DAD WEEPS ON A TOMBSTONE
The scene at Cremorne Point had suddenly reminded Clara that she was
playing with fire. In the beginning she had consented to these
meetings to humour the parent of her best pupil, and gradually she had
drifted into an intimacy with Jonah without the courage to end it. To
her fastidious taste his physical deformity and the flavour of Cardigan
Street that still clung about his speech and manners put him out of
court as a possible lover; but it had gratified her pride to discover
that he was in love with her, and as he never expressed himself more
plainly than by furtive glances and sudden inflections in his voice,
she felt sure of her power to keep him at a distance.
These outings, indeed, had nearly fallen through, when Jonah, fumbling
for words and afraid to say what was on his mind, had touched on a
detail of his business. To his surprise Clara caught fire like straw,
fascinated at being shown the inner workings of the "Silver Shoe". And
from that time a curious attitude had grown between them. Jonah talked
of his business, and stared at Clara as she listened, forgetful of him,
her mind absorbed in details of profit and loss. She found the
position easy to maintain, for Jonah, catching at straws, demanded no
positive encouragement. A chance word or look from her was rich matter
for a week's thought, twisted and turned in his mind till it meant all
he desired.
She saw clearly and coldly that Jonah had placed her on a pedestal, and
she determined never to step down of her own accord, recognizing with
the instinct for business that had surprised Jonah that she would lose
more than she would gain. And yet the sudden glimpse of passion in
Jonah had whetted her appetite for more. It had recalled the days of
her engagement with a singular bitterness and pleasure. She thought
with a hateful persistence of her first love, the man who had
accustomed her to admiration and then shuffled out of the engagement,
forced by the attitude of his relatives to her father. But for weeks
after the scene at Cremorne Jonah had retired within himself terrified
lest he should alarm her and put an end to their outings. So far she
had timed their meetings for the daylight out of prudence, but, pricked
on by curiosity, she had begun to dally on the return journey, desiring
and fearing some token of his adoration.
Meanwhile Jonah swung like a pendulum between hope and despair. He
dimly suspected that a bolder man would have had his declaration out
and done with long ago, and he waited for a favourable opportunity; but
it came and went, and left him speechless. He had accepted Ada as the
typical woman, and now found himself as much at sea as if he had
discovered a new species, for he never suspected that any other woman
had it in her power, given a favourable opportunity, to lead him to
this new world of sensation. Women had always been shy of him, and
with his abnormal shape and his absorption in business it had been easy
for him to miss what lay beneath the surface. But for the accident of
his meeting with Clara, his temperament would have carried him through
life, unconscious of love from his own experience and regarding it as a
fable of women and poets.
Jonah never spent money willingly, except where Ray was concerned, and
Clara in their first meetings had been surprised and chilled by his
anxiety to get the value of his money. He had informed her, bluntly,
that money was not made by spending it; but for some months he had been
surprised by a desire to spend his money to adorn and beautify this
woman. Clara, however, maintaining her independence with a wary eye,
had refused to take presents from him. He had become more civilized
and more human under the weight of his generous emotions, but they
could find no outlet.
It was the affair of Hans Paasch that opened his eye to the power for
good that she exercised over him. When his shop had closed for want of
customers, Paasch found that his failing eyesight and methodical
slowness barred him from competing with younger and quicker men, and,
his mind weakened and bewildered by disaster, he had turned for help to
his first and only love, the violin. For some years he had taught a
few pupils who were too poor to pay the fees of the professional
teachers, and, persuaded that pupils would flock to him if he gave his
whole time to it he took a room and set up as a teacher. In six months
he had to choose between starvation by inches or playing dance music in
Bob Fenner's hall for fifteen shillings a week. For a while he endured
this, playing popular airs that he hated and despised for the larrikins
whom he hated and feared, a nightly butt and target for their coarse
jests. Then he preferred starvation, and found himself in the gutter
with the clothes he stood up in and his fiddle. He had joined the army
of mendicant musicians, who scrape a tune in front of hotels and shops,
living on charity thinly veiled.
They had passed him one night on their return from Mosman, playing in
front of a public-house to an audience of three loafers. The streets
had soon dragged him to their level. Unkempt and half starved, he wore
the look of the vagrant who sleeps in his clothes for want of bedding.
Grown childish in his distress, he had forgotten his lifelong habits of
neatness and precision, going to pieces like a man who takes to drink.
Clara, who knew his history, was horrified at the sight. She thought
he lived comfortably on a crust of bread by giving lessons. Jonah
turned sulky when she reproached him.
"I don't see 'ow I'm ter blame for this any more'n if 'e'd come to the
gutter through drink. It was a fair go on the Road, an' if I beat 'im
an' the others, it was because I was a better man at the game. I spent
nearly all my money in that little shanty where I started, an' 'im an'
the others looked on an' 'oped I'd starve. Yer talk about me bein'
cruel an' callous. It's the game that's cruel, not me. I knocked 'im
out all right, but wot 'ud be the use of knockin' 'im down with one
'and an' pickin' 'im up with the other?"
"You say yourself that he took you off the streets, and gave you a
living."
"So 'e did, but 'e got 'is money's worth out of me. I did the work of
a man, an' saved 'im pounds for years. Yer wouldn't 'ave such a
sentimental way of lookin' at things if yer'd been a steet-arab,
sellin' newspapers, an' no one ter make it 'is business whether yer
lived or starved."
"But surely you can't see him in that condition without feeling sorry
for him?"
"Oh yes, I can; 'e's no friend of mine. 'E told everybody on the Road
that I went shares with the Devil," said Jonah, with an uneasy grin.
"'Ere, I'll show yer wot 'e thinks of me."
He felt in his pocket for a coin, and crossed the street. Paasch had
finished his piece, and putting his fiddle under his arm, turned to the
loafers with a beseeching air. They looked the other way and discussed
the weather. Then Jonah stepped up to him and thrust the coin into his
hand. Paasch, feeling something unaccustomed in his fingers, held it
up to the light. It was a sovereign, and he blinked in wonder at the
coin then at the giver, convinced that it was a trick. Then he
recognized Jonah, and a look of passionate fear and anger convulsed his
features. He threw down the coin as if it had burnt him, crying:
"No, I vill not take your cursed moneys. Give me back mine shop and
mine business that you stole from me. You are a rich man and ride in
your carriage, and I am the beggar, but I would not change with you.
The great gods shall mock at you. Money you shall have in plenty while
I starve, but never your heart's desire, for like a dog did you bite
the hand that fed you."
Suddenly his utterance was choked by a violent fit of coughing, and he
stared at Jonah, crazed with hate and prophetic fury. A crowd began to
gather, and Jonah, afraid of being recognized, walked rapidly away.
"Now yer can see fer yerself," he cried, sullenly.
"Yes, I see," said Clara, strangely excited; "and I think you would be
as cruel with a woman as you are with a man."
"I've given yer no cause ter say that," protested Jonah.
"Perhaps not," said Clara; "but that man won't last through the winter
unless he's cared for. And if he dies, his blood will be on your head,
and your luck will turn. His crazy talk made me shiver. Promise me to
do something for him."
"Ye're talkin' like a novelette," said Jonah, roughly.
But Paasch's words had struck a superstitious chord in Jonah, and he
went out of his way to find a plan for relieving the old man without
showing his hand. He consulted his solicitors, and then an
advertisement in the morning papers offered a reward to anyone giving
the whereabouts of Hans Paasch, who left Hassloch in Bavaria in 1860,
and who would hear of something to his advantage by calling on Harris &
Harris, solicitors. A month later Jonah held a receipt for twelve
pounds ten, signed by Hans Paasch, the first instalment of an annuity
of fifty pounds a year miraculously left him by a distant cousin in
Germany.
He showed this to Clara while they were crossing in the boat to Mosman.
She listened to him in silence. Then a flush coloured her cheeks.
"You'll never regret that," she said; "it's the best day's work you
ever did."
"I 'ope I'll never regret anythin' that gives you pleasure," said
Jonah, feeling very noble and generous, and surprised at the ease with
which he turned a compliment.
They had the Point to themselves, as usual, and Clara went to the edge
of the rocks to see what ships had come and gone during the week,
trying to identify one that she had read about in the papers. Jonah
watched her in silence, marking every detail of her tall figure with a
curious sense of possession that years of intimacy had never given him
with Ada. And yet she kept him at a distance with a skill that
exasperated him and provoked his admiration. One day when he had held
her hand a moment too long, she had withdrawn it with an explanation
that sounded like an apology. She explained that from a child she had
been unable to endure the touch of another person; that she always
preferred to walk rather than ride in a crowded bus or tram because
bodily contact with others set her nerves on edge. It was a nervous
affection, she explained, inherited from her mother. Jonah had his own
opinion of this malady, but he admitted to himself that she would never
enter a crowd or a crush.
The result of her pleading for Paasch had put her in a high good
humour. It was the first certain proof of her power over Jonah, and she
chattered gaily. She had risen in her own esteem. But presently, to
her surprise, Jonah took some papers from his pocket and frowned over
them.
"It's very impolite to read in other people's company," she remarked,
with a sudden coolness.
"I beg yer pardon," said Jonah, starting suddenly, as if a whip had
touched him. She never failed to reprove him for any lapse in manners,
and Jonah winced without resentment.
"I thought this might interest yer," he continued. "I'm puttin' Steel
in as manager at last, an' this is the agreement."
"Who advised you to do that?" said Clara, with an angry flush.
"Well, Johnson's been complainin' of overwork fer some time, but Miss
Giltinan decided me. She's very keen on me openin' up branches in the
suburbs."
"You place great weight on Miss Giltinan's opinion," said Clara,
jealously.
"Ter tell the truth, I do," said Jonah. "Next ter yerself, she's got
the best 'ead fer business of any woman I know."
"I don't agree with it at all," said Clara. "You're the brains of the
"Silver Shoe", and another man's ideas will clash with yours."
"No fear!" said Jonah. "I've got 'im tied down in black and white by
my solicitors."
Clara ran her eye over the typewritten document, reading some of the
items aloud.
"'Turn over the stock three times a year'! What does that mean?" And
she listened while Jonah explained, the position of pupil and tutor
suddenly reversed.
"'Ten and a half per cent bonus, in addition to his salary, if he shows
an increase on last year's sales.'"
"'Net profits on the departments not to exceed twenty-five per cent.,'"
read Clara in amazement. "Why, I should have thought the more profit
he made, the better for you."
"No fear," said Jonah, with a grin; "I can't 'ave a man puttin' up the
price of the Silver Shoe with his eye on his bonus."
Then a long discussion followed that lasted till nightfall. As the
night promised to be fine, Jonah persuaded her to take tea at a
dilapidated refreshment-room, halfway to the jetty, and they continued
the discussion over cups of discoloured water and stale cakes. When
they reached the Point again the moon was rising clear in the sky, and
they sat and watched in silence the gradual illumination of the
harbour. The wind had dropped, and tiny ripples alone broke the
surface of the water. On the opposite shore the beaches lay obscured
in the faint light of the moon, growing momently stronger, the land and
water melted and confounded together in the grey light. The lesser
stars fled at the slow approach of the moon, and in an hour she floated
alone in the sky, save for the larger planets, Hooding the deep abysses
of the night with a gleam of silver, tender and caressing that softened
the angles and blotted details in brooding shadows.
Overhead curved the arch of night, a deep, flawless blue with velvety
depths, pale and diluted with light as it touched the skyline. On the
right, in the farther distance, Circular Quay flashed with the gleam of
electric arcs, each contracted into a star of four points. And they
glittered on the waterline like clustered gems without visible setting.
A fainter glow marked the packed suburbs of the east; and then the
lamps, flung like jewels in the night, picked out the line of shore to
Rose Bay and the Heads.
Ferry-boats were crossing the harbour, jewelled and glittering with
electric bulbs, moving in the distance without visible effort with the
motion of swans, the throb of engines and the swirl of water lost in
the distance. It was a symphony in light, each detached gleam on the
sombre shore hanging
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear.
Between the moon and the eye the water lay like a sheet of frosted
glass; elsewhere the water rippled without life or colour, treacherous
and menacing in the night.
Jonah turned and looked at the woman beside him. They were alone on
the rocky headland, the city and the world of men seemed remote and
unreal, cut off by the silvery light and the brooding shadows. It
dawned slowly on him that his relations with this woman were
independent of time and space. Of all things visible, it was she alone
that mattered. Often enough he had missed his cue, but now, as if
answering a question, he began speaking softly, as if he were talking
to himself:
"Clara!--Clara Grimes!--Clara! I've wanted ter say that out aloud fer
months, but I've never found the place ter say it in. It sounds quite
natural 'ere. Yer know that I love yer--I've seen it in yer face, but
yer don't know that you're the first woman I ever wanted. No, yer
needn't run away. I'm afraid ter touch yer, an' yer know it. Yer
thought because I was married that I knew all about women. Why, I
didn't know what women were made for till I met you. I thought w'en I
'ad the shop an' my boy that I had everythin' I wanted, but the old
woman was right. There's a lot more in this world than I ever dreamt
of. Seein' you opened my eyes. An' now I want yer altogether. I want
ter see yer face every 'our of the day, an' tell yer whatever comes
into my mind. I spend 'ours talkin' to yer w'en I'm by myself."
"It's only my right," he went on, with increased energy. "I'm a man in
spite of my shape, an' I only ask fer what I'm entitled to. I can see
that other men 'ave been gittin' these things without me knowin' it. I
used ter grin at Chook, but I was the fool. I had everythin' that I
could see that was worth 'avin', an' somehow I wasn't satisfied. I
never could see much in this life. I often wondered what it was all
about. But now I understand. What's this for," and he indicated the
dreamy peaceful scene with a sweep of his hand, "if it only leaves yer
starin' and wonderin'? I know now. It's ter make me think about yer
an' want yer. Well, yer've made a man of me, an' it's up ter yous ter
make the best of me." He broke off with a short laugh. "P'raps this
sound funny ter you. I've 'eard old women at the Salvos' meetings talk
like this, tellin' of the wonderful things they found out w'en they got
converted."
Clara had listened in silence, with an intent, curious expression on
her face. Jonah's words were like balm to her pride, lacerated three
years ago by her broken engagement. And she listened, immensely
pleased and a little afraid, like a mischievous child that has set fire
to the curtains. Jonah's face was turned to her, and as she looked at
him her curiosity was changed to awe at the sight of passion on fire.
She thought of the crazy fiddler's words, and felt in herself an
infinite sadness, for she knew that Jonah would never gain his heart's
desire.
"I've 'ad my say," he continued, "an' now I'll talk sense. You're a
grown woman, an' yer know what all this means. I can give yer anythin'
yer like: a house an' servants; everythin' yer want. What do yer say?"
Clara had gone white to the lips. It had come at last, and the "Silver
Shoe" was within her reach, but the gift was incomplete. She must
decline it, and take her chances for the future.
"Not quite everything, Joe," she replied gently, afraid of wounding
him. "Ever since I was a girl I've had something to be ashamed of
through no fault of my own--my drunken father, the street we live in,
our genteel poverty; and now, when I seem to have missed all my
chances, you come along, and offer me everything I want with the main
thing left out. Oh, I know those cottages where the husband is a
stranger, and the neighbours watch them behind the curtains, and pump
the servant over the back fence! I'm too proud for that sort of thing.
Oh, what a rotten world this is!" she cried passionately, and burst
into a storm of weeping. It was the most natural action of her life.
Jonah sat and stared at the lights of the Quay, dismayed by her tears
but relieved in his mind. He had spoken at last; already he was
framing fresh arguments to persuade her. Presently she dried her eyes
and looked at him with the ghost of a smile. Then began a discussion
which threatened to last all night, neither of them giving way from the
position they had taken up, neither yielding an inch to the other's
entreaties. Suddenly Jonah looked at his watch with an exclamation.
It was nearly ten. In the heat of argument they had forgotten the
lapse of time. They scrambled over boulders and through the lantana
bushes down to the path, and just caught the boat.
When they reached the Quay they were surprised again by the splendour
of the night. The moon, just past the full, flooded the streets with
white light that left deep shadows between the buildings like a
charcoal drawing. They took a tram to the Haymarket, as they were
afraid of being recognized in the Waterloo cars, and reached Regent
Street after eleven. The hotels had disgorged their customers, who
were talking loudly in groups on the footpath or lurching homeward with
uneven steps. Jonah was explaining that he must see Clara all the way
home on account of the lateness of the hour, when he was astonished to
hear someone sobbing in the monumental mason's yard as if his heart
would break. He turned and looked. The headstones and white marble
crosses stood in rows with a faint resemblance to a graveyard; the
moonlight fell clear and cold on these monuments awaiting a purchaser.
Some, already sold, were lettered in black with the name of the
departed. Jonah and Clara stared, puzzled by the noise, when they saw
an old man in the rear of the yard in a top hat and a frock coat,
clinging to a marble cross. He lurched round, and instantly Clara,
with a gasp of amazement and shame, recognized her father.
She moved into the shadows of a house, humiliated to her soul by this
exhibition; but Jonah laughed, in spite of himself, at the figure cut
by Dad among the ready-made monuments. As he laughed, Dad caught sight
of him, and clinging to a marble angel with one arm for support,
beckoned wildly with the other.
"Come here--come here," he cried between his sobs. "I'm all alone with
the dead, and nobody to shed a tear 'cep' meself. Shame on you, shame
on you," he cried, raising his voice in bitter grief, "to pass the poor
fellows in their graves without sheddin' tear!"
He stopped and stared with drunken gravity at the name on the nearest
tombstone, trying to read the words which danced before his eyes in the
clear light. Jonah saw them plainly.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
SARAH JAMES,
Aged Eighty-five.
A fresh burst of grief announced that Dad had deciphered the lettering.
"Sam!" he cried bitterly. "Me old fren' Sam! To think of bringing him
here without letting me know! The besh fren' I ever had."
Here sobs choked his utterance. He stooped and examined the shining
marble slab again, lurching from one side to the other with incessant
motion.
"An' not a flowersh onsh grave!" he cried. "Sam was awf'ly fond
flowersh."
"Get away 'ome, or the Johns'll pinch yer," said Jonah.
Dad stopped and stared at him with a glimmering of reason in his
fuddled brain.
"I know yoush," he cried, with a cunning leer. "An' I know your fren'
there. She isn't yer missis. She never is, y' know. Naughty boy!" he
cried, wagging his finger at Jonah; "but I wont split on pal."
That reminded him of the deceased Sam, and he turned again to the
monument.
"Goo'bye, Sam," he cried suddenly, under the impression that he had
been to a funeral. "I've paid me respecks to an ol' fren', an' now
we'll both sleep in peace."
"Come away and leave him," whispered Clara, trembling with disgust and
mortification.
"No fear!" said Jonah. "The Johns down 'ere don't know 'im, an'
they'll lumber 'im. You walk on ahead, an' I'll steer 'im 'ome."
He looked round; there was not a cab to be seen.
He led Dad out of the stonemason's yard with difficulty, as he wanted
to wait for the mourning coaches. Then, opposite the mortuary, he
remembered his little present for the Duchess, and insisted on going
back.
"Wheresh my lil' present for Duchess?" he wailed. "Can't go 'ome
without lil' present."
Jonah was in despair. At last he rolled his handkerchief into a ball
and thrust it into Dad's hand.
Then Dad, relieved and happy, cast Jonah off, and stood for a moment
like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Jonah watched anxiously, expecting him
to fall, but all at once, with a forward lurch Dad broke into a run,
safe on his feet as a spinning top. Jonah had forgotten Dad's run,
famous throughout all Waterloo, Redfern, and Alexandria.