SLIVERS
Everyone has heard of the oldest inhabitant--that wonderful piece of
antiquity, with white hair, garrulous tongue, and cast-iron memory,--who
was born with the present century--very often before it--and
remembers George III, the Battle of Waterloo, and the invention of the
steam-engine. But in Australia, the oldest inhabitant is localized, and
rechristened an early settler. He remembers Melbourne before Melbourne
was; he distinctly recollects sailing up the Yarra Yarra with Batman,
and talks wildly about the then crystalline purity of its waters--an
assertion which we of to-day feel is open to considerable doubt. His
wealth is unbounded, his memory marvellous, and his acquaintances of
a somewhat mixed character, comprising as they do a series of persons
ranging from a member of Parliament down to a larrikin.
Ballarat, no doubt, possesses many of these precious pieces of antiquity
hidden in obscure corners, but one especially was known, not only in
the Golden City, but throughout Victoria. His name was Slivers--plain
Slivers, as he said himself--and, from a physical point of view, he
certainly spoke the truth. What his Christian name was no one ever knew;
he called himself Slivers, and so did everyone else, without even an
Esquire or a Mister to it--neither a head nor a tail to add dignity to
the name.
Slivers was as well known in Sturt Street and at ‘The Corner’ as the
town clock, and his tongue very much resembled that timepiece, inasmuch
as it was always going. He was a very early settler; in fact, so
remarkably early that it was currently reported the first white men who
came to Ballarat found Slivers had already taken up his abode there, and
lived in friendly relations with the local blacks. He had achieved this
amicable relationship by the trifling loss of a leg, an arm, and an eye,
all of which portions of his body were taken off the right side, and
consequently gave him rather a lop-sided appearance. But what was left
of Slivers possessed an abundant vitality, and it seemed probable he
would go on living in the same damaged condition for the next twenty
years.
The Ballarat folk were fond of pointing him out as a specimen of the
healthy climate, but this was rather a flight of fancy, as Slivers was
one of those exasperating individuals who, if they lived in a swamp or
a desert, would still continue to feel their digestions good and their
lungs strong.
Slivers was reputed rich, and Arabian-Night-like stories were told of
his boundless wealth, but no one ever knew the exact amount of money he
had, and as Slivers never volunteered any information on the subject, no
one ever did know. He was a small, wizen-looking little man, who usually
wore a suit of clothes a size too large for him, wherein scandal-mongers
averred his body rattled like a dried pea in a pod. His hair was white,
and fringed the lower portion of his yellow little scalp in a most
deceptive fashion. With his hat on Slivers looked sixty; take it off and
his bald head immediately added ten years to his existence. His one eye
was bright and sharp, of a greyish colour, and the loss of the other was
replaced by a greasy black patch, which gave him a sinister appearance.
He was cleaned shaved, and had no teeth, but notwithstanding this want,
his lips gripped the stem of his long pipe in a wonderfully tenacious
and obstinate manner. He carried on the business of a mining agent, and
knowing all about the country and the intricacies of the mines, he was
one of the cleverest speculators in Ballarat.
The office of Slivers was in Sturt Street, in a dirty, tumble-down
cottage wedged between two handsome modern buildings. It was a remnant
of old Ballarat which had survived the rage for new houses and highly
ornamented terraces. Slivers had been offered money for that ricketty
little shanty, but he declined to sell it, averring that as a snail grew
to fit his house his house had grown to fit him.
So there it stood--a dingy shingle roof overgrown with moss--a quaint
little porch and two numerously paned windows on each side. On top of
the porch a sign-board--done by Slivers in the early days, and looking
like it--bore the legend ‘Slivers, mining agent.’ The door did not
shut--something was wrong with it, so it always stood ajar in a
hospitable sort of manner. Entering this, a stranger would find himself
in a dark low-roofed passage, with a door at the end leading to the
kitchen, another on the right leading to the bedroom, and a third on
the left leading to the office, where most of Slivers’ indoor life was
spent. He used to stop here nearly all day doing business, with the
small table before him covered with scrip, and the mantelpiece behind
him covered with specimens of quartz, all labelled with the name of the
place whence they came. The inkstand was dirty, the ink thick and the
pens rusty; yet, in spite of all these disadvantages, Slivers managed
to do well and make money. He used to recommend men to different mines
round about, and whenever a manager wanted men, or new hands wanted
work, they took themselves off to Slivers, and were sure to be satisfied
there. Consequently, his office was nearly always full; either of people
on business or casual acquaintances dropping in to have a drink--Slivers
was generous in the whisky line--or to pump the old man about some
new mine, a thing which no one ever managed to do. When the office was
empty, Slivers would go on sorting the scrip on his table, drinking
his whisky, or talking to Billy. Now Billy was about as well known in
Ballarat as Slivers, and was equally as old and garrulous in his own
way. He was one of those large white yellow-crested cockatoos who, in
their captivity, pass their time like galley-slaves, chained by one leg.
Billy, however, never submitted to the indignity of a chain--he mostly
sat on Slivers’ table or on his shoulder, scratching his poll with his
black claw, or chattering to Slivers in a communicative manner. People
said Billy was Slivers’ evil spirit, and as a matter of fact, there was
something uncanny in the wisdom of the bird. He could converse fluently
on all occasions, and needed no drawing out, inasmuch as he was
always ready to exhibit his powers of conversation. He was not a pious
bird--belonging to Slivers, he could hardly be expected to be--and his
language was redolent of Billingsgate. So Billy being so clever was
quite a character in his way, and, seated on Slivers’ shoulder with his
black bead of an eye watching his master writing with the rusty pen,
they looked a most unholy pair.
The warm sunlight poured through the dingy windows of the office, and
filled the dark room with a sort of sombre glory. The atmosphere of
Slivers’ office was thick and dusty, and the sun made long beams of
light through the heavy air. Slivers had pushed all the scrip and loose
papers away, and was writing a letter in the little clearing caused by
their removal. On the old-fashioned inkstand was a paper full of grains
of gold, and on this the sunlight rested, making it glitter in
the obscurity of the room. Billy, seated on Slivers’ shoulder, was
astonished at this, and, inspired by a spirit of adventure, he climbed
down and waddled clumsily across the table to the inkstand, where he
seized a small nugget in his beak and made off with it. Slivers looked
up from his writing suddenly: so, being detected, Billy stopped and
looked at him, still carrying the nugget in his beak.
‘Drop it,’ said Slivers severely, in his rasping little voice. Billy
pretended not to understand, and after eyeing Slivers for a moment or
two resumed his journey. Slivers stretched out his hand for the ruler,
whereupon Billy, becoming alive to his danger, dropped the nugget, and
flew down off the table with a discordant shriek.
‘Devil! devil! devil!’ screamed this amiable bird, flopping up and down
on the floor. ‘You’re a liar! You’re a liar! Pickles.’
Having delivered himself of this bad language, Billy waddled to his
master’s chair, and climbing up by the aid of his claws and beak, soon
established himself in his old position. Slivers, however, was not
attending to him, as he was leaning back in his chair drumming in an
absent sort of way with his lean fingers on the table. His cork arm hung
down limply, and his one eye was fixed on a letter lying in front of
him. This was a communication from the manager of the Pactolus Mine
requesting Slivers to get him more hands, and Slivers’ thoughts had
wandered away from the letter to the person who wrote it, and from
thence to Madame Midas.
‘She’s a clever woman,’ observed Slivers, at length, in a musing sort of
tone, ‘and she’s got a good thing on in that claim if she only strikes
the Lead.’
‘Devil,’ said Billy once more, in a harsh voice.
‘Exactly,’ answered Slivers, ‘the Devil’s Lead. Oh, Lord! what a fool I
was not to have collared that ground before she did; but that infernal
McIntosh never would tell me where the place was. Never mind, I’ll be
even with him yet; curse him.’
His expression of face was not pleasant as he said this, and he grasped
the letter in front of him in a violent way, as if he were wishing his
long fingers were round the writer’s throat. Tapping with his wooden leg
on the floor, he was about to recommence his musings, when he heard a
step in the passage, and the door of his office being pushed violently
open, a man entered without further ceremony, and flung himself down on
a chair near the window.
‘Fire!’ said Billy, on seeing this abrupt entry; ‘how’s your
mother!--Ballarat and Bendigo--Bendigo and Ballarat.’
The newcomer was a man short and powerfully built, dressed in a
shabby-genteel sort of way, with a massive head covered with black hair,
heavy side whiskers and moustache, and a clean shaved chin, which had
that blue appearance common to very dark men who shave. His mouth--that
is, as much as could be seen of it under the drooping moustache--was
weak and undecided, and his dark eyes so shifty and restless that they
seemed unable to meet a steady gaze, but always looked at some inanimate
object that would not stare them out of countenance.
‘Well, Mr Randolph Villiers,’ croaked Slivers, after contemplating his
visitor for a few moments, ‘how’s business?’
‘Infernally bad,’ retorted Mr Villiers, pulling out a cigar and lighting
it. ‘I’ve lost twenty pounds on those Moscow shares.’
‘More fool you,’ replied Slivers, courteously, swinging round in his
chair so as to face Villiers. ‘I could have told you the mine was no
good; but you will go on your own bad judgment.’
‘It’s like getting blood out of a stone to get tips from you,’ growled
Villiers, with a sulky air. ‘Come now, old boy,’ in a cajoling manner,
‘tell us something good--I’m nearly stone broke, and I must live.’
‘I’m hanged if I see the necessity,’ malignantly returned Slivers,
unconsciously quoting Voltaire; ‘but if you do want to get into a good
thing--’
‘Yes! yes!’ said the other, eagerly bending forward.
‘Get an interest in the Pactolus,’ and the agreeable old gentleman
leaned back and laughed loudly in a raucous manner at his visitor’s
discomfited look.
‘You ass,’ hissed Mr Villiers, between his closed teeth; ‘you know as
well as I do that my infernal wife won’t look at me.’
‘Ho, ho!’ laughed the cockatoo, raising his yellow crest in an angry
manner; ‘devil take her--rather!’
‘I wish he would!’ muttered Villiers, fervently; then with an uneasy
glance at Billy, who sat on the old man’s shoulder complacently ruffling
his feathers, he went on: ‘I wish you’d screw that bird’s neck, Slivers;
he’s too clever by half.’
Slivers paid no attention to this, but, taking Billy off his shoulder,
placed him on the floor, then turned to his visitor and looked at him
fixedly with his bright eye in such a penetrating manner that Villiers
felt it go through him like a gimlet.
‘I hate your wife,’ said Slivers, after a pause.
‘Why the deuce should you?’ retorted Villiers, sulkily. ‘You ain’t
married to her.’
‘I wish I was,’ replied Slivers with a chuckle. ‘A fine woman, my good
sir! Why, if I was married to her I wouldn’t sneak away whenever I saw
her. I’d go up to the Pactolus claim and there I’d stay.’
‘It’s easy enough talking,’ retorted Villiers crossly, ‘but you don’t
know what a fiend she is! Why do you hate her?’
‘Because I do,’ retorted Slivers. ‘I hate her; I hate McIntosh; the
whole biling of them; they’ve got the Pactolus claim, and if they find
the Devil’s Lead they’ll be millionaires.’
‘Well,’ said the other, quite unmoved, ‘all Ballarat knows that much.’
‘But I might have had it!’ shrieked Slivers, getting up in an excited
manner, and stumping up and down the office. ‘I knew Curtis, McIntosh
and the rest were making their pile, but I couldn’t find out where; and
now they’re all dead but McIntosh, and the prize has slipped through my
fingers, devil take them!’
‘Devil take them,’ echoed the cockatoo, who had climbed up again on the
table, and was looking complacently at his master.
‘Why don’t you ruin your wife, you fool?’ said Slivers, turning
vindictively on Villiers. ‘You ain’t going to let her have all the money
while you are starving, are you?’
‘How the deuce am I to do that?’ asked Villiers, sulkily, relighting his
cigar.
‘Get the whip hand of her,’ snarled Slivers, viciously; ‘find out if
she’s in love, and threaten to divorce her if she doesn’t go halves.’
‘There’s no chance of her having any lovers,’ retorted Villiers; ‘she’s
a piece of ice.’
‘Ice melts,’ replied Slivers, quickly. ‘Wait till “Mr Right” comes
along, and then she’ll begin to regret being married to you, and then--’
‘Well?’
‘You’ll have the game in your own hands,’ hissed the wicked old man,
rubbing his hands. ‘Oh!’ he cried, spinning round on his wooden leg,
‘it’s a lovely idea. Wait till we meet “Mr Right”, just wait,’ and he
dropped into his chair quite overcome by the state of excitement he had
worked himself into.
‘If you’ve quite done with those gymnastics, my friend,’ said a soft
voice near the door, ‘perhaps I may enter.’
Both the inmates of the office looked up at this, and saw that two men
were standing at the half-open door--one an extremely handsome young
man of about thirty, dressed in a neat suit of blue serge, and wearing a
large white wide-awake hat, with a bird’s-eye handkerchief twisted round
it. His companion was short and heavily built, dressed somewhat the
same, but with his black hat pulled down over his eyes.
‘Come in,’ growled Slivers, angrily, when he saw his visitors. ‘What the
devil do you want?’
‘Work,’ said the young man, advancing to the table. ‘We are new arrivals
in the country, and were told to come to you to get work.’
‘I don’t keep a factory,’ snarled Slivers, leaning forward.
‘I don’t think I would come to you if you did,’ retorted the stranger,
coolly. ‘You would not be a pleasant master either to look at or to
speak to.’
Villiers laughed at this, and Slivers stared dumbfounded at being spoken
to in such a manner.
‘Devil,’ broke in Billy, rapidly. ‘You’re a liar--devil.’
‘Those, I presume, are your master’s sentiments towards me,’ said the
young man, bowing gravely to the bird. ‘But as soon as he recovers the
use of his tongue, I trust he will tell us if we can get work or not.’
Slivers was just going to snap out a refusal, when he caught sight
of McIntosh’s letter on the table, and this recalled to his mind the
conversation he had with Mr Villiers. Here was a young man handsome
enough to make any woman fall in love with him, and who, moreover, had a
clever tongue in his head. All Slivers’ animosity revived against Madame
Midas as he thought of the Devil’s Lead, and he determined to use this
young man as a tool to ruin her in the eyes of the world. With these
thoughts in his mind, he drew a sheet of paper towards him, and dipping
the rusty pen in the thick ink, prepared to question his visitors as
to what they could do, with a view to sending them out to the Pactolus
claim.
‘Names?’ he asked, grasping his pen firmly in his left hand.
‘Mine,’ said the stranger, bowing, ‘is Gaston Vandeloup, my friend’s
Pierre Lemaire--both French.’
Slivers scrawled this down in the series of black scratches, which did
duty with him for writing.
‘Where do you come from?’ was his next question.
‘The story,’ said M. Vandeloup, with suavity, ‘is too long to repeat at
present; but we came to-day from Melbourne.’
‘What kind of work can you do?’ asked Slivers, sharply.
‘Anything that turns up,’ retorted the Frenchman.
‘I was addressing your companion, sir; not you,’ snarled Slivers,
turning viciously on him.
‘I have to answer for both,’ replied the young man, coolly, slipping
one hand into his pocket and leaning up against the door in a negligent
attitude, ‘my friend is dumb.’
‘Poor devil!’ said Slivers, harshly.
‘But,’ went on Vandeloup, sweetly, ‘his legs, arms, and eyes are all
there.’
Slivers glared at this fresh piece of impertinence, but said nothing. He
wrote a letter to McIntosh, recommending him to take on the two men, and
handed it to Vandeloup, who received it with a bow.
‘The price of your services, Monsieur?’ he asked.
‘Five bob,’ growled Slivers, holding out his one hand.
Vandeloup pulled out two half-crowns and put them in the thin, claw-like
fingers, which instantly closed on them.
‘It’s a mining place you’re going to,’ said Slivers, pocketing the
money; ‘the Pactolus claim. There’s a pretty woman there. Have a drink?’
Vandeloup declined, but his companion, with a grunt, pushed past him,
and filling a tumbler with the whisky, drank it off. Slivers looked
ruefully at the bottle, and then hastily put it away, in case Vandeloup
should change his mind and have some.
Vandeloup put on his hat and went to the door, out of which Pierre had
already preceded him.
‘I trust, gentlemen,’ he said, with a graceful bow, ‘we shall meet
again, and can then discuss the beauty of this lady to whom Mr Slivers
alludes. I have no doubt he is a judge of beauty in others, though he is
so incomplete himself.’
He went out of the door, and then Slivers sprang up and rushed to
Villiers.
‘Do you know who that is?’ he asked, in an excited manner, pulling his
companion to the window.
Villiers looked through the dusty panes, and saw the young Frenchman
walking away, as handsome and gallant a man as he had ever seen,
followed by the slouching figure of his friend.
‘Vandeloup,’ he said, turning to Slivers, who was trembling with
excitement.
‘No, you fool,’ retorted the other, triumphantly. That is “Mr Right”.’