four-sheet weekly publication containing local advertisements, weather
remarks, and a little kindly gossip about townspeople. This was her
usual Saturday night entertainment. Carry and Andrew went to town to
participate in the unfailing diversion of a large percentage of the
population. This was tramping up and down the main street in a stream
till the business places closed, from which exercise they apparently
derived an enjoyment not visible to my naked eye. Uncle Jake and Miss
Flipp not being in evidence, Dawn and I were the only two unoccupied,
and noticing that she was prettily dressed, I resorted to a point of
common interest in promoting friendliness between members of our sex
and invited her to look at a kimono I had bought for a dressing-gown.
This had the desired effect. A look of pleasure passed over the face
that charmed me so, and she arose willingly.
"I'm glad it is my week to stay in and make the bedtime coffee," she
said as we examined the gorgeous kimono, a garment of dark-flowered
silk; and Dawn, having all the fetichly and long-engendered feminine
love of self-decoration, was delighted with it.
"Put it on," I suggested, and the girl complied with alacrity. She did
not make a very natural Jap, being more on the robust than _petite_
scale, but she was a very beautiful girl. With my impassioned love of
beauty I could not help exclaiming about hers, and the foolish
platitude, "You ought to be on the stage," inadvertently escaped me,
seeing this is the highest market for beauty in these days when even
personal emotions can be made to have commercial value.
"Do you think so too?" she said eagerly, betraying what lay near her
heart. "Do you know anything about the stage? You don't think all
actresses bad women like grandma does, do you?"
"Scarcely! Some of the most sweet and lovable women I've ever seen are
earning their living on the boards. I'm intimately acquainted with
several actresses, and will show you their photographs some day."
"Oh, I'd love to be on the stage!" exclaimed the girl.
"Tell me why and how you first came to have such a wish."
"Well, it's this way," said Dawn, pulling my kimono close about her
beautifully rounded throat and curling her pink feet on a wallaby-skin
at the bedside as she sat down upon them. "I heard grandma telling you
something about me this afternoon, and I suppose you think I'm a
terrible girl."
"A beautiful one," I said, revelling in the curling lips and rounded
cheek and chin.
"Don't make fun of me," said Dawn huffily, blushing like noon.
"Good gracious, now _you_ are making fun of me. I'm only stating a
patent fact. Mirrors and men must have told you a thousand times that
you are pretty."
"Oh, them! They say it to every one. Look here--there's the ugliest
little runts of girls in Noonoon, and they're always telling their
conquests and that this man and that man say they're pretty, when a
blind cat could see that they are ugly, and the men must be just
stringing them to try and take them down. So when they say it to me I
always make up my mind I'd have more gumption than to take notice, for
I can't see any beauty in myself. I'm too fat and strong-looking; all
the beauties are thin and delicate-looking in the face--not a bit like
me. I know I'm not cross-eyed or got one ear off, but that's about
all."
I had been wont to think the only place unconscious beauties abounded
was in high-flown, unreal novels; but here was one in real life, and
that the exceedingly unvarnished existence of Noonoon. Not that I
would have thought any the less of her had she been conscious of her
physical loveliness, for beauty is such a glorious, powerful,
intoxicating gift that had I been blessed with it I'm sure I would
have admired myself all day, and the wonder to me regarding beautiful
men and women is not that they are so conceited, but, on the contrary,
that they are so little vain.
"I want to tell you why I want to be on the stage. I couldn't tell how
I hate Noonoon. It's all very well for grandma to settle down now and
want me to be the same, but when she was young (you get her to tell
you some of the yarns, they're tip-top) she wasn't as quiet as I am by
a long way. Just fancy marrying some galoot about here and settling
down to wash pots and pack tomatoes and live in the dust among the
mosquitoes, _always_! I'd rather die. I'll tell you the whole thing
while I'm about it. You won't mind, as I'm sure you have had trouble
too, as your white hair doesn't look to be age."
Comparison of her midget irritation with those that had put broad
white streaks in my hair was amusing, but the rosy heart of a girl
magnifies that which it doesn't contract.
"Grandma wants me to marry. Did you see that fellow who was after
pumpkins?--he ought to make one of his head, the great thing! Grandma
has a fancy for me having him, but I wouldn't marry him if he were the
only man in Noonoon. Do you know, they actually call him Dora because
he was breaking his neck after a girl of that name. He used to be
making red-hot love to her. Young Andrew there saw him up the lane by
Bray's with his arm round her waist, mugging her for dear life, and
then he'd come over here and want to kiss me! If he had seen me up a
lane hugging the baker, I wonder would he want me then!" Dawn's tone
approached tears, for thus are sensitive maiden hearts outraged by an
inconsistent double standard of propriety and its consequences, great
and small.
"Grandma says that's nothing if it's not worse, for that's the way of
men, but I'd rather have some one who hadn't done it so plainly right
under my nose; people wouldn't be able to poke it at me then. I've got
him warded off proposing, and while I guard against that it's all
right. Now, this is why I'd like to be on the stage. I'd love to have
been born rich and have lovely dresses, and I'm sure I could hold
receptions and go to balls, and the stage would be next best to
reality."
"But why not marry some one who could give you these things?"
"Where would I find him? You may bet that's the sort of man I'd like
to marry if I did marry at all," and the dullest observer could have
seen she was heart-whole and fancy free. Certainly there would be a
difficulty in procuring that brand of eligible. There was but a
limited supply of him on the market, and that was generally
confiscated to the use of imported actresses, and, could society
journals be relied upon, it was the same in England; so Dawn showed
good instinct in wanting to bring herself into more equal competition
with the winners.
"Can you sing?"
"I've never been trained," she said, but at my request went to the
piano in the next room and gave vent to a strong, clear mezzo. It was
a good voice--undoubtedly so. There are many such to be heard all over
Australia--girls singing at country concerts without instruction, or
the ignorant instruction more injurious than helpful. These voices are
marred to the practised ear by the style of production, which in a
year or two leaves them cracked and awful. This widespread lack of
voice preservation is the result of a want of public musical training.
With all the training in Paris, Dawn would never have been a Dolores
or Calvé, but with other ability she had sufficient voice to make a
success in comic opera or in concerts as second fiddle to a star
soprano.
"You must sing again for me," I said, "and I'll discover whether you
have any ability." For the way to wean any one from a desire is not by
condemnation of it.
"Don't you say anything to grandma about me and the stage or she'd
very nearly turn you out of the house. You just ask her what she
thinks of it some time, and it will give you an idea; but I hate
Noonoon, and would run away, only grandma goes on so terribly about
hussies that go to the bad, and she's very old, and you know how you
feel that a curse might follow you when people go on that way," said
the girl in bidding me good night.
Dawn had many characteristics that made one love her, and a few in
spite of which one bore her affection. Her method of dealing with her
native tongue came among the latter. It was reprehensible of her too,
seeing the money her grandmother had spent in giving her a chance to
be a lady--that is, the type of lady who affects a blindness
concerning the stern, plain facts of existence, and who considers that
to speak so that she cannot be heard distinctly is an outward sign of
innate refinement. She had made poor use of her opportunities in this
respect, but if to be honest, healthy, and wholesome is lady-like,
then Dawn was one of the most vigorous and thoroughly lady-like folk I
have known, and what really constitutes a lady is a mootable point
based largely upon the point of view.
FIVE.
MISS FLIPP'S UNCLE.
I did not sleep that night. Dawn and her grandma had given me too much
food for cogitation. I felt I had incurred a responsibility in regard
to the former, upon which I chewed tough cud at the expense of sleep.
While there was hard common-sense in the old grandmother's point of
view, it was also easy to be at one with the girl's desire for
something brighter and more stirring than old Noonoon afforded. The
fertile valley was beautiful in all truth, but with the beauty that
appeals only to the storm-wrecked mariner, worn with a glut of human
strife and glad to be at anchor for a time rebuilding a jaded
constitution.
Upon a first impression this girl did not seem abnormally anxious for
the mere plaudits or the notoriety part of the stage-struck's fever,
nor was she alight with that fire called genius which will burn a hole
through all obstacles till it reaches its goal; she appeared rather to
regard the stage as a means to an end--a pleasant easy way, in the
notion of the inexperienced, of obtaining the fine linen and silver
spoon she desired. Had she been a boy, doubtless she would have set
out to work for her ambition, but being a girl she sought to climb by
the most approved and usual ladder within reach--the stage; for
actresses all married the lovely, rich (often titled) young gentlemen
who sat in rows in the front seats and admired the high-class "stars"
and worshipped the ballerinas and chorus girls, or so at least a great
many people believed, being led astray by certain columns in gossip
newspapers, which doubtless have a colouring of truth inasmuch that
the women of the stage are idealised creatures--idealised by
limelight, and advertised by a pushing management for the benefit of
the box-office.
Now Dawn had ample ability and appearance for success on the stage if
her parents had been there before her, so that she could have grown up
in touch with it, but whether she had sufficient iron and salt to push
her way against the barriers in her pathway I doubted. Only sheer
genius can get to the front in any line of art with which it is not in
touch, and even giant talent is often so mangled in the struggle that
when it wrests recognition it is too spent to maintain the altitude it
has attained at the expense of heart-sweat and blood.
The girl worried me, and it worried me more to think that after all my
experience I was so foolish and sentimental that I could be worried
regarding her. She had a comfortable home, a loving guardian, youth,
health, good appearance, and, to a certain extent, fitted her
surroundings. There was nothing of the ethereally æsthetic about her,
and no stretch of sickly imagination could picture her as pining to be
understood. Notwithstanding this, there was I longing to help her so
much that, in spite of my health and an acquaintance that was only
twelve hours old, I was contemplating entering society for her sweet
sake. The fact was, this little orphan girl who had taken up the life
her mother had laid down at dawn of day nineteen years ago, had
collected my scalp, and was at leave to string it on her belt as that
of an ardent faithful lover who never entertained one unworthy thought
of her, or wavered in affection from the hour she first flashed upon
her.
I desired to save her from such savage disappointment as had blighted
my life, not that she would ever have the capacity to feel my frenzy
of griefs, but remembering my own experience, I was ever anxious to
save other youngsters from the possibilities of a similar fate.
The best disposal to be made of Dawn was to settle her in marriage
with some decent and well-to-do man on the sunny side of thirty; but
where was such an one?
Thus I lay awake, and heard the hours chime and the trains go roaring
by, till all the household but Miss Flipp had returned. She entered
from the outside, did not come in till after midnight, and was not
alone. Her uncle accompanied her. My room had French lights opening
into the garden in the same way as Miss Flipp's, and as my ailment was
a heart affection it was sometimes necessary for me to go outside to
get sufficient air, and in this instance I had the door-windows wide
open and the bed pulled almost to the opening. Miss Flipp apparently
had her window open too, for despite the conversation in her room
being in subdued tones, I heard it where I lay.
It contained startling disclosures anent these two persons' relations
and characters, and when Mr Pornsch went his way with the uneven
footsteps of the overfed and of accumulating years, he left me in a
painful state of perturbation.
What course should I pursue?
Casting on a pair of slippers and a heavy cloak, I took a little path
leading from my window through the garden to the pier where the boats
were moored, and here I sat down to consider. Experience had taught me
to be chary of entering matters that did not concern me, but it had
not made me sufficiently callous to preserve my equanimity in face of
a discovery so serious as this.
Miss Flipp had sinned the sin which, if discovered, put a great gulf
'twixt her and Grandma Clay, Dawn, Carry, and myself, but which would
not prevent her fellow-sinner from associating with us on more than
terms of equality. Should Grandma Clay become aware of what I knew,
she certainly would bundle the girl out neck and crop, as she would be
justified in doing. But the girl was in a ghastly predicament, and
more sinned against than sinning, when one heard her grief and
remembered the age of her betrayer, which should have made him the
protector instead of the seducer of young women.
Times out of number the dramatic critics have termed me an artist of
the first rank, and it is this temperament which furnishes the faculty
of regarding all shades and consequences of life's issues unabashed,
and with the power to distil knowledge from good and bad and use it
experimentally, rather than, as a judge, condemnatory.
I determined to keep the girl's secret, and show myself
sympathetically friendly otherwise, hoping she would extend me her
confidence, so that in a humble way I might be privileged to stand
between her and perdition.
It was a beautiful night, one of those when the moon relinquishes her
court to the little stars. Vehicular traffic had ceased, and the only
sound breaking the stillness of the great frostless, silver-spangled
darkness was the panting of the steam-engines and the murmur of the
river where half a mile down it took a slight fall over boulders. The
electric lights of the town twinkled in the near distance, and farther
east was a faint glow beyond the horizon, rightly or wrongly
attributed to the lights of the metropolis. After a time it grew
chilly, and I was glad to return to my bed. Dawn was separated from me
by a thin wooden partition, and her strong healthy breathing was
plainly discernible as she lay like an opening rose in maiden slumber,
but there was now no sound from the room of the other poor girl--a
rose devoured by the worm in its core.
Next morning, however, she appeared at breakfast, for Clay's was not a
house wherein one felt encouraged to coddle themselves without
exceptional reason, and to all but a suspicious or hypercritical
observer she seemed as usual.
Carry was going to church.
"I haven't been able to go this three weeks because my dress wasn't
finished, and next Sunday will be my week in the kitchen, so if I
don't go now I won't be able to show it for a fortnight," she
announced.
"Well, I ain't going," said grandma. "Gimme back your porridge, I
forgot to dose it"--this to Andrew, on whose oatmeal she had omitted
to put sugar and milk. "I've always found church is a good deal of
bother when you have any important work. I contribute to the stipend;
that ought to be enough for 'em. If one spent all their time running
to church they would have no money to give to it, an' I never yet see
praying make a living for any one but the parsons."
Thus, Dawn being engaged in the kitchen, and her Uncle Jake keeping
her company there while he perused the 'Noonoon Advertiser,' which
descended to him on Sunday morning, Andrew having gone away with Jack
Bray, and Miss Flipp being invisible, grandma and I were left together
to enjoy a small fire in the dining-room, so I took this opportunity
of inquiring how Jim Clay had managed to capture her. This sort of
thing interested me; I liked life in the actuality where there was no
counterfeit or make-believe to offend the sense of just proportions.
Not that I do not love books and pictures, but they have to be so very
very good before they can in any way appease one, while the meanest
life is absorbingly interesting, invested as it must ever be with the
dignity of reality.
SIX.
GRANDMA CLAY'S LOVE-STORY.
"Oh, you don't want to hear it now," she said in response to my
request, but she gave a pleased laugh, betraying her willingness to
tell it. "Sometimes I get running on about old times an' don't know
where to stop, an' Dawn says people only pretend to be interested in
me out of politeness. I think I hinted to you that mine was a love
match--the only sort of marriage there ought to be; any other sort, in
my mind, is only fit for pigs."
"But sometimes love matches would be utterly absurd," I remarked.
"Well, then, people that are utterly absurd ought to be locked up in a
asylum. Anybody that's _fit_ to love wouldn't love a fool, because
there must be reason in everything. _Some_ people I know would love a
monkey, but they ain't fit to be counted with the people that keeps
the world going. Well, I got as far as we kep' a accommodation house
on the Sydney road,--fine road it was too, level and strong, and in
many places flagged by the convicts, an' it stands good to this day.
It ain't like these God-forsaken roads about here,"--grandma showed
symptoms of convulsions,--"but _some_ people is only good for to be
stuffed in a--a--asylum, and that's where the Noonoon Municipal
Council ought to be, an' I say it though Jake there, me own brother,
is one of them."
"Did Jim Clay--" I said, by way of keeping to the subject.
"I told you how I used to sneak out to buckle the horses on; an' w'en
Jack Clay, a great chum of me father's, used to be driving the 'Up'
coach, me father, w'en he'd be slack of passengers,--which wasn't
often, there being more life and people moving in the colony
then,--an' w'en I'd be good, would put me up on the box an' take me on
to the next stage, an' I'd come back with Jack Clay--that was me
husband's father.
"As it used to be in the night, it usedn't to take from me time, an' I'd
be up again next day as if I'd slep' forty hours. I wasn't like the
girls these days, if they go to a blessed ball an' are up a few hours
they nearly have to stay in bed a week after it. In that way I come to
be a great hand with the reins, an' me father took a deal of pride in me
because all the young men up that way began to talk about me. Me father
had the best team of horses on the road. He used to always drive them
hisself. He was always a kind man to every one and everythink about him.
He drove three blood coachers abreast and two lighter ones, Butterfly
and Fairy, in the lead. Weren't them days! That great coach swingin'
round the curves and sidlings in the dark, I fancy I can feel the reins
between me fingers now! And there was always a lot of jolly fellows, and
usedn't they to cheer me w'en the horses 'u'd play up a bit. It was
considered wonderful for me to manage such a team. I was only a slight
slip of a girl, not near so fat as Dawn; she takes more after her
grandfather. Me and me sisters had no lack of sweethearts, and we didn't
run after them neither. Some people make me that mad the way they run
after people and lick their boots. W'en I'd be drivin' with me father,
Jim Clay used to be with his, but he was some years older than me. He
wanted to enter the drivin' business soon as opportunity came, an' him
an' me were sort of rivals like. Many of the young swells used to bring
me necklaces and brooches, but somehow when Jim Clay only brought me a
pocket-handkerchief or a lump of ribbon I liked it better an' kep' it
away in a little scented box an' I was supposed to be in love with a
good many in them days. _Some people_ always knows other's business
better than they do theirselves. Me two sisters got married soon as they
were eighteen--one to a thrivin' young squatter, an' the other to a rich
old banker. Seein' how she got on is what makes me agen old men marryin'
young girls. It ain't natural. A man might marry a girl a few years
younger than hisself, but there must be reason in everythink. I was
older than me sisters, an' people began to twit me an' say I'd be left
on the shelf, but before this, w'en I was sixteen an' Jim Clay twenty,
me father broke his leg and was put by. All his trouble was his horses;
he fretted an' fretted that they'd be spoilt by a careless driver, an'
he had 'em trained so they knew nothing but kindness. I was only too
willin', and I up an' undertook to drive the coach right through. Old
Jack Clay said he'd come with me a turn or two an' leave Jim to take his
team, but just then he had some terrible new horses that no one could
handle but hisself,--he was a wonderful hand with horses was Jim's
father,--so Jim was sent with me. My, wasn't there a cheer when I first
brought the mail in all on me own!" The old face flashed forth a
radiance as she told her tale.
"Some of the old gents in the town of Gool-Gool come out an' shook
hands with me, an' the ladies kissed me w'en I got down off of the
box. There was a lawyer feller considered a great lady-killer in them
days. He had a long beard shaved in the Dundreary,--Dawn always says
he must have been a howler with a beard of that description; but times
change, an' these clean-faced women-lookin' fellers the girls think is
very smart now will look just as strange by-an'-by. However, he was
runnin' strong with me, an' me mother considered him favourable,--him
bein' a swell an' makin' his way. Soon as ever I started runnin' the
coach he was took with a lot of business down the road, an' used to be
nearly always a passenger."
"It appears that sweetheart tactics have not changed if the style in
beards has," I remarked with a smile.