the shipping and on the further

shore were as reflections of the stars above. And there in the water, as

in a mirror, was that glowing moon. Startled, she found herself thinking

that it would be heavenly to take Ned's hand and plunge underneath this

crystal sheet that alone separated them from peace and happiness. She

looked up again. There was the moon itself, swimming amid the twinkling

stars, full and round and white and radiant. As its rays enwrapped her

eyes, she heard the leaves rustling in melody and the wavelets rippling

in tune.

All Nature lived to her then. There was life in the very rocks under her

feet, language in the very shimmer of the waters, a music, as the

ancients dreamed in the glittering spheres that circled there in space.

The moon had something to say to her, something to tell her, something

she longed to hear and shrank from hearing. She knew she was not herself

somehow, not her old self, that it was as though she were being

bewitched, mesmerised, drawn out of herself by some strange influence,

sweet though fearful. Suddenly a distant clock struck and recalled her

wandering thoughts.

"Half-past! Half-past eleven I suppose! I thought it was later, ever so

much later. It has seemed like hours, it is so beautiful here, but we

haven't been here many minutes," she said. Adding incongruously: "Let's

go. It's getting very late." She spoke decidedly. She felt that she dare

not stay; why, she had not the least idea.

Then she heard Ned, who was standing there, rigid, except that he was

twirling his soft straw hat round and round in his fingers, say in a low

tremulous husky whisper:

"Nellie!"

Then she knew.

She was loved and she loved. That was what the stars sang and the little

ripples and the leaves. That was what the hard rock knew and what the

shimmer of the water laughed to think of and what the glowing moon had to

tell her as it swam high in heaven, looking down into her heart and

swelling its tumultuous tide. The moon knew, the full moon that ever made

her pulse beat strong and her young life throb till its throbbing was a

pain, the full white moon that, dethroned on earth, still governs from

the skies the lives of women. She was loved. She was loved. And she, who

had vowed herself to die unmarried, she loved, loved, loved.

She knew that those only laugh at Love to whom the fullness of living has

been denied, in whose cold veins, adulterate with inherited disease, a

stagnant liquid mocks the purpose of the rich red blood of a healthy

race; that in that laugh of theirs is the, knell of them and of their

people; that the nation which has ceased to love has almost ceased to

live.

She knew that every breath she had ever drawn had been drawn that she

might live for this moment; that every inch of her stature and every

ounce of her muscle and every thought of her brain had built up slowly,

surely, ultimately, this all-absorbing passion; that upon her was the

hand of the Infinite driving her of her own nature to form a link in the

great Life-chain that stretches from the Whence into the Whither, to lose

herself in the appointed lot as the coral insect does whose tiny body

makes a continent possible.

She knew that Love is from the beginning and to all time, knew that it

comes to each as each is, to the strong in strength and to the weak in

weakness. She knew that to her it had come with all the force of her

grand physique and vigorous brain and dominant emotionality, that in her

heart one man, one hero, one lover, was enshrined and that to him she

would be loyal and true for ever and ever, choosing death rather than to

fail him.

She knew that they do rightly and for themselves well who in Love's

strength brush aside all worldly barriers and insensate prejudice. She

knew that it is the one great Democrat strong as Death--when it comes,

though sad to say in decaying states it comes too seldom; that its

imperious mandate makes the king no higher than the beggar-girl and binds

in sweet equality the child of fortune and the man of toil. She knew that

the mysterious Power which orders all things has not trusted to a frail

support in resting the conservation of the race upon the strength of

loving.

All this she knew and more, knew as by instinct as her love flamed

conscious in her.

She knew that there was one thing to which love like hers could not link

itself and that was to dishonour, not the false dishonour of

conventionalism but the real dishonour of proving untrue to herself. She

know that when she ceased to respect herself, when she shrank from

herself, then she would shrink before him whom she loved and who loved

her. She knew that she could better bear to lose him, to go lonely and

solitary along the future years, than shame that self-consciousness which

ever she had held sacred but which was doubly sacred now he loved her.

How she loved him! For his soul, for his body, for his brain, for his

rough tenderness, for his fiery tongue! She loved his broad shoulders and

his broad mind. She loved his hearty laugh and his hearty hand-grip and

his homely speech and his red-hot enthusiasm. She loved him because she

felt that he dared and because she felt that he loved her. She loved him

because she had learned to see in him her ideal. She loved him because he

was in danger for the Cause and because he was going from her and because

she had loved him for years had she but known. She loved him for a

thousand things. And yet! Something held her back. It only needed a word

but the word did not come. It was on her lips a dozen times, that one

word "Ned!" which meant all words, and she did not say it.

They stood there side by side, motionless, silent, waiting, Ned suffering

anguish unspeakable, Nellie plunged in that great joy which comes so

seldom that some say it only comes to herald deeper sadness. To him the

glorious scene around spoke nothing, he hardly saw it; to her it was

enchanted with a strange enchantment, never had it seemed so, all the

times she had seen it. How beautiful life was! How sweet to exist! How

glad the world!

"Nellie!" said Ned, at last, humbly, penitently, hopelessly. "I'm not a

good man. I haven't been just what you think I've been." He stopped, then

added, slowly and desperately as if on an afterthought: "If--your own

heart--won't plead--for--me--it's not a bit of use my saying

anything."

When one speaks as one feels one generally speaks to the point and this

sudden despairing cry of Ned's was a better plea than any he could by

long thinking have constructed. Wonderful are the intricacies of a man's

mind, but still more intricate the mind of woman. Nellie at the moment

did not care whether he had been saint or sinner. She felt that her love

was vast enough to, wash him clean of all offending and make amend in him

for all shortcoming. She could not bear to see him in pain thus when she

was so happy; in uncertainty, in despair, when the measure of her love

was not to be taken, so huge was it and all for him. If he had sinned,

and how men sin there is little hid from the working girl, it was not

from evil heart. If he had not been good he would be good. He would

promise her.

"But you will be good now, will you not, Ned?" she asked, softly, not

looking at him, dropping her hand against his, stealing her slender

fingers into the fingers that nervously twirled the hat.

From bitter despondency Ned's thoughts changed to ecstatic hope. He swung

round, his hand in Nellie's, his brain in a whirl. Was it a dream or was

she really standing there in the strong moonshine, her lovelit eyes

looking into his for a moment before the down-cast lids veiled them, her

face flushed, her bosom heaving, her hand tenderly pressing his? He

dropped his hat, careless, of the watery risk, and seizing her by both

arms above the elbows, held her for a moment in front of him, striving to

collect himself, vainly trying to subdue the excitement that made him

think he was going to faint.

"Nellie!" he whispered, passionately, his craving finding utterance.

"Kiss me!" She lifted up the flushed face, with the veiled downcast eyes

and soft quivering lips. He passed his hands under her arms and bent

down. Then a white mist came over his eyes as he crushed her to him and

felt on his parched lips the burning kiss of the woman he loved. For a

moment she rested there, in his arms, her mouth pressed to his. The rose,

shattered, throw its petals as an offering upon the altar of their joy.

The Future, what did it matter to him? The scaffold or the gaol might

come or go, what did it matter to him? It flashed through his mind that

Nellie could be his wife before he went and then all the governments in

the world and all the military and all the gatling guns might do their

worst. They could not take from him a happiness he had not deserved, but

which had come to him as a free gift in despite of his unworthiness. And

as he thought this, Nellia shook herself out of his arms, pushing him so

violently that he staggered and almost fell on the uneven rocks.

"I cannot," she cried, holding up her arms as if to ward him off. "I

cannot, Ned. You mustn't touch me. I cannot."

"Nellie!" he replied, bewildered. "What on earth is the matter?"

"I cannot," she cried again. "Ned, you know I can't."

"Can't what?" he asked, gradually understanding.

"I can't marry. I shall never marry. It's cruel to you, contemptible of

me, to be here. I forgot myself, Ned. Come along! It's madness to stay

here."

She turned on her heel and walked off sharply, taking the upper path. He

picked up his hat and hastily followed. There was nothing else to be

done. Overtaking her, he strode along by her side in a fury of mingled

rage, sorrow, anger and disappointment.

She paused at the corner of her street. As she did so bells far and near

began to strike midnight, the clock at the City Hall leading off with its

quarters. They had been gone an hour and a quarter. To both of them it

seemed like a year.

CHAPTER IV.

THE WHY OF THE WHIM.

Nellie stopped at the corner of her street, under the lamp-post. Ned

stopped by her side, fuming by now, biting his moustache, hardly able to

hold his tongue. Nellie looked at him a moment, sadly and sorrowfully.

The look of determination that made her mouth appear somewhat cruel was

on her whole face; but with it all she looked heart-broken.

"Ned," she begged. "Don't be angry with me. I can't. Indeed, I can't."

"Why not?" he demanded, boiling over. "If you wouldn't have had me at

first I wouldn't have blamed you. But you say you love me, or as good as

say, and then you fly off. Nellie! Nellie, darling! If you only knew how

for years I've dreamed of you. When I rode the horse's hoofs kept saying

'Nellie.' I used to watch the stars and think them like your eyes, and

the tall blue gum and think it wasn't as full of grace as you. Down by

the water just now I thought you wouldn't have me because I wasn't fit,

and I'm not, Nellie, I'm not, but when I thought it I felt like a lost

soul. And then, when I thought you loved me in spite of all, everything

seemed changed. I seemed to feel that I was a man again, a good man, fit

to live, and all that squatter government of ours could do, the worst

they could do, seemed a bit of a joke while you loved me. And----"

"Ned! Ned!" begged Nellie, who had put her hands over her face while he

was speaking. "Have pity on me! Can't you see? I'm not iron and I'm not

ice but I can't do as others do. I cannot. I will not."

"Why not?" he answered. "I will speak, Nellie. Do you----"

"Ned!" she interrupted, evidently forcing herself to speak. "It's no use.

I'll tell you why it's not."

"There can be no reason."

"There is a reason. Nobody knows but me. When I have said I would never

marry people think it is a whim. Perhaps it is, but I have a reason that I

thought never to tell anyone. I only tell you so that you may understand

and we may still be friends, true friends."

"Go on! I'll convince you that it doesn't mean what you think it does,

this reason, whatever it is."

"Ned! Be reasonable!" She hesitated. She looked up and down the street.

Nothing moved. The moon was directly overhead. There were no shadows. It

was like day. An engine whistle sounded like a long wail in the distance.

In the silence that followed they could hear the rushing of a train. Ned

waited, watching her pain-drawn face. A passionate fear assailed him,

blotting out his wrath.

"You recollect my sister?" she asked, looking away from him.

He nodded.

"You heard she died? You spoke of her two years ago."

He nodded again.

"I did not tell you the whole truth then . . . . . . I did not tell

anybody . . . . . . I came down here so as not to tell . . . . . . I

could not bear to go home, to chance any of them coming down to Brisbane

and seeing me . . . . . . You know." She stopped. He could see her hands

wringing, a hunted look in the eyes that would not meet his.

"Never mind telling me, Nellie," he said, a great pity moving him. "I'm a

brute. I didn't mean to be selfish but I love you so. It shall be as you

say. I don't want to know anything that pains you to tell."

"That is your own self again, Ned," she answered, looking at him, smiling

sadly, a love in her face that struck him with a bitter joy. "But you

have a right. I must tell you for my own sake. Only, I can't begin." Her

mouth trembled. Great tears gathered in her eyes and rolled down her

cheeks. A lump rose in his throat. He seized her hands and lifted them

reverently to his lips. He could not think of a word to say to comfort

her.

"Ned!" she said, in a tone almost inaudible, looking at him through her

tears. "She died in the hospital but I didn't tell you how. . . . . She

died, oh, a terrible death . . . . . . She had gone . . . . . down, Ned.

Right down. Down to the streets, Ned."

He pressed her hands, speechless. They stood thus facing one another,

till down his face, too, the sad tears rained in sympathy, sad tears that

mourned without reproach the poor dead sister whom the hard world had

crushed and scorned, sad tears that fell on his passion like rain on fire

and left in him only a yearning desire to be a comforter. Nellie,

snatching her hands away, pressed them to her mouth to stifle the frantic

sobs that began to shake her, long awful sobs that drew breath whistling

through clenched fingers. And Ned, drawing her to him, laid her head on

his shoulder, stroking her hair as a mother does, kissing her temple with

loving, passionless kisses, striving to comfort her with tender brotherly

words, to still her wild cries and frantic sobs in all unselfishness.

There were none to see them in all this moonlit city. The wearied

toilers, packed around them, slumbered or tossed unconsciously. Above

them, serene and radiant, the full moon swam on amid the stars.

"She was so good, Ned," cried Nellie, choking, with sobs, almost

inarticulate, pouring out to him the pent-up thinking of long years. "She

was so good. And so kind. Don't you remember her, Ned? Such a sweet girl,

she was. It killed her, Ned. This cruel, cruel life killed her. But

before it killed her--oh!--oh!--oh!--oh! Why are we ever born?

Why are we ever born?"

It was heart-rending, her terrible grief, her abandonment of anguish

which she vainly endeavoured to thrust back into her throat. With all her

capacity for passionate love she bewailed her sister's fate. Ned,

striving to soothe her, all the while mingled his tears with hers. A

profound sadness overshadowed him. He felt all his hopes numbed and

palsied in the face of this omnipotent despair. This girl who was dead

seemed for the time the symbol of what Life is. He had hated Society,

hated it, but as its blackest abyss opened at his very feet his hate

passed from him. He only felt an utter pity for all things, a desire to

weep over the helpless hopelessness of the world.

Nellie quieted at last. Her sobs ceased to shake her, her tears dried on

her pale face, but still she rested her head on Ned as if finding

strength and comfort in him. Her eyelids were closed except for an

occasional belated lingering sob she might have been asleep. Her grief

had exhausted her. At last a coming footfall roused her. She raised her

head, putting her hands instinctively to her hat and hair, pulling

herself together with a strong breath.

"You are very kind to me, Ned," she said, softly. "I've been so silly but

I'm better now. I don't often carry on like that." She smiled faintly.

"Let's walk a bit! I shall feel better and I have such a lot to tell you.

Don't interrupt! I want you to know all about it, Ned." And so, walking

backwards and forwards in the moonlit streets, deserted and empty,

passing an occasional night prowler, watched with suspicious eyes by

energetic members of the "foorce" whose beats they invaded, stopping at

corners or by dead-walls, then moving slowly on again, she told him.

* * * * *

"You know how things were at home on the Darling Downs, Ned. Father a

'cooky,' going shearing to make both ends meet, and things always going

wrong, what with the drought and the wet and having no money to do things

right and the mortgage never being cleared off. It wasn't particularly

good land, either, you know. The squatters had taken all that and left

only stony ridges for folks like ours. And we were all girls, six of us.

Your father was sold up, and he had you boys to help him. Well, my father

wasn't sold up but he might as well have been. He worked like a horse and

so did mother, what with the cows and the fowls and looking after things

when father was away, and we girls did what we could from the time we

were little chits. Father used to get up at daybreak and work away after

dark always when he was at home. On Sunday mornings after he'd seen to

the things he used to lie on his back under that tree in front if it was

fine or about the house if it was wet, just dead beat. He used to put a

handkerchief over his face but he didn't sleep much. He just rested. In

the afternoon he used to have a smoke and a read. Poor father! He was

always thought queer, you recollect, because he didn't care for

newspapers except to see about farming in and took his reading out of

books of poetry that nobody else cared about. On Monday he'd start to

work again, with only a few hours for sleep and meals, till Saturday

night. Yet we had only just a living. Everything else went in interest on

the mortgage. Twelve per cent. Mother used to cry about it sometimes but

it had to be paid somehow.

"When Mary was fifteen and I was thirteen, you remember, she went to

Toowoomba, to an uncle of ours, mother's brother, who had four boys and

no girls and didn't know what to put the boys to. Father and mother

thought this a splendid chance for Mary to learn a trade, there were so

many of us at home, you know, and so they took one of my cousins and

uncle took Mary and she started to learn dressmaking. Uncle was a small

contractor, who had a hard time of it, and his wife was a woman who'd got

frozen about the heart, although she was as good as gold when it melted a

little. She was always preaching about the need for working and saving

and the folly of wasting money in drink and ribbons and everything but

what was ugly. She said that there was little pleasure in the world for

those who had to work, so the sooner we made up our minds to do without

pleasure the better we'd get on. Mary lived with them a couple of years,

coming home once in a while. Then she got the chance of a place where

she'd get her board and half-a-crown a week. She couldn't bear aunt and

so she took it and I went to live at uncle's and to learn dressmaking,

too. That was six months after you went off, Ned. I wasn't quite fifteen

and you were eighteen, past. Seven years ago. I was so sorry when you

went away, Ned.

"Aunt wasn't pleasant to live with. I used to try to get on with her and

I think she liked me in her way but she made me miserable with her

perpetual lecturing about the sin of liking to look nice and the

wickedness of laughing and the virtue of scraping every ha'penny. I used

to help in the house, of course, when I came from work and I was always

getting into trouble for reading books, that I borrowed, at odd minutes

when aunt thought I ought to be knitting or darning or slaving away

somehow at keeping uncomfortable. I used to tell Mary and Mary used to

wish that I could come to work where she did. We used to see each other

every dinner hour and in the evening she'd come round and on Sundays we

used to go to church together. She was so kind to me, and loving, looking

after me like a little mother. She used to buy little things for me out

of her halfcrown and say that when she was older aunt shouldn't make me

miserable. Besides aunt, I didn't like working in a close shop, shut up.

I didn't seem to be able to take a good breath. I used to think as I sat,

tacking stuff together or unpicking threads that seemed to be endless,

how it was out in the bush and who was riding old Bluey to get the cows

in now I was gone and whether the hens laid in the same places and if it

was as still and fresh as it used to be when we washed our faces and

hands under the old lean-to before breakfast. And Toowoomba is fresher

than Sydney. I don't know what I'd have thought of Sydney then. I used to

tell Mary everything and she used to cheer me up. Poor Mary!

"For a long while she had the idea of going to Brisbane to work. She said

there were chances to make big wages there, because forewomen and draping

hands were wanted more and girls who had anything in them had a better

show than in a little place. I used to remind her that it was said there

were lots too many girls in Brisbane and that unless you had friends

there you couldn't earn your bread. But she used to say that one must

live everywhere and that things couldn't be worse than they were in

Toowoomba. You see she was anxious to be able to earn enough to help with

the mortgage. Father had been taken sick shearing: and had to knock off

and so didn't earn what he expected and that year they'd got deeper into

debt and things looked worse than ever. One day he came into Toowoomba

with his cart, looking ten years older. Next day, Mary told me she didn't

care what happened, she was going to Brisbane to see if she couldn't earn

some money or else they'd lose the selection and that she'd spoken for

her place for me and I was to have it. She'd been saving up for a good

while what she could by shillings and sixpences and pennies, doing sewing

work for anybody who'd pay her anything in her own time. She said that

when she'd got a five-pound-a-week place she'd come back for a visit and

bring me a new dress, and mother and father and the others all sorts of

things and pay the interest all herself and that I should have the next

best place in the shop and come to live with her. We talked about going

into business together and whether it wouldn't be better for father to

throw up the selection after a while and live with us in Brisbane. Ah!

What simple fools we were! If we had but known!

"So Mary went to Brisbane, with just a few shillings beside her ticket

and hardly knowing a soul in the big town. I went to the station with her

in the middle of the night. She was going by the night train because then

she'd get to Brisbane in the morning and have the day in front of her and

she had nowhere to go if she got in at night. I recollect thinking how

sweetly pretty she looked as she sat in the carriage all alone.

"You remember her, Ned? Well, she got prettier and prettier as she grew

older, not tall and big and strong-looking like me but smaller than I was

even then and with a fresh round face that always smiled at you. She had

small feet and hands and hair that curled naturally and her skin was

dark, not fair like mine. People in Toowoomba used to turn and look at

her when she went out and everybody liked her. She was so kind to

everybody. And she was full of courage though she did cry a little when

she kissed me good-bye, because I cried so. I could never have stopped

crying had I but known how I should see her again.

"She wrote in two or three days to say that she had got a place, just

enough to pay her board, and expected to get a better one soon. She was

always expecting something better when she wrote and my aunt when I saw

her wagged her head and said that rolling stones gathered no moss. The

interest-day came round and father just managed to scrape the money

together. They'd got so poor and downhearted that I used to cry at night

thinking of them and I used to tell Mary when I wrote. I used to blame

myself for it once but I don't now. We all get to believe at last in what

must be will be, Ned. And then I had a letter from Mary telling me she

had a much better place and in two or three weeks mother wrote such a

proud pleased letter to say that Mary had sent them a five-pound note.

And for about a year Mary sent them two or three pounds every month and

at Christmas five pounds again. Then her letters stopped altogether, both

to them and to me. To me she had kept writing always the same, kind and

chatty and about herself. She told me she had to save and scrape a little

but that she had hope some day to be able to get me down. I never dreamed

it was not so, not even when the letters stopped, though afterwards, when

I went through them, I saw that the handwriting, in the later ones, was

shaky a little.

"We waited and waited to hear from her but no letter came to anybody.

There was a girl I knew whose father had been working in Toowoomba and

who was in the same shop for a little while and her father was going to

Brisbane to a job and they were all going. He was a carpenter. She and I

had got to be friendly after Mary went away and she promised to find her

but couldn't. You see we were bush folks still and didn't think anything

of streets and addresses and thought the post office enough. And when two

months passed and no letter came mother wrote half crazy, and I didn't

know what to do, and I wrote to the girl I knew to ask her to get me work

so that I could go to look for Mary. It just happened that they wanted a

body hand in her shop and they promised me the place and I went the next

day I heard. They wanted a week's notice where I was working and didn't

want to give up my things without but aunt went and got them and gave me

the money for my fare and told me if I wanted to come back to write to

her and she'd find the money again. Poor old aunt! I shall never forget

her. Her heart was all right if she had got hard and unhappy. That's how

I got to Brisbane to look for Mary.

"I went to board with the girl I knew. I was earning ten shillings a week

and paid that for my board and helped with the ironing for my washing.

Her father had got out of work again for times were bad and they were

glad to get my money. Lizzie got ten shillings a week and she had a

brother about fourteen who earned five shillings. That was about all they

had to live on often, nine in the family with me and the rent seven

shillings for a shell of a place that was standing close up against other

humpies in a sort of yard. There were four little rooms unceiled and

Lizzie and I slept together in a sort of shelf bedstead, with two little

sisters sleeping on the floor beside us. When it was cold we used to take

them in with us and heap their bedclothes on top of us. The wind came

through the walls everywhere. Out in the bush one doesn't mind that but

in town, where you're cooped up all day, it doesn't seem the same thing.

We had plenty of bread and meat and tea generally but the children didn't

seem to thrive and got so thin and pale-looking that I thought they were

going to be ill. Lizzie's father used to come home, after tramping about

for work, looking as tired as my father did after his long day in the

fields and her mother fretted and worried and you could see things

getting shabbier and shabbier every week. I don't know what I should have

done only Lizzie and I now and then got a dress to make for a neighbour

or some sewing to do, night-times. Lizzie's mother had a machine and we

used that and they always made me keep my half of what we got that way,

no matter how hard up they were. They never thought of asking for

interest for the use of the machine. And all the while I was looking for

Mary.

"I used to stand watching as the troops of girls went by to work and from

work, morning and evening, going to a new place every day so that I

shouldn't miss her and in the dinner hours I used to go round the work

rooms to see if she worked in one of them or if anybody knew her. At

first, when I had a shilling to spare, I put an advertisement that she

would understand in the paper, but I gave that up soon. I never dreamed

of going to the police station, any more than we had dreamed of it in

Toowoomba. I just looked and looked but I couldn't find her.

"I shall never forget the first time I got out of work. One Saturday,

without a minute's warning, a lot of us were told that we wouldn't be

wanted for a week or two. Lizzie and I were both told. She could hardly

keep herself from crying but I couldn't cry. I was too wretched. I

thought of everything and there seemed nothing to do anywhere. At home

they couldn't help me. I shrank from asking aunt, for she'd only offered

to help me to come back and what could I do in Toowoomba if I got there?

And how could I find Mary? I had only ten shillings in the world and I

owed it all for my board. I got to imagining where I should sleep and how

long I could go without dying of hunger and I hated so to go into the

house with Lizzie to tell them. Lizzie's mother cried when she heard it

and Lizzie cried, but I went into the bedroom when I'd put my money on

the table and began to put my things in my box. They called me to dinner

and when I didn't come and they found out that I meant to go because I

couldn't pay any more they were so angry. Lizzie's mother wanted to know

if they looked altogether like heathens and then we three cried like

babies and I felt better. I used to cry a good deal in those days, I

think.

"Lizzie's father got a job next week a few miles out of Brisbane and went

away to it and on the Monday I answered an advertisement for a woman to

do sewing in the house and was the first and got it. She was quite young,

the woman I worked for, and very nice. She got talking to me and I told

her how I'd got out of work and about Mary. I suppose she was Socialist

for she talked of what I didn't understand much then, of how we ought to

have a union to get wages enough to keep us when work fell off and of the

absurdity of men and women having to depend for work upon a few employers

who only worked them when they could get profit. She thought I should go

to the police-station about Mary but I said Mary wouldn't like that. What

was more to me at the time, she paid me four shillings a day and found me

work for two weeks, though I don't think she wanted it. There are kind

people in the world, Ned.

"I got back to regular work again, not in the same shop but in another,

and then Lizzie's folks moved out to where her father was working. I and

another girl got a room that we paid five shillings a week for,

furnished, with the use of the kitchen. It cost us about ten shillings a

week between us for food, and I got raised to twelve-and-six a week

because they wanted me back where I'd worked before. So we weren't so

badly off, and we kept a week ahead. Of course we lived anyhow, on dry

bread and tea very often, with cakes now and then as a treat, boiled eggs

sometimes and a chop. There was this about it, we felt free. Sometimes we

got sewing to do at night from people we got to hear of. So we managed to

get stuff for our dresses and we kept altering our hats and we used to

fix our boots up with waxed threads. And all the time I kept looking for

Mary and couldn't see her or hear of her.

"I had got to understand how Mary might live for years in a place like

Brisbane without being known by more than a very few, but I puzzled more

and more as to how she'd got the money she'd sent home. The places where

she might have earned enough seemed so few that everybody knew of them.

In all dressmaking places the general run of girls didn't earn enough to

keep themselves decently unless they lived at home as most did. Even then

they had a struggle to dress neatly and looked ill-fed, for, you see, it

isn't only not getting enough it's not getting enough of the right food

and getting it regularly. Most of the girls brought their lunch with them

in a little paper parcel, bread and butter, and in some places they made

tea. Some had lots of things to eat and lots to wear and plenty of pocket

money and didn't seem to have to work but they weren't my sort or Mary's.

"What made me think first how things might be was seeing a girl in the

second place I worked at. She looked so like Mary, young and fresh and

pretty and lively, always joking and laughing. She was very shabby and

made-over when I saw her first, with darned gloves and stitched-up boots

down at heel and bits of ribbon that she kept changing to bring the best

side up. Then she got a new dress all at once and new boots and gloves

and hat and seemed to have money to spend and the girls began to pass

remarks about her when she wasn't bearing and sometimes to her face when

they had words with her. I didn't believe anything bad at first but I

knew she wasn't getting any more pay and then, all at once, I recollected

being behind her one night when we came out of the shop and seeing a

young fellow waiting in a door-way near. He was a good-looking young

fellow, well-dressed and well to do, and as she passed with some other

girls he dropped his stick out in front of her and spoke to her. She

laughed and ran back to the shop when we'd gone on a little further and

spoke to him for a second or two as she passed him. It was after that she

was well dressed and I saw her out with him once or twice and--and--I

began to think of Mary. You see, I knew how hard the life was and how

wearying it is to have to slave and half-starve all the time, and then

Mary wanted money so to send home to help them. And when the girls talked

at work they spoke of lots of things we never heard of in the bush and

gradually I got to know what made me sick at heart.

"I was nearly mad when I thought of that about Mary, my sister Mary who

was so good and so kind. I hated myself for dreaming of such a thing but

it grew and grew on me and at last I couldn't rest till I found out. I

didn't think it was so but it began to seem just possible, a wild

possibility that I must satisfy to myself, the more I couldn't find her.

I somehow felt she was in Brisbane somewhere and I learnt how easily one

slips down to the bottom when one starts slipping and has no friends. So

I used to go on Queen Street at night and look for her there. But I never

saw her. I wanted to ask about her but I couldn't bear to. I thought of

asking the Salvation Army people but when I went one night I couldn't.

"At last one night when we'd been working late at the shop, till eleven,

as we did very often in busy times without getting any overtime pay

though they turned us off as they pleased when work got slack, I saw a

girl coming that I thought I'd ask. She was painted up and powdered and

had flaring clothes but she looked kind. It was a quiet street where I

met her and before I had time to change my mind she got to me and I

stopped and asked her. I told her I'd lost my sister and did she know

anything of her. She didn't laugh at me or say anything rude but talked

nice and said she didn't think so and I mustn't think about that but if I

liked she'd find out. I told her the name but she said that wasn't any

good because girls always changed their name and she looked like crying

when she said this. I had a photograph of Mary's that I always carried

with me to show anybody who might have seen her without knowing her and

the girl said if I'd trust her with it for a week she'd find Mary if she

was in Brisbane and meet me. So I lent it to her. And we were just

talking a bit and she was telling me that she was from London and that

when she was a little girl a great book-writer used to pat her on the

head and call her a pretty little thing and give her pennies and how

she'd run away from home with a young officer, who got into trouble

afterwards and came out to Australia without her and how she came out to

find him and would some day, when a policeman came along and asked us

what we were doing. She said we weren't doing anything and that he'd

better mind his business and he said he knew her and she'd better keep a

civil tongue in her head. Then he wanted to know what my name was and

where I lived and the girl told me not to tell him or he'd play a trick

on me and I didn't. But I told him I worked at dressmaking and roomed

with another girl and he gave a kind of laugh and said he thought so and

that if I didn't give him my name and address I'd have to come along with

him. I began to cry and the girl told him he ought to be ashamed of

himself ruining a poor hard-working girl who was looking for her sister

and he only laughed again and said he knew all about that. I don't know

what would have happened only just then an oldish man came along, wearing

spectacles and with a kind sharp face, who stopped and asked what was the

matter. The policeman was very civil to him and seemed to know him and

told him that I wouldn't give him my address and that I was no good and

that he was only doing his duty. The girl called the policeman names and

told how it really was, only not my name, and the man looked at me and

told the policeman I was shabby enough to be honest and that he'd answer

for me and the policeman touched his hat and said 'good-night, sir,' and

went on. Then the man told me I'd had a narrow escape and that it should

be a lesson to me to keep out of bad company and I told him the girl had

told the truth and he laughed, but not like the policeman, and said that

was all the more reason to be careful because policemen could do what

they liked with dressmakers who had no friends. Then be pulled out some

money and told me to be a good girl and offered it to me, so kindly, but

of course I didn't take it. Then he shook hands and walked off. There are

kind people in the world, Ned, but we don't always meet them when we need

them. I didn't know then how much he did for me or what cruel, wicked

laws there are.

"Next week I met the girl again. I wanted so to find Mary I didn't care

for all the policemen. I knew when I saw her coming that she'd found her.

I didn't seem to care much, only as though something had snapped. It was

only afterwards, when Mary was dead, that I used to get nearly crazy. I

never told anybody, not even my room-mate, that I'd found her.

"She was in the hospital, dying, Mary was. I've heard since how that

awful life kills the tender-hearted ones soon and Mary wasn't 21. She was

in a bleak, bare ward, with a screen round her, and near by you could

hear other girls laughing and shouting. You wouldn't have known her. Only

her eyes were the same, such loving, tender eyes, when she opened them

and saw me. She looked up and saw me standing there by the bedside and

before she could shrink away I put my arms round her neck and kissed her

forehead, where I used to kiss her, because I was the tallest, just where

the hair grew. And I told her that she mustn't mind me and that she was

my dear, dear sister and that she should have let me known because it had

taken me so long to find her. And she didn't say anything but clung tight

to me as though she would never let me go and then all at once her arms

dropped and when I lifted my head she had fainted and her eyelids were

wet.

"She died three days after. I made some excuse to get away and saw her

every day. She hardly spoke she was so weak but she liked to lie with my

hand in hers and me fanning her. She said that first day, when she came

to, that she thought I would come. But she wouldn't have written or

spoken a word, Mary wouldn't. She didn't even ask after the folks at home

or how I was getting on. She said once she was so tired waiting and I

knew she meant waiting to die. She didn't want to live. The last day she

lay with her eyes half-closed, looking at me, and all at once her lips

moved. I bent down to her and heard her murmur: 'I did try, Nellie, I did

try,' and I saw she was crying. I put my arms round her and kissed her on

the forehead and told her that I knew she had, and then she smiled at me,

such a sweet pitiful smile, and then she stopped breathing. That was the

only change.

"I couldn't stay in Brisbane. I was afraid every minute of meeting

somebody who'd known Mary and who might ask me about her, or of father or

uncle or somebody coming down. I wrote home and said I'd found out that

Mary had died in the hospital of fever and they never thought of wanting

to know any more, they were so full of grief. And then I got wondering

how I should get away, somewhere, where nobody would be likely to come to

ask me about her, and I couldn't go because I had no money and I was just

wishing one day that I could see you when who should I meet but that Long

Jack. He gave me your address and I wrote to ask you to lend me thirty

shillings, the fare to Sydney, and you sent me five pounds, Ned. That's

how I came here. Mary wouldn't have anybody know if she could help it and

I couldn't have stayed there to meet people who knew her and would have

talked of her."

CHAPTER V.

AS THE MOON WANED.

The shadows were beginning to throw again as Nellie finished telling her

story. The quarters had sounded as they walked backwards and forwards. It

was past one when they stopped again under the lamp-post at the corner.