A Leading Barrister.
While the rest of his family preferred the pleasures of a Melba
concert, held in the Town Hall, old John chose to spend the evening
with an old friend, who, with his family, resided far out in the
suburbs, and who, like old John himself, possessed an overweaning
predilection for draught playing. These two old fogies pored over the
board until such a late hour that old John narrowly escaped missing
the last tram back to town. And before half the sections had been
traversed he was the one solitary occupant of the car, and the only
passenger left to alight at the terminus. Prompted no doubt by the
glad feeling of having at last finished for “the day,” the conductor
called out a cheerful “good-night” as our quaint friend crept down
off the footboard. Old John paused for a moment to study the lay of
the town, then directed his footsteps for the hotel. The smellsome
street was dark, and dull, and empty. Not a sound, save the echo of
his own footsteps ringing out on the hard, hollow pavements, pervaded
it. The crowds of jostling people had gone; all the theatre-goers had
long since wended their way to their homes and lodging places; street
singers, cheap jacks, and beggars had departed; the sin and vice of the
city that was usually flaunting round in paint and powder and all the
alluring colours of the rainbow had disappeared as completely as though
swallowed by an earthquake. A light, drizzling rain was falling, and
wretchedness and misery seemed to hang like a shroud over the dazzling
city. A few lights still flickered afar out on the silent, ghostly
waters of the dark and distant harbour. Mayhaps, in the absence of the
great shop illuminations, the pallid gas-lamps holding sentry at the
street corners burned brighter than they were wont to do.
A night-porter unbolted the large front door of the hotel with grating
noise, and with a series of bows and succulent smiles admitted old John.
“Ah’m late, eh?” he said, apologetically.
The porter smiled some more.
“Not the latest, though, sir,” he answered, in a consoling tone of
voice. “There’s any amount more to come after you.”
“What, to-naht?” and old John looked surprised.
“Oh, I don’t know about to-night, sir,” with a significant grin, “some
of them generally turn up about morning.”
He bolted the door again, and old John peregrinated in the direction of
the elevator. A light was burning in the hotel office. Two gentlemen
were leaning on the bottom half of the double door that guarded it,
conversing volubly. One had been to the theatre and still wore his
dress suit, and a large diamond stud shone in the centre of his
starched shirt like the morning star. The other wore a long top-coat,
buttoned all the way down, beneath which a pair of carpet slippers
protruded. A couple of empty glasses stood before them, resting on the
door ledge.
The one in the long coat and carpet slippers greeted old John
boisterously.
“Hello!” he cried, “this is a nice hour for a respectable married man
to come in!”
Old John, who had made the gentleman’s acquaintance during the course
of numerous quiet chats in the smoking-room, laughed, and said:
“Ah-h, but that be th’ pot calling th’ kettle black. Why ain’t _yow_ in
bed?”
“Well, I was,” answered the other in extenuation, and throwing open
his top-coat displayed a suit of gaudy pyjamas, “but my friend, here,
dragged me out to come down and have a drink with him. Let me introduce
you” (turning to his friend). “Mr. Dashwood, one of our wealthiest
and most successful farmers. Mr. Portland, Mr. Dashwood; one of our
country’s brightest barristers. In fact, I might say the brightest
counsel in the Commonwealth. I suppose you’ve heard of him.”
Old John had heard of barrister Portland, and proceeded to make a
great mouthful of the circumstance. He was overjoyed at making the
acquaintance of such a noted person.
“Oh! Ah-h! Mah word!” he exclaimed, seizing hold of the great counsel’s
extended hand, “Ah wer’ on th’ jury once, when yow were defenden th’
presoners.”
Barrister Portland’s eye began to sparkle with the glow of professional
pride.
“Indeed,” he said; “when was that, Mr. Dashwood?”
Old John gave him the day and date, and the name of the presiding
judge, and those of the prisoners, with a few remarks thrown in on the
personal inconvenience he himself underwent during a busy harvest time
to attend the assizes.
Mr. Portland remembered the sittings, and all its attendant
circumstances and triumphs perfectly.
[Illustration: ONE IN THE MORNING.]
“Oh, by Jove, yes,” he observed, turning with enthusiasm to his
long-coated companion. “I defended six prisoners that day, Murphy,
five of them as d— scoundrels as ever looked a judge in the eye. The
other was a harmless poor devil of a nigger, who seemed to regard his
trial for murder as a sort of bora ceremony. In fact, I had an idea
all the time that he thought we were marrying him to a nice little
gin, and that I was there simply acting as best man, and old Judge
Browser tying the knot.” (Here Murphy laughed heartily.) “Well the
five d— scoundrels, I might tell you, that I reckoned on having a
devil of a fight for, I got off without turning a hair. ‘Not guilty,’
said the jury” (here Mr. Portland laughed himself). “But to my utter
astonishment your friend here” (smiling at old John) “and his brother
jurymen put the rope round the poor unfortunate nigger’s neck without
leaving the box.” Then, addressing old John: “I could never understand
that verdict, Mr. Dashwood!”
“Ah, well, yow see,” answered old John, “we let five on ’em go, an’ it
would a looked bad to let ’em all off!”
“Ah! and so you hanged the nigger for preference!” said Mr. Portland.
“Well, that’s candid, and it shows that there are occasions in
Australia when a nigger is chosen for a job before a white man.” Then
turning to the night-porter, who stood behind the office door listening
to the conversation with a broad smile on his clean-shaven, flinty
face: “Fill those up again. What are you going to drink, Mr. Dashwood?”
Old John hesitated.
“Well,” he drawled, “Ah dersent drink but very little as a rule.”
“Well, you are going to break the rule this time,” insistently from the
great barrister. “You see, Mr. Dashwood,” he added, “I don’t know when
I might have you on one of my juries again.”
“Ah, well, a little port wine,” said old John to the porter.
The three glasses being filled, they drank to each other’s health,
wealth and continued prosperity. Then the leading counsel of the
Commonwealth, who had accounted for numerous drinks during the
evening, talked with increased volubility, and grew reminiscent of
his Bar experiences. With a profundity and fluency that was amazing
he poured forth anecdote after anecdote, recounted stories of the
various judges that would have made their Honours blush to hear, and
related sensational instances of juries being bribed and intimidated.
He mimicked the mannerisms and styles of speech that characterised his
less successful brothers at the Bar, till his friend Murphy, the porter
behind the “door,” and old John were forced to hold their sides in
order to prevent internal dislocations.
To old John in particular the great barrister’s company was heaven
upon earth. It was the first time in his long life that he had been
privileged to share learned society. Besides, the port wine was of
the best. And taking advantage of a lull, while Mr. Portland lit for
himself a large superbly-flavoured cigar, he said, with enthusiasm, to
the porter: “Just fill them yere glasses up again, my boy!”
The porter filled those glasses again; and old John, rummaging his
pockets, discovered they were empty of silver.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter, sir,” said the porter accommodatingly. “I’ll
mark them up, and you can pay for them in the morning.” Then, as if to
emphasise his confidence in old John, he spilled one out for himself,
which he also marked down to old John.
“Never worry about owing a few drinks here, Mr. Dashwood,” the famous
barrister remarked off-handedly, “the hotel belongs to a wealthy
temperance syndicate. A good harvest, Mr. Dashwood.” Down went the
whisky in a gulp, then, smacking his lips a few times, Mr. Portland
took a pull at the cigar, and plunged into a story about “a deaf and
dumb fellow, a college chum of his who turned out to be one of the most
capable and eloquent pleaders at the Bar in Mexico.”
Suddenly and solemnly the great city clock, a mile up the street,
chimed out the hour as 1.30 o’clock. The great barrister stopped in
the middle of his story, pricked his ears, and quoted a weird lump of
Latin verse that had particular reference to graves, and the dead, and
midnight.
As the melancholy echoes of the clock died away several solemn,
dusty-looking hotel-hands, habitues of the scullery, appeared, shoving
before them a lengthy four-wheeled trolly, upon which was stacked to an
alarming height a magnificent pile of boots and shoes—males’, females’
and children’s—and the soles of which were numbered in chalk.
“Upon my honour, just look here,” exclaimed Mr. Portland, upon
observing the cargo of shoe leather that had been “put out” by the
lodgers to be cleaned while they themselves slumbered peaceably in
their hired beds, “now isn’t that a sight worth sitting up to see—eh?
Isn’t it?”
“An’ that ain’t all of ’em,” sorrowfully remarked one of the dusty
boot-blacks, while his two companions stood beside the pile and grinned
grins of irony.
“You don’t say so!” cried Mr. Portland enthusiastically, “and are you
fellows going to polish that ship-load before morning?”
“Before mornin’?” grinned one. “It’s that now, sir!”
“Then before you start on your long and early journey round those
number nines, gentlemen, you had better have a drink.”
The boot-blacks required no second invitation. And they didn’t wait to
make enquiries as to the respectability of the person who desired them
to drink with him. Boot-blacks all know the dangers of delays. Their
feet didn’t hit the floor once before they arrived with a loud bang
against the office door.
“Brandy, Billy,” they all said in the same breath.
Mr. Portland bowed interrogatively to old John. Old John said he’d
“have port wine again.”
Mr. Portland himself and his friend Murphy remained true to whisky.
“Best respec’s, sir,” said the boot-blacks, up-ending their glasses.
“Your very best health, gentlemen; and a pleasant morning,” responded
the noted barrister—“a pleasant morning.”
He emptied his glass and strode over to the heap of shoe leather and
surveyed it. A huge, ugly male boot of great length caught his legal
eye. He lifted it, and stared long and studiously at it. “Enough to
give any man ten years!” he said scornfully, and dropped the boot back
on the pile.
The boot-blacks grinned.
“That’s Judge Yorrick’s,” one of them said. “He’s here to-night!”
“Heavens!” cried Mr. Portland, lifting the long, ill-shaped boot again,
“so it is! I should have known it by the utter look of imbecility it
has about it; by the woeful lack of decision and direction that’s
stamped all over it; and, above all, I most certainly should have
recognised its distinguished owner in it by the almost entire absence
of a sole! Poor old Yorrick! I know you too —— well,” and once more
Mr. Portland dropped the boot on the pile. Looking further afield his
eyes rested on a lady’s shoe with “21” chalked on the sole of it. He
took it in his hand and turned it over and over tenderly. He pressed it
to his starched bosom and said: “Ah, th’ dear, dainty little thing.”
(Old John and Murphy laughed.) “Could that innocent, empty little shoe
but speak!”
The chalked figures on the sole caught his eye, “Ah! and your owner is
only 21. A tender age! The bloom and bud of life!”
“Twenty-one!” growled one of the boot-blacks. “Yer wouldn’t say so if
yer see’d her upstairs, sir. A leather-necked ole hen, what’s nearer a
century. ‘Twenty-one’ is only the number of her room!”
“What!” cried Mr. Portland sharply, “that’s—that’s _my wife’s_, then!”
Then all at once it seemed to come upon him from different directions
that he had been basely insulted.
A burst of laughter greeted his ears.
“You d— ruffian!” he shouted and flung the shoe at the head of the
offending boot-black, who promptly ducked and took refuge in the dark
shades of the elevator encasement. The two remaining boot-blacks
entered into the humour of the situation. Mr. Portland turned his wrath
upon them.
[Illustration: “BOOTS O!”]
“Scullery rats!” he cried. “Take that! and _that_!” aiming in quick
succession at them Judge Yorrick’s large ill-tempered-looking boots.
The shoe-blacks dodged this way and that. The leading counsel of the
Commonwealth armed himself with a fresh supply of clog-hoppers, and
pursued them with vengeance in his eye. The night-porter and Murphy and
old John pursued Mr. Portland, calling upon him to “take no notice.”
The affrighted shoe-blacks flew up several flights of the great stairs.
Mr. Portland pelted them up on to the fourth landing. Here he was
overtaken by the night-porter, his friend Murphy and old John. They
beseeched him in the interests of the slumbering lodgers, and in the
good name and reputation of the hotel, to desist.
Mr. Portland desisted.
“Well, call the scavengers back,” he said, starting to descend the
stairs, “and we’ll have a doch-an-doris.”
The night-porter called them back. With grins on their faces the
shoe-blacks returned cautiously to their pile of boots.
“A doch-an-doris, you sweeps,” called out the great barrister to them,
“and I’ll file a _Nolle Prosequi_ against you, and let you off without
a stain on your blackened characters.”
The three shoe-blacks came up to the office door again, smiling.
They all drank again.
“Well, we’ve had a very pleasant evening,” Mr. Portland said,
addressing his friend Murphy, “taking it all in all. And Mr. Dashwood,”
turning to old John, “I have to thank you for the pleasure of your
company this evening, and I’m quite alive to the fact that your stay
with us was prolonged at acute personal inconvenience and sacrifice to
yourself. Porter,” to the night officer, as he pointed to the lift,
“lead thou the way to that virtuous bug-roost for the joys of which I
am paying four guineas a week!”
The porter led the way; and the merry trio ascended in the lift to
disperse on different floors and seek their respective rooms.
* * * * *
Next morning, old John, with some silver in his hand and a look of
repentance on his brow, sought the night-porter.
“What is it Ah owes yow for last naht,” he enquired, in a confidential
whisper.
With a meaning smile the porter referred to the pages of a pocket book.
“I thought we were going to have some trouble, last night, sir?” he
began. But old John wasn’t to be drawn. He had no inclination whatever
to discuss the doings of “last night.”
“How mooch, lad?” he whispered again, glancing restlessly over his
shoulder to see if Mrs. Dashwood was hovering near.
“Yours come to—let me see—one pound two and sixpence,” and the porter’s
face never moved a muscle or disclosed the slightest suspicion of his
feeling in any way the pangs of a guilty conscience.
Old John staggered visibly.
“Eh?” he said, “Ah only put down one lot o’ drinks, weren’t it?” and he
glanced back over his shoulder again.
“I don’t suppose you remember, sir,” said the unblushing flunkey, in
low, guarded tones that insinuated scandal and disgrace, “y’ know you
were shouting right and left for all hands. Oh, you were _terrible_ bad
last night, sir, terrible bad!”
Here old John observed Mrs. Dashwood making towards him from the
breakfast room.
“One pahnd two an’ sex,” he murmured, dropping the coin into the
porter’s hand.
“Right, sir, thank you, sir,” said that gentle, obliging rascal, and,
with a heavy sinking feeling at his heart, old John turned away.
[Illustration: Decorative Image]