be considered sheer spleen from a plain girl are taken as fine fun
when uttered by a girl as physically attractive as Dawn.
During the second week of the footballer's absence, who should appear
to lend a hand on the side of Leslie Walker but Mr Pornsch, _uncle_ of
the late Miss Flipp. He arrived with the callousness worthy of a
certain department of man's character, and addressed a meeting with as
much pomp and self-confidence and talk of bettering the morals of the
people, as though he had been an Ellice Hopkins. He had the further
effrontery to visit Clay's and feign crocodile grief for the
deplorable fate of his niece. He protested his shame and horror,
together with a desire for revenge, so loudly that I resolved that he
should not be disappointed, that the dead girl should be in a slight
measure avenged, and he should not only know but feel it.
"I ain't got me voting paper. Me an' Carry will go up for 'em
to-morrer," said grandma one evening from her arm-chair near the
fireplace.
There had been the usual meeting, and Ada Grosvenor and others had
called in to discuss it.
"Why, didn't the police deliver yours?" inquired Miss Grosvenor.
"No, we was missed somehow."
"Easy to see Danby wasn't on the racket of deliverin' electors'
rights, or you would have had two or three apiece," Andrew chipped in.
"I'm going for Walker straight," announced grandma. "He's temperance
at all events, and that is somethink w'en there ain't any
common-sense in any of them."
"If I had twenty votes I wouldn't give one to that Walker," said
Andrew. "All the women are after him because they think he's
good-lookin', an' he's got bandy legs. They clap him like fury, and
look round like as they'd eat any one that goes to ask him a question.
They seem to reckon he's an angel that oughtn't to be asked nothink he
can't answer. I believe they'd all kiss him an' marry him if they
could. I hate him. Vote for Henderson, he wouldn't give the women a
vote, and only men are workin' on his committee."
"Oh my, what's this!" exclaimed Dawn.
"Well, you know, the women _are_ making fools of themselves about this
Walker," said Ada Grosvenor, with her intelligently humorous laugh. "I
don't think much of him myself. In spite of his choice phrasing of the
usual hustings' bellowing, if women had not already the franchise he
would be slow to admit them on a footing of equality with men as
regards being. There are two extremes of men, you know. One thinks
that woman's position in life is to act squaw to her lord and master.
The other regards her as a toy--an article to be handed in and out of
carriages like choice china--a drawing-room ornament, to be decked in
wonderful gowns, and whose whole philosophy of existence should be to
add to the material delight of men. Walker is a representative of the
latter type, and old Hollis, who thinks that monkeys have as good a
right to vote as women, belongs to the other. At a surface glance
their views regarding women seem to be diametrically opposed, but to
me it has always appeared that they equally serve the purpose of
degrading the position of women. You should have seen how cruel
Walker looked to-night when an old man asked if he approved of women
entering the senate. He said _no_ like a clap of thunder."
It was probably this perspicacity on the part of Ada Grosvenor,
coupled with a sense of humour, that earned for her the reputation of
"trying to ape the swells."
"Well, good-night everybody, and, Mrs Clay, don't forget to apply for
your right in time, or you won't be able to vote," she said in
parting.
"No fear," responded grandma. "I've not been counted among mad people
an' criminals, an' done out of me simple rights till this time of life
without appreciatin' 'em w'en I've got 'em at last."
Next day, true to intention, the old dame and Carry went up town for
their "voting papers," and to repeat the former's words, "was
downright insulted, so to speak."
The civil servant whose duty it was to give rights to those electors
who were not already in possession of such, was carrying affairs with
a high hand, and had the brazen effrontery to tell Grandma Clay that
it was a disgrace to see a woman of her years "running after a vote,"
as he elegantly expressed it; and he also suggested to Carry that it
would suit her better to be at home doing her housework, and to put
the cap on his gross misconduct, he persuaded them that they had left
it too late to obtain the coveted document, the first outward and
visible proof that men considered their women complete rational
beings.
Carry had retorted that it would suit him better to do the work he was
paid for than to exhibit his ignorance in meddling with the private
affairs of others, and that if he could discharge his duties as well
as she did her housework, he wouldn't make an ass of himself by
showing his fangs about women having the vote in the way he did.
The two electresses thus bluffed came down the street and told their
grievance to Mr Oscar Lawyer, for the nonce head of the Opposition
League, and at ordinary seasons a father of his people, to whom all
the town made in times of necessity,--whether it was an old beldame
requiring assistance from the Benevolent Society or a lad seeking a
situation and requiring a testimonial of character.
With Mr Oscar Lawyer they also ran upon Mr Pornsch; and it was
discovered that the churlish clerk's statement was utterly false, and
made because he was on the side of Henderson and these two women were
not. There was more talk than there is space for here, but the upshot
of it was the clerk was routed, and grandma and Carry came home
triumphantly, each in possession of one of the magic sheets of blue
paper, which they spread out on the table for us all to see.
"Well, well!" said grandma, "I seen the convicts flogged in days w'en
this was nothink but a colony to ship them to, and I drove coaches
w'en the line was only as far out of Sydney as here; and to think I
should have lived to see the last of the convicts gone, coaches nearly
become a novelty of the past, us callin' ourselves a nation, an' here
a paper in me hand to show I can vote a man into this parliament and
the other that the king's son hisself come out to open. I'm glad to
see us lived that we can have our say in the laws now same as the men,
and not have to swaller anythink they liked to put upon us to soot
theirselves," and the old dame, with a splendid light in her eye,
rubbed the creases out of the paper and spread it out again.
"Pooh, it's the same as we've had all along. You didn't think a
elector's right was anythink to be grinnin' at w'en the men had it. I
never seen you gapin' at mine; you'd think it was somethink wonderful
now when you've got one of your own," said Uncle Jake, coming in.
"Well, I never! Jake Sorrel! Of course we don't think much of other
people's things! What is the good of another woman's baby or husband
or _frying-pan_, that is, if it was equally a thing you couldn't
borrer? And if you was blind, what pleasure would you get out of some
one else seein' the blue sky, or warnin' that there was a snake there
to be trod on, an' that's what it's been like with the elector's
rights."
"Well, but what difference does that bit of paper make to you now? You
won't live no longer nor find your appetite no better, an' it won't
pay the taxes for you," contended uncle.
"Then if it is of so little account, why does it gruel you so much to
see me with it? An' little as it is, there ain't that paper's reason
why we shouldn't have always voted; and little though it is, that's
all the difference has stood all these years between men voting and
women not; and little as you think it is for a woman to have done
without, it's what men would shed their blood for if _they_ was done
out of it. It ain't what things actually are, it's all they stand
for," and grandma gathered up her _right_ and went to take off her
bonnet and change the bristling black dress which she donned for
public appearance.
I sat musing while she was away. "It ain't what things actually are,
it's all they stand for," as the old dame had said; and her delight in
being a freed citizen, no longer ranked with criminals and lunatics,
had touched my higher self more profoundly than anything had had
power to do for years.
Though taking a vivid interest in the electioneering, owing to the
large distillation of the essence of human nature it afforded, as
neither of the candidates had a practical grip of public business, I
cared not which should poll highest; but now I resolved to procure my
right and go to the ballot, and, if nothing more, make an informal
vote _for the sake of all that it stood for_.
At back of the simple paper were arrayed the spirits of countless
noble and fearless men and women who had so loved justice and their
fellows that they had spent their lives in working for this betterment
of the conditions of living, and the little paper further stood for an
improvement in the position of women, and consequently of all
humanity, inconceivable to cursory observation.
As for a woman going to the poll and voting for Jones or Smith, that
was harmless in either case, and would not help her live or die or pay
her debts, as Uncle Jake expressed it; but excepting the female vote
for the House of Keys in the Isle of Man, the enfranchisement of
women, spreading from one to the other of the Australian States,
represented the first time that woman, even in our vauntedly great and
highly civilised British Empire, was constitutionally, statutably
recognised as a human being,--equal with her brothers. That women
shall compete equally with men in the utilitarian industrialism of
every walk of life is not the ultimate ideal of universal adult
franchise. Such emancipation is sought as the most condensed and
direct method of abolishing the female sex disability which in time
shall bring the human intelligence, regardless of sex, to an
understanding of the superiority of the mother sex as it concerns the
race--as it is the race, the whole race, and consequently worthy of a
status in life where it shall neither have to battle at the polls for
its rights nor be sold in the market-place for bread.
The empty-headed cannot be expected to perceive the magnitude of this
upward step in the evolution of man, and its machinery may not run
smoothly for a span; we nor our children's children may not know much
benefit from what it symbolises, but shall we who are comfortable in
rights wrested from ignorance and prejudice but never enjoyed by past
generations, be too selfish and small to rejoice in the possibility of
bettered conditions those ahead may live under as the fruits of the
self-sacrificing labour of those now fighting for their ideals?
NO!
TWENTY-ONE.
THINGS GO MORE WRONG.
Grandma could think of nothing but the clerk's insult when she had
gone for her electoral right.
"Him! that thing! What's he employed for but to do this work, and if
he ain't prepared to do it decent, why don't he give up an' let a
better man in his place? They're easy to be got. 'Runnin' after a
vote,' indeed! But that's where I made me big mistake. I should have
stayed at home and writ to him, an' he'd have been compelled to send
the police with it. That's what I ought to have done, an' let me
servants that I'm taxed to keep do the work they're dying for want of,
instead of doin' it meself; but at any rate I got me right safe an'
sure," she said with satisfaction. "A long time we'd be getting them
if all men was like him, which, thank God, they ain't. But that's the
way with all these fellers in a Government job; they think they're
Lord Muck, and too good to speak to the folk that's keeping them
there, and only for which they wouldn't be there at all. Only for
Oscar Lawyer and Mr Pornsch--and Dawn, where are you? Mr Pornsch was
very nice to me, an' I asked him to tea, an' to come down for some of
them little things belongin' to his niece. He's very cut up about
her."
"Yes, about as cut up about her as Uncle Jake would be over me."
"Now, Dawn, how do you know?" severely inquired the old dame.
"I know very well that old men with his delightful slenderness of
figure, and men who have drunk all the champagne and other poison it
must have taken to colour his nose that way, haven't got much true
feeling left, except for a bottle of wine, and a feed of something
high and well seasoned."
However, Mr Pornsch presently arrived, and illustrated by his
smickering at Dawn that notwithstanding his grief for a dead girl he
yet retained an eye for the charms of a living one. It also transpired
that he would not have waited for an invitation to call upon us.
This sweet bachelor champion of Women's Protection Bills, who had so
long deprived some woman of the felicity of being his wife, had
apparently determined to hastily repair the omission, and it soon
became evident that he meant to honour no less a person than Dawn in
this connection--Dawn! a princess in her own right, by reason of her
health, her beauty, her youth, and her honest maidenhood!
He took Ernest's place in going to Sydney with her, thrust costly
trifles upon her; he was fifty-five if he were a day, and a repulsive
debauchee at that. Dawn, so healthy and wholesome, loathed him. She
sat on her bed at night with her dainty toes on the floor, and raved
while she combed her fine-spun brown hair. I let her rave, believing
this a good antidote for the worry of that dish of water that was
rarely out of her thoughts. I knew that she never omitted to scan the
football news in hopes of seeing the doings of a certain red-headed
player recorded there, and I also knew that she was doomed to
disappointment, unless she could connect R. E. Breslaw with R. Ernest
of the wash-up water incident.
A man of Pornsch's calibre is hard to abash, or Dawn would have
abashed him, but failing to do so, at last she came to me requesting
that I should assist her to get rid of him.
"I don't want to complain to grandma," said she. "It might get abroad
if she took it in hand, so I'd like to choke him off myself if I
could. I have enough to suffer already;" and I knew she was again
thinking of that fatal dish of water, and how "Dora" Eweword twitted
her concerning it.
Then I took Dawn on my knee as it were, and told her a story. It was
such a painful story that I first extracted from her a solemn promise
that she would not make a fuss of any sort, for this young woman
lacked restraint--that command over her emotions which, if carefully
adjusted and gauged, will make the work of a talented artist pass for
genius, and that of a genius pass for the work of a god.
When his connection with the ill-fated young girl, who had slipped out
in the dead of night to throw herself in the gently gliding Noonoon,
became known to Dawn, I was afraid her horror would so betray her that
any subsequent plans for the punishment of the miscreant might fall
through.
"I'll knock him down with the poker next time he comes. I'll throw a
kettle of boiling water on him as sure as eggs are eggs. Fancy the
reptile leering around me: I felt nearly poisoned as it was, but I
didn't know he was a murderer as well! Oh, the hide of him to come
here! I really will throw boiling water on him!"
Dawn continued in this strain for some time, but as she quieted down
became possessed of a notion to tar and feather him in the manner
mentioned by her grandmother in one of her anecdotes. Carry and I were
to be called upon to assist in this ceremony, which was to take place
upon the return of Mr Pornsch. For the present he had disappeared to
attend to some business.
In the interim, the meetings continued without a break, and Dawn
unremittingly looked for the football news, now with the war crowded
into a far corner, by the special complexion that each daily chose to
put on political affairs.
"Just look up the football news," I said one day, "and see how my
friend Ernest is doing."
"He made a lot of goals as 'forward' in the last match. See!" she
coolly replied, putting her tapering forefinger on the name of R. E.
Breslaw, as she handed me the paper.
"Did he tell you he wanted to disguise his identity while here?"
"Yes; he told me all about it one day when we went to Sydney," she
replied, leaving me wondering what else they might have confided
during these jaunts.
Now that we required his presence Mr Pornsch was not in evidence, and
neither was anything to be heard of the red-headed footballer's
reappearance, though he had been absent four weeks, and this brought
us towards the end of June. At this date there appeared a paragraph
stating that Breslaw and several other amateur sportsmen were
contemplating a tour of America, to include the St Louis Exposition.
That night some one besides myself heard the roar of the passing
locomotives, but she did not confess the cause of her sleeplessness.
It was one of those irritations one cannot tell, so she let off her
irritation in other channels.
Matters did not brighten as the days went on. Two nights after
Ernest's reported departure for the States, "Dora" Eweword brought
Dawn home from Walker's committee meeting, and remained talking to her
in the otherwise deserted dining-room till a late hour. As soon as he
left Dawn came upstairs, and throwing herself face downwards on her
bed burst into violent weeping.
"What has come to you lately, Dawn?" I inquired. "Tell me what sort of
a twist you have put in your affairs so that I may be able to help
you."
"No one can help me," she crossly replied.
"Don't you think that I was once young, and have suffered all these
worries too? It is not so long since I was your age that I have
forgotten what may torment a girl's heart."
Thus abjured she presently made me her father-confessor.
Eweword it appeared had grown very pressing, and her grandma had urged
her to accept him as the best of her admirers. The old dame had not
observed the trend of matters with Ernest. In a house where week-end
boarders came and went, and the landlady had a pretty granddaughter,
there were strings of ardent admirers who came and went like the
weeks, and in all probability transferred their week-end affections as
frequently and with as great pleasure as they did their person, and
the old lady was too sensible to place any reliance in their
earnestness, while Dawn too was very level-headed in the matter. Thus
Ernest, if considered anything more than my friend, would have merely
been placed in the week-end category. The old lady, not feeling so
vigorous as usual, was anxious to have Dawn settled, and had tried to
put a spoke in "Dora" Eweword's wheel by threatening Dawn with
deprivation of her coveted singing lessons did she not receive him
favourably. Dawn in a fit of the blues, probably brought on by seeing
the announcement of Ernest's departure, had accepted Eweword
conditionally. The conditions were that he should wait two years and
keep the engagement entirely secret, and she had promised her grandma
that she would think of marriage with him at the end of that time,
provided her vocal studies should be continued till then.
"That's the way I'll keep grandma agreeable to pay for the lessons,
and in that time, do you think, I'll be able to go on the stage and do
what I like and be somebody?" asked the girl from out the depths of
her inexperience.
"And what of '_Dora_'?"
"He can go back to Dora Cowper then. I'll tell him I was only 'pulling
his leg,' like he said about her. It will do him good."
"You might break his heart," I said with mock compassion.
"Break his heart! _His_ heart! He's got the sort of heart to be
compensated by a good plate of roast-beef and plum-pudding--like a
good many more!"
"Will he consent to this?"
"He'll have to or do the other thing; he can please himself which. I
don't care a hang. He said that if I would marry him soon he would let
me continue the singing lessons and get me a lovely piano,--all the
soft-soap men always give a girl beforehand. I wonder did he think me
one of the folks who would swallow it? Couldn't I see as soon as I was
married all the privileges I would get would be to settle down and
drudge all the time till I was broken down and telling the same
hair-lifting tales against marriage as aired by every other married
woman one meets;" and Dawn, her cheeks flushed and her white teeth
gleaming between her pretty lips, looked the personification of
furious irritation.
"All I care for now is to get the singing lessons, as long as I don't
have to do anything too bad to get them."
I suddenly turned on her and asked--
"Honestly, why did you throw that dish of water on Ernest Breslaw?"
Thus unexpectedly attacked, her answer slipped out before she had time
to prevaricate.
"Because I was a mad-headed silly fool--the biggest idiot that ever
walked. That's why I did it!"
"Do you know that it hurt him very, very keenly?"
No answer.
"Do you know that he cared more for you than he understood himself?"
No answer.
"Dawn, do _you_ care?"
"Not in that way; but oh, I care terribly that I made such a fool of
myself. Had it been any one else it wouldn't have mattered, but he
will think I did it because I was an ignorant commoner who knew no
better. That's what stings; but I'm not going to think any more of it.
I'm going to give my life up to singing, and it doesn't matter. I
suppose I'll never see him again, and he'll never know but that I did
it out of ignorance."
I smiled at the despondence in her tone as I extinguished the kerosene
lamp-light.
There is a stage in the course of most love affairs when the knight is
despised and rejected by the lady, when the sun and the salt of life
depart, and he finds no more pleasure in it; when he is seized with an
irresistible desire to go forth in the world and by his prowess dazzle
all mankind for the purpose of attracting one pair of eyes. The same
occurs to the lady, and she determines to make all men fall at her
feet by way of illustrating to one adamantine heart that he was a
dullard to have passed over her charms. And this young lady of the
rose and lily complexion, and knight of the bright-hued locks and
herculean muscles, being young--sufficiently young to be downcast by
imaginary stumbling-blocks--had reached it. Goosey-gander knight!
Gander-goosey lady!
I smiled again, for in my pocket was a letter that morning received
from the former himself, stating that he had been booked for a trip to
the St Louis Exposition, but had flung it up at the last moment in
favour of seeing how Les. got on at the election, and that he would be
back in Noonoon before polling-day. Considering he could have seen how
the election progressed equally as well in Sydney as Noonoon, and that
to see how his step-brother polled, when he took little interest in
politics, had grown preferable to a trip to America, quite contented
me regarding the probable termination of affairs.
However, I did not show this letter, as in matchmaking, like in good
cooking, things have to be done to the turn, and this was not the
opportune turn.
"Oh, well," I said, "so long as you don't let your little arrangement
get abroad, I don't expect it will harm Eweword."
"No fear of it getting abroad. I've threatened him if it does that a
contradiction that will be true will also get abroad by being put in
the 'Noonoon Advertiser.'"
Next night, however, I found Dawn stamping on something glittering
that spread about the floor, and by inquiry elicited--
"That infernal 'Dora' Eweword has had the cheek to give me a ring, and
that's what I've done with it, and that's all the hope he has of ever
marrying me," she exclaimed, bringing the heel of her high-arched foot
another thump on the fragments.
"He's a bit too quick with his signs and badges of slavery. He's so
complacent with himself, and thinks he's ousted the 'red-headed mug'
as he calls him, that I hate him."
"He has a right to be complacent. You have given him reason to be. He
has won you, so you have told him, and he believes you."
"Yes, I know, and it makes me all the madder to think of it."
I suppressed a chuckle; even before attaining my teens I had never
been so splendidly, autocratically _young_ as this beautiful
high-spirited creature!
"Let things settle awhile, and then we'll pour them off the dregs," I
advised.
TWENTY-TWO.
"O Spirit, and the Nine Angels who watch us,
And Thy Son, and Mary Virgin,
Heal us of the wrong of man."