OLD FLICK.
Old Flick's dwelling-place was in a narrow thoroughfare--so narrow,
that Old Flick might have shaken hands with his neighbour on the
opposite side of the way without moving from his own side of the
pavement. Not that he ever tried the experiment; Old Flick was not
given to the shaking of hands and was as secret and close as the
grave. The thoroughfare was a misnomer; for if you walked about twenty
yards beyond Old Flick's dwelling-place, you came, to your great
discomfiture, plump upon the dead wall of a building which checked all
further progress. Many deluded pedestrians, who had strolled into the
place, curious to know whither it led, had been compelled to retire in
dudgeon. A clever speculator had purchased the land round about Old
Flick's dwelling, and had mapped it out and built upon it with so much
ingenuity, that when he came to Old Flick's Thoroughfare, which was
the last built upon, he, to his exceeding surprise, found himself
blocked in; and rushing to his plans, discovered that he had given
himself a few feet of land more upon paper than he actually possessed
upon earth. But he derived consolation from the thought that he had
accomplished his object, which was, to build as many tenements as he
could crowd upon his freehold, and to allow as little walking and
breathing space as possible to his tenantry. This result being
successfully attained, he took a first-class passage home, and retired
to Bermondsey, where he lives to the present day upon the results of
his ingenuity, and talks continually, in grandiloquent strains, of his
Estates in Victoria.
Old Flick's Thoroughfare, as it had grown to be called, boasted of
about two feet of pavement and six feet of road, and contained sixteen
tenements--eight on each side. In the owner's plan of the estate,
which decorated the walls of his parlour in Bermondsey, it was
represented as a magnificent street, lined on each side with handsome
edifices, four storeys high, and crowded with carriages and
pedestrians of the most fashionable character; whereas, in truth, the
tenements were each composed of but one storey, and there was scarcely
room in the road to wheel a barrow. Over the portico of Old Flick's
dwelling was the inscription:--
OLD FLICK'S
ALL-SORTS STORE.
WHOLESALE, RETAIL, AND FOR EXPORTATION.
For be it here remarked, it is the fashion of all small traders in the
colonies to sell everything down to oranges and gingerbread,
"wholesale, retail, and for exportation." It is an idiosyncrasy
peculiar to the class. In the windows of Old Flick's All-sorts Store
was heaped the most worthless collection of worthless articles that
could possibly be compressed within so small a space. Blunt saws,
dirty pannikins, broken crockery, worn-out dog collars, two-bladed
penknives, empty ink bottles, rust-eaten picks and shovels, a few torn
books, the broken works of two or three clocks and watches, with a
multitude of other utterly incongruous things, were tumbled
indiscriminately upon each other. In one pane there was an
advertisement to the effect that "Doctor Flick prescribed for and
cured every disorder incidental to the human frame, at the lowest
possible rates;" and in another pane appeared the announcement that
Old Flick was a land and estate agent, and collected rents and debts,
and acted as the confidential adviser of all persons in trouble and
difficulty, and that secrecy and despatch might be relied upon. To
show that he was ready for consultation or active business, Old Flick,
with his palsied frame and blear eyes, might be seen, half the day,
standing in ragged slippers, at his door, on the watch for customers.
He might not inaptly have been likened to an ugly spider on the
look-out for flies.
The origin of Old Flick was wrapped in mystery. Nothing further was
known of him than that he had sprung up suddenly in Canvas Town, in
the early days of the gold-diggings, and that, when that motley
delectability was swept away, he had migrated to the blind alley to
which he gave his name, and which had just then been formed by the
operations of the Bermondsey speculator. Canvas Town, when Old Flick
first made his appearance there, was indeed a delectable locality.
Take a few acres of level ground, where in the winter people sank over
their ankles in thick mud, and where in the summer they were blinded
with the fine dust which an Australian hot wind drove mercilessly in
their faces; divide the ground into the narrowest and most irregular
of streets and lanes; erect (if it may be so called) upon it a few
hundreds of canvas tents, of all sizes and shapes, which in a
civilised city would not be thought fit for pigs or poultry; smoke-dry
the entire space until the canvas of the tents becomes black and
rotten, and hangs in shreds from weak battens and crazy poles; let the
wretched habitations be tenanted by gaol-refuse, by unscrupulous
traders, by dismayed and distressed immigrants who have journeyed over
stormy seas in search of gold, by brute faces and kind faces, by
flaunting women and ladies of tender rearing; let the spaces be choked
up with packing-cases, and immigrants' trunks, and crying children,
and perplexed wanderers from distant lands; above all, let no vice be
hidden, let no shame be shame-faced: and a reasonably correct picture
of Canvas Town, Melbourne, in the early days of the gold-diggings,
will be portrayed. But even in Canvas Town, where probably was
assembled the most incongruous mass of human beings ever congregated
together; where thief and gentleman slept with but the division
of a strip of calico between them, and where ladies cooked their
family meals, and washed their family clothes, in the open
thoroughfares--even there, Old Flick was a mystery. He was a tall,
thin, stooping man, with an unwholesome-looking face, always stubbled
and dirty. He was a dealer in everything, whether honestly come by or
not, and professed himself a doctor; and as a proof of his skill he
was in the habit of exhibiting a musty, yellow, old cash-book, in
which were inscribed more than fifty testimonials from grateful
patients who had been cured of lumbago, tooth-ache, and other plagues
which human flesh is heir to. He was sixty years of age, or
thereabouts, and he was so shaky that he could scarcely hold a glass
to his lips without spilling half its contents. He said it was ague;
others said it was rum. At the time of his introduction to the reader,
he was standing at his door, as usual, in his ragged slippers, with
his blear eyes looking frequently over his shoulder to the room at the
back of his store. While thus engaged, he was accosted by Milly, whose
manner and appearance betokened that she had been drinking.
"Hallo! Old Flick! Who is inside?"
"No one, Milly," he answered.
"What a liar you are, Flick!" said Milly. "Jim's inside, and you know
it."
"Jim isn't inside," he returned. "You're drunk."
"I say, Old Flick," said Milly, "I never saw you blush. Tell the truth
for once, and set your face on fire."
Old Flick looked venomously at the girl, but she only laughed at him
in return.
"Go in, and tell Jim I want to speak to him," she said.
"I have told you he isn't there."
"All right. Then I'll sit here and wait for him;" and she sat down on
the pavement in front of the store. Old Flick was in despair. He
glared at her, and swore at her.
"Get up, you she-devil!" he quavered, in a voice shaking with passion.
"I shan't. If you call me names, I'll pull your whiskers out."
"Go away, Milly," said Old Flick, coaxingly; "go away, there's a dear!
You'll have the peelers on you, and if Jim hears you--"
"Oh, he _is_ in there, is he!" exclaimed Milly, rising to her feet.
"Yes, but it's more than my life's worth to disturb him. Go away,
quietly, there's a dear!"
"All right; just you tell him, when you go in, to come home soon. I
didn't want to see him, you old fool. I only wanted to know where he
was. Oh, what a liar you are, Flick!"
And giving him a playful pinch on his withered cheek, she walked away,
singing.
In the back room of Old Flick's dwelling was assembled a quartette,
each member of which bore upon his face a certificate for the gallows.
It was composed of Jim Pizey, Black Sam, Ned Rutt, and the
Tenderhearted Oysterman. Spirits and glasses were on the table, and
the room was filled with smoke.
"That's arranged, then," said Jim Pizey; "we meet at Gisborne this day
fortnight?"
His companions nodded.
"Until then," he continued, "try quietly to find out where Dick
Handfield has got to."
"If I knew where that milk-faced woman of his was," said Ned Rutt,
with a dark look, "I'd soon work it out of her."
"Strike me blind!" exclaimed the Tenderhearted Oysterman. "You don't
mean to say you'd hurt a woman!"
"Wouldn't I?" sneered Ned Rutt. "You wouldn't hurt a woman, of course,
Oysterman?"
"Strike me dizzy!" exclaimed the Oysterman. "I wouldn't hurt a fly."
"There's that young devil, Grif," says Pizey; "he knows where Dick
Handfield is. If you could get hold of him and frighten him,
Oysterman, he might tell."
"I'd frighten him if I got hold of him," muttered the Oysterman, with
a villanous scowl.
"Come here, Old Flick," shouted Jim Pizey, striking the table
violently, and putting an end to the discussion. "Come here, you bag
of rattling old bones, and let's settle up with you."
Which settling-up caused a great deal of whining on the part of Old
Flick, and a great deal of cursing on the part of the quartette.
"Milly's been here, Jim," said Old Flick, when the settling was
arranged, and Ned Rutt and Black Sam had departed. "She kicked up a
nice row! I had as much as I could do to prevent her coming in."
"She'll be whimpering nicely when she knows I'm going away," said
Pizey, with a touch of softness in his voice, for bad as he was, he
had a sincere affection for the girl. "I haven't told her, and don't
intend to. I shall leave that job to you, Flick. And now just listen
to what I say, and don't miss a word."
With their heads close together, Jim Pizey and the Tenderhearted
Oysterman laid bare their scheme. It was complete in its
villanousness. Highway robbery, burglary, murder--they would stop
short at nothing.
"Never mind about Dick Handfield giving us the slip," said Jim. "He's
gone up the country, that's certain; we shall hear something of him,
and when we do, he shan't escape us a second time."
"I'll lay a trap for him when I come across him," said the Oysterman
with a lowering look, "that he'll be clever to get out of. A better
trap than the forged five-pound note."
"What do you think of our plan, Flick?" asked Pizey.
"It sounds very well, Jim," said Old Flick. "But I've heard such lots
of these schemes, and they've all ended in smoke."
"And why?" asked Jim Pizey, with passion. "Why have they all ended
in smoke? Because, when everything has been cut and dried, some
white-livered thief grew squeamish, and backed out of it; or because
the infernal cowards have turned dainty at the sight of a drop of
blood, and didn't have heart enough among the lot of 'em to kill a
man! But this shan't end so--if any man turns tail when I am leading,
I'll give him six barrels, one after another; he shall never turn tail
again! We've got the right lot this time; there are four of us down
here, and I can reckon upon four up the country. Grif's father's one
of 'em. When we've got them all together, perhaps we'll 'stick up' the
gold escort. I'll take care we won't bungle over it. We'll kill every
damned trooper among 'em."
"But we won't hurt 'em, Flick," said the Tenderhearted Oysterman. "If
I thought we should hurt the poor coves, I wouldn't have anything to
do with it."
"There shan't be many left to blab about it," said Jim. "How would you
like to have your hands in the gold-boxes, Flick, and run the dust
through your fingers, eh?" Old Flick's eyes glistened, and his fingers
twitched, as if they were already playing with the precious dust. "How
would you like to buy it at so much a measureful,--eh, Flick? That's
the way lots of it was sold after the 'Nelson' was stuck up in
Hobson's Bay."
"Ah," said Old Flick, pensively, "that was a smart trick, that was!
But them men had pluck in them."
"It's all very well to say that," grumbled Jim; "I could find men with
lots of pluck, but there are no opportunities, worse luck!"
"Only think," said Old Flick, gloating upon the subject; "the dark
night; the ship ready for sea, and going to sail the next day; the
gold on board; the captain and officers on shore. I can see it all.
The ship lies snugly at anchor; a boat with muffled oars, comes
quietly to the side; half a dozen plucky men glide up like snakes on
to the deck. Down goes the watch, gagged and bound in no time! The
iron boxes, filled with gold--thousands and thousands of ounces--are
lowered into the boat, and in a few minutes the brave fellows are
pulling back to shore, made for life." And old Flick's villanous face
brightened, and his eyes glistened.
"Made for life!" sneered Jim. "Not they! They were robbed right and
left by such villains as yourself. I could lay my hands on a man in
this town who would only put down a hundred sovereigns for every tin
measure of gold-dust he bought. A fairish-sized measure, too!"
"That's the way they do us poor hard-working coves," grumbled the
Oysterman. "Why, every one of them measures was worth a thousand
pounds! He ought to be had up for embezzlement."
And thus conversing, they sat together until late in the night,
hatching their villanous schemes; and when they departed, Old Flick
chuckled, and rubbed his hands, and with one leg, and nearly the whole
of the other in the grave, indulged in anticipations of a glowing
future, as he drank his rum-and-water.