came to the old withered cheek, the spark of battle flashed in the
stern blue-grey eye.
"Could I see you privately?" said Danby.
"Certainly," said Mrs Clay: "but I'm not fond of secrecy; things is
better open, and this is the first time in my life I've had to be seen
secret by the police. Come this way."
We said nothing, but dropped our feeding tools and waited in suspense,
till in less than a minute grandma thrust her head in the dining-room
door.
"For mercy's sake, Dawn, look in Miss Flipp's room and see is she
there."
Dawn rose in a hurry and boxed Andrew's ears as she passed, because he
too rose and tumbled over his chair in her way.
"Some people ought to tie themselves up to be out of the way," she
ejaculated.
"Miss Flipp is not in her room," she presently called, "and her bed is
smooth and made up."
"God save us, then! Mr Danby says she's drownded in the river,"
exclaimed her grandma. "What's to be done?"
"We'll spare you all the trouble possible, Mrs Clay," said the man,
with the respect always tendered the old dame; "but I'm afraid it's a
suicide. Some men going to work on the new viaduct just noticed her
clothes sticking up as they crossed the bridge at daylight and
reported it, and I was sent down. We've taken the body to Jimmeny's
pub., and sent for the coroner, at all events."
Dawn and Andrew howled together in a frightened manner, while the
sensible Carry, who never lost her head, admonished them--
"Don't be jackdaws. That won't mend matters. Perhaps it isn't half as
bad as some make out. Things never are when you get the right hang of
them."
"Things are bad enough anyhow, but the way to mend 'em ain't to be
snivelling," rapped out grandma, giving Dawn and Andrew a shaking that
braced them up.
Things were indeed bad enough, and nothing could mend them. They had
gone beyond repair. It transpired that my senses had been correct, and
poor Miss Flipp had _not_ returned that moonlit night as I lay
listening to the passing trains. She had ended her ruined life by
weighting her feet and dropping into the pretty stretch of water under
the bridge, where the locomotives rushed by like thunder, and from
where could be seen the twinkling electric lights of one of the oldest
towns in Australia.
The inquest, at which we all had to appear, elicited information that
fairly stood poor grandma's hair on end. It was a great blow to find
that she had been harbouring a woman who was not as Cæsar's wife, and
that it was fear of the penalty of her divergence from what is
accepted as virtue, had driven her to take her life ere she had
transmitted the tribulation of being to a nameless child.
Nothing was cleared up regarding her antecedents. The person by whom
she was supposed to be recommended to Mrs Clay knew of no such
individual, and no one came to claim her.
Her uncle, it was discovered, had a day or two previously sailed for
America on urgent business, and after the girl's death an affectionate
letter for her arrived from him. She had left nothing to fix the blame
where it belonged, but with a misdirected loyalty so common in her
sex had paid all the debt her frail self.
The post on the day of her death brought me a pathetic little note, in
which she stated that she wished to bear the whole blame; a woman
always had to in any case, and as she could not face it she had
decided upon death. She had written this to me because she felt I had
had an inkling of how matters had been with her, and she thanked me
that I had kept silent, in conjunction with the observation that it
was not usual for such as she to meet with forbearance from those who
had had sense to preserve their respectability. Ah, the regret that
consumed me that I had not risked the unpopularity of interference and
sought her confidence. I might have been able to have saved her from
such an end!
I kept my knowledge to myself. It would scarcely have hurt Mr Pornsch.
Under the British Constitution property is far more sacred than women.
But having a fatality in belief that there is a law of retribution in
all things, I hoped to be able to sheet this crime home to its
perpetrator in a way that should put him to confusion when he least
expected it.
There was ample money for burial among the girl's belongings, which
were taken in charge by the police, and there let the cruelly common
incident rest for the present.
The affair so upset Dawn that she refused to occupy her usual room any
longer, and at her suggestion she and I determined to occupy a big
upstairs room, up till that time filled with rubbish. This being
agreed upon we forsook the apartments opening into the river garden,
and betook ourselves to an altitude from which we had even a better
view of the valley, river, and trains.
Dawn so perceptibly went "off colour" that I persuaded her
grandmother to let the singing lessons begin by way of diverting her
mind.
The old lady would not contemplate paying more than two guineas per
quarter, so I saw a six guinea teacher, arranged with him to take the
pupil at four, two of which I privately paid myself, and Dawn at last
set out for the city for her first lesson in the arduous and
unattractive boo-ing and ah-ing that lie at the foundation of a
singer's art.
SIXTEEN.
ADVANCE, AUSTRALIA!
In the career of a prodigy there invariably comes a time when it is
compelled to relinquish being very clever for a child, and has to
enter the business of life in competition with adults.
This crisis had arrived in the career of the prodigy Australia.
It is at the time of electing new or re-electing old representatives
of the people to the legislature that the state of a country's affairs
is more prominently before the public than at any other, and preceding
the State election in which Grandma Clay was to exercise the rights of
full citizenship for the first time, it was a lugubrious statement.
That the country had gone to the dogs was averred by each candidate
for the three hundred a-year given ordinary State members, and each
described himself as the instrument by which it could be restored to a
state of paradisaical prosperity.
This is an old bogey, unfailingly revived at elections. The
Ministerialists invariably roar how they have improved the public
finances, while the Opposition as blatantly tries to drown them by
bellowing that the retiring government has damned the country, and
that the Opposition has the only recipe of satisfactory
reconstruction, but in spite of this threadbare election scare the
Commonwealth remained the freest and one of the wealthiest
abiding-places in the world.
Just then its business affairs were undoubtedly badly managed, and
mismanagement, if continued, inevitably leads to bankruptcy. Undeniably
there was an unwholesome percentage of unemployed--inexcusable when there
abounded vast areas of fertile territory quite unpeopled, mines as rich as
any known to history all untouched; the sugar, grape, timber, and other
industries crying aloud for further development, and countless resources on
every hand requiring nothing but that these and men should meet on healthy
and enterprising business terms. The population, instead of gaining in
numbers, was foolishly leaving the country, like over-indulged, spoiled
children, imagining themselves ill-treated, while others hesitated to come
in because the Australian trumpet was not blown loudly enough nor in the
right key.
The administration, like a young housewife tossed into an overflowing
storehouse, had spent lavishly, but the bank of a multi-millionaire
will come to an end in time, and so with the play-days of Australia.
The hour had arrived for her to be up and doing, to marshal her
forces, advertise her wares, and take her place as a worker among the
nations.
There are always old bush lawyers and city know-alls beside whom
Chamberlain and Roberts are but small tomahawks as empire-builders,
and these now were predicting that to make a nation of her Australia
needed war and many other disasters to harden her people from the
amusement-loving, sunny-eyed folk they were; but this was an
extremist's outlook. She was in greater need of a land law that would
sensibly and practically put the right people on the soil, and entice
population of desirable class--independent producers--so that the
development of the industries would follow in natural sequence. In
short, Australia was languishing for a few patriotic sons with strong,
clear, business heads to apply the science of statecraft, as
distinguished from the self-seeking artifices of the mere job
politician at present sapping her vitals, and all the elements for
success were within her gates.
I had long had an eye open for the discernment of such an embryo
statesman, and looked forward with interest to the study of the
present crop of political candidates.
As soon as Leslie Walker--Ernest Breslaw's step-brother--had been
elected as the Opposition candidate for Noonoon, canvassing,
"spouting," war-whooping, and all manner of "barracking" began with
such intense enthusiasm that fortunately Miss Flipp's sad fate was
speedily driven out of our thoughts.
Dawn and Mrs Bray were on Walker's committee, and nearly every night
there was an advocate of one party or the other gasconading in
Citizens' Hall.
To Noonoon residents it became what the theatre is to city patrons of
the drama, and more, for this was invested with the dignity of a
certain amount of reality. To women being in the fray many attributed
the unusual interest distinguishing this campaign, but the real cause
was that public affairs had come to such a deadlock that legislature,
as the medium through which they might be moved, had become a vital
question to the veriest numskull, and all were mustering to ascertain
who put forth the most favourable policy.
With politics and her newly started singing lessons, Dawn was too
thoroughly engrossed for thought of any knight to pierce her armour of
indifference, which was the outcome of full mental occupation. I
invested in a nice little piano, that was carried upstairs to our big
room, and had undertaken to superintend her practising, but she was a
more enthusiastic politician than a vocal student, as I pointed out to
her grandmother's satisfaction. These happenings had eventuated during
the first fortnight of May, and in the third week of this month Leslie
Walker imported a couple of experienced ranters to renew the attack
and denounce the villainy of the present government in loud and
blustering vote-catching war-whoops.
In the town itself, nearly every third person was employed on the
railway, and their only care in casting their vote was to secure a
representative who would not in any way reduce the expenditure of the
railways. Thus a parliamentary candidate in Noonoon had to trim his
sails to catch this large vote or be defeated. It was the same with
other factions: any man with a common-sense platform, impartially for
the good of the State at large, might as well have sat down at home
and have saved himself the labour of stumping an electorate and
bellowing himself hoarse for all the chance he had of being returned.
We turned out _en masse_ from Clay's to hear the second speech of
young Walker, assisted by two M.P.'s belonging to his party. Grandma
and I drove in the sulky, while the girls and Andrew walked ahead, the
latter under strict orders to behave with reason, and not make "a fool
of hisself with the larrakins."
It was well we arrived early, as there was not sitting room for half
the audience, though more than half the hall being reserved for the
ladies, we got a front seat, and long before the time for the speakers
to appear every corner was packed, and women as well as men were
standing in rows fronting the stage. A great buzz of conversation at
the front, and stampeding and cat-calling among the youths at the
back, was terminated by the arrival of the three speakers of the
evening, who were received amid deafening cock-a-doodling, cheering,
stamping, and clapping. An old warrior of the class dressed _up_ to
the position of M.P. sat to one side, and next him was the barrister
type so prolific in parliament, who had himself dressed _down_ to the
vulgar crowd, while third sat Leslie Walker.
Surely not the first Leslie Walker who had appeared a week or two
previously! His bright, restless eye, though too sensitive for that of
an old campaigner, now took in the crowd with complete assurance, and
there was no hint of hesitation discernible. Having once smelt powder
he was ready for the fray.
"By Jove! hasn't Les. bucked up!" whispered Ernest, who sat on one
side of me, where he had landed after an ineffectual attempt to sit
beside Dawn.
"Yes; if he can only roar and blow and wave his arms sufficiently he
may have a chance."
"But he's still nervous," said the observant Andrew from the rear.
"You watch him go for that flea in the leg of his pants!"
Sitting in full view of a "chyacking" audience is a severe ordeal to
an inexperienced campaigner with a sensitive temperament, and this
action, indeed peculiarly like an attempt to detain an annoying insect
in a fold of his lower garment, was one of those little mannerisms
adopted to give an appearance of ease.
Behind the speakers came, as chairman, one of the swell class almost
extinct in this region, and he, too, had rather an effete attitude and
physique, as he took up his position behind the spindley table
weighted by the smeared tumblers and water-bottle. He rose with the
intention of flattering the speakers and audience in the orthodox way,
but the electors, among whom a spirit of overflowing hilarity was at
large, took his duties out of his mouth.
"Don't smoodge, old cockroach, let the other blokes blaze away, as we
(the taxpayers) are paying dear for this spouting."
The barrister man M.P. burst upon them first with the latest trumpet
blare with which speeches were being opened. Having been primed as to
the magnitude of the railway vote in Noonoon, first move was to throw
a bone to it, and, metaphorically speaking, he got down on his knees
to this section of the electors, and howled and squealed that all
civil servants' wages would be left as they were.
He took another canter to flatter the ladies regarding the remarkably
intelligent vote they had cast in the Federal elections, and asserted
his belief that they would do likewise in the present crisis, and
introduce a nobler element into political life.
Creatures, a few months previously ranked lower than an almost
imbecile man, and with no more voice in the laws they lived under than
had lunatics or horses--it was miraculous what a power they had
suddenly grown! The man at the back saw the point--
"Blow it all, don't smoodge so. It ain't long since you was all rared
up on yer hind legs showin' how things would go to fury if wimmen had
the vote."
Having got past this prelude, he proceeded with a vigorous volley of
abuse against the sitting government, and showed how Walker, the
Opposition candidate, was the only man to vote for. He shook his
fists, stamped and raved, and illustrated how much a voice could
endure without cracking, the back people carefully waiting till he had
to pull up to take a drink out of one of the glasses on the spindley
table, when they got in with--
"You're mad! Keep cool! You'll bust a blood-vessel! When are you going
to give Tomato Jimmy a show to blow his horn?" This being a reference
to the calling of the other speaker, who was a middleman in the
vegetable and fruit-market. The first speaker, however, was not nearly
exhausted yet--he had to thump his fists on the unfortunate spindley
table, and work off several other oratorical poses and a deal of
elocutionary voice-play, ere he was finished. I fairly rolled with
enjoyment of the wonderful wit and humour of the crowd at the back,
which, unless it be put down as the critical faculty, is an
inexplicable phenomenon. Not one of the interrupters, if drafted on to
the hustings, could have given a lucid or intelligent statement of his
views, or indication that he was furnished with any, and yet not one
slip on the part of a candidate, one inconsistent point, personal
mannerism or peccadillo, but was remarked in an astonishingly humorous
and satirical style.
The barrister man having finished "spouting," the common-sense
individual, who always sits half-way down the hall, and who, when he
asks a question, has to face the double ordeal of the crowd and the
candidate, said--
"The speaker has shown us all the things the other fellows _can't do_,
we'd like another speech now stating what _he can_ do." The chairman
rose to say this was out of order, but his voice was lost in the din.
"You sit down, old chap, we can manage this meetin' ourselves."
"But out of respect to the ladies present!"
"We'll look after the ladies too," was the good-humoured rejoinder.
"Why, they're enjoyin' it as much as we are. They've got a vote now,
you know, and are going to use it in an intelligent manner."
"Did you know Queen Anne was dead?" said another.
"The ladies won't be harmed. Any one that disrespects the ladies will
be chucked out."
The ladies had to laugh at this, and the meeting went right merrily,
and more merrily in that half the "blowing" from the stage was drowned
by the interjectory din from the rear of the building, where lads and
men stood chock-a-block, the former, and the latter too, making right
royal use of their licence to be rowdy; but such a good-natured crowd
could not often be seen. There were no altercations, only laughter and
the crude repartee of such a gathering.
The first speaker having returned to his seat and sanity, the second
took his place.
"Hullo, Tomatoes! What's the price of onions and spuds?"
"Now begin and tell the ladies how intelligent they are, so you'll get
their vote."
"Tomatoes" did butter the ladies, next yelled that the civil servants
would not be retrenched, and then upheld the virulent attack on the
government. Keeping in time with the utterances of "Tomato Jimmy," the
boys at the back grew so boisterous that at one time it appeared
inevitable that the meeting must break up in disorder. The chairman,
the candidates, the ladies, the whole house rose, and one man towards
the front made himself heard amid the babel to the effect that the
ladies ought to walk out to show their resentment of the insults that
had been offered their presence by this disorderly behaviour.
"Ladies, don't go. _Dear_ ladies, don't go," called some wags. "We're
only educatin' you in politics,--learning you how to be like your
superiors--men."
This evoked a round of laughter, and order was restored.
"That's right, ladies, don't go; if you was to turn dawg on us now,
we'd be so crestfallen we couldn't think about politics and save the
country at all."
Once more "Tomatoes" belched forth the infamy of the government, and
louder and louder he yelled, till one marvelled at his endurance.
Rougher and hotter grew his repartee till, by sheer abuse, he gained
the ascendancy; but there was no sane statement of what he would
propose as a remedy. Grandma Clay happened to rise as he neared the
finish to see about a reticule she had dropped, and proved a target
for those at the rear.
"Hello, grandma! are you going to contradict him? Give us a straight
tip about women's rights while you're up;" and poor grandma sat down
very precipitately with an exceedingly deep blush.
"If I could only get the chance," she gasped, "I'd give 'em a piece of
me mind."
Third on the list came Leslie Walker, whose improvement was beyond
belief. No notes or hesitation this time. Each sentence was crisp and
clear, and in every detail he evinced the facility for enacting his
_rôle_ which is supposedly a feminine accomplishment.
The chairman, in closing the meeting, rose to say--
"In reference to the interjector who said the speaker was mad--"
"Oh, that's what every one said about _you_ when you were in the
council, and so you were too, and so are they all. Look at the roads
we've got in the municipality," said a voice.
So the chairman had to let the meeting terminate with the candidates
thanking the electors for the extraordinarily good hearing they had
been accorded; it being part of the humour of politics that the worse
a candidate is boo-hooed the more stress he lays upon the _good
hearing_ given him, and the more scurrilous he is regarding his
opponent the more frantically he assures one that he is a bosom
_personal_ friend.
Andrew and I had the distinction of going home under grandma's
tutelage, while Carry and Dawn stayed behind to go to the ladies'
committee rooms, and Ernest lingered to escort them.
"I say, grandma, are you goin' to vote for that bloke?" inquired
Andrew.
"I'm goin' to hear the other side first, and give me opinion after.
There wasn't one of the swells there, was there?"
"Dr Smalley and Dr Tinker both was."
"Yes; but I mean the wimmen: an' how on earth did old Tinker ever get
away from Mrs Tinker for that length of time? You'll never see one of
them kind of wimmen at anythink that makes for progress. That's the
way they make theirselves superior to the likes of you an' me--by
never doin' nothink only for theirselves. 'Oh, we've got all we want
as it is, an' don't want the vote; a woman's place is home,' they say
if you ask 'em. It's all very fine for them as has a man to keep them
like in a band-box; they would have found it different if they had to
act on their own like me. I'm sick of this intelligence in women they
make a fuss about all of a sudden. I've rared a family and managed me
business better than a man could; and what's there been all along to
prevent a woman from stroking out a name on a paper I never could see.
And it never seems to me much difference which name was struck out,
for they're mostly a lot of impostors that only think of featherin'
their own nests. You'll always hear of wimmen not bein' intelligent
enough to do this and that, and these things is only what men like
doin' best theirselves, and the things they make out God intended
women to do is them the men don't like doin'. You don't ever hear of
them thinkin' women ain't intelligent enough to do seven things at
once." Grandma was in great form that night, and not only led but
maintained the conversation.
"I rather like this young feller, but he ain't no sense much either.
All he thinks of is buttoning for the railway people, and it's the
people on the land that ought to be legislated for first. They are the
foundation of everythink; other things would work right after. Every
one can't live in Sydney, an' that's what they're all makin' for now.
Every one is getting some little agency--parasite business. They've
got sense to see the people on the land is the most despised and sat
upon. You don't hear no squallin' about they'll protect the farmer.
No, he's a despised old party that them scuts of fellers on the
railway would grin at and think theirselves above, and scarcely give
him a civil answer if he asked a question about his business what he's
payin' them fellers there to do for him, and which only for the
prodoocers wouldn't be there at all. Things is gettin' pretty tight on
farms now. It means about sixteen hours hard graft a-day to make not
half what a railwayman makes in eight hours. If you happen to have
grapes or oranges, if they manage to escape the frost, an' hail, an'
caterpillar, then the blight ketches 'em, or there's a drewth, and
there ain't none; an' if there's any, there's so much that there ain't
no sale for 'em; and the farmer's life I reckon ought to be stopped as
gamblin', for a gambler's life ain't one bit more precarious."
"Then why the jooce do you want me to go on the land?" said Andrew.
"That ain't the point."
"It's the most sticking out point to me," protested the lad. "I reckon
bein' on the land is a mug's game; scrapin' like a fool when a feller
could be sittin' in an office an' gettin' all they want twice as
easy."
"Here, you don't know what's good. It's more respectabler bein' on the
land. You get the pony out, an' make the coffee, an' hold your
tongue."
Andrew and I had undertaken to make the coffee for supper, and thus
give Carry, whose week in the kitchen it was, a chance to go to the
meeting.
They all arrived from it after a time--Dawn and the knight together,
Carry and Larry Witcom following. Oh, where was "Dora"?