an ebook published by Project Gutenberg Australia
Title: The Dashwoods
Author: Steele Rudd
eBook No.: 2400201h.html
Language: English
Date first posted: July 2024
Most recent update: July 2024
This eBook was produced by: Walter Moore
Chapter 1. - Staunton, Junior
Chapter 2. - It Was Will
Chapter 3. - The Family Visit The Theatre
Chapter 4. - The Sheriff’s Faithful Man
Chapter 5. - A Leading Barrister
Chapter 6. - Meeting Mcclure
Chapter 7. - James And Peter Attend Church
Chapter 8. - In The Public Domain
Chapter 9. - Peter In The Breakers
Chapter 10. - Home Again
The Dashwoods had been a full week in the great metropolis. Each day they visited different localities, and each day fresh wonders and glories were revealed to them.
They all enjoyed the city—all but Mrs. Dashwood and Maria. The former tired of it after the first day, and saw nothing to enthuse about. There was nothing real, nothing natural there, to appeal to her homely spirit. In her heart she longed to be back at “Fairfield”—longed to be amongst the fowls, and the ducks, and the dairy cows, and to see again the great wheat fields, and the blue peaks of the ranges, and vast plain lands stretching far away to the boundless west. But for the sake of the others she endured, without complaint, the stuffy, noisy, dirty streets of the artificial city, with its crowds of jostling humanity. She even pretended to share the joys and excitements of her family, and almost ran her legs off chasing trains and trams to please and humour them. An unselfish mother was Mrs. Dashwood, who lived to make life light and bright for those around her.
As for Maria, she liked the city “right enough,” but nobody, she reckoned, “could see anything, or go anywhere in peace with a blessed baby to look after.” And one day, when in extreme distress about the infant, she threatened to leave the encumbrance at home with its father the next time she came to town. To which resolution Tilly fervently said “Amen,” and fired Maria’s family pride. She flew into a temper, and proceeded to call Tilly names, and to remind her of things she did when at school, but Mrs. Dashwood intervened in time to save the situation and preserve the family name.
“Well, Ah baint be goin’ weth yow to-day,” old John informed the family at the breakfast table, “mah old friend, Robert Staunton, has herd we’re dahn, an’ writes sayin’ as he wants to see me perticler. He called twahce a’ready, but we moost abeen aht soomewheres he thenks.”
Mrs. Dashwood wondered how the Stauntons were getting along.
“They roons a produce place soomewheres,” old John answered, “but Ah don’t know wheres exactly yet, Eliza.”
Hailing a waiter scurrying past with two trays of “returned empties” in his hands, old John questioned him.
“Staunton & Staunton, Solicitors?” interrogated the waiter.
“Hoh! hoh! hoh!—Noh-h,” laughed old John, “none o’ thet kidney. He be too honest for thet; Robert’s a big man—bigger ’n me; an’ his wahfe’s a big woman. Theey’re both old friends o’ ahn—ever since theey coomed to th’ coontry, and —”
The waiter was impatient and broke in on old John.
“Well, there are several gentlemen in the city bigger, than you, sir,” he answered, “but I’ll enquire at the office,” and away he glided.
“Ah-h,” muttered old John, “Ah-h!”
Tilly and Polly followed the flunkey’s flying coat-tails with their eyes, and smiled.
“A wery erbligin’ young man thet be,” said old John, “wery erbligin’.”
“When there’s half-a-crown put into his hand, father. Ha! ha! ha,” from Peter.
“Well, Ah dedn’t give ’n no half-crahn, lad,” replied the parent, in defence of the waiter.
“No, but I did, yesterday,” from Peter.
James looked up quickly, and stared at his brother as at one who had suddenly gone out of his mind. Tilly and Polly opened their eyes in wonder, and exclaimed simultaneously:
“You, Peter?”
James struggled hard to suppress his merriment.
“What, yow gin him half-a-crahn?” old John asked, in astonishment.
Peter nodded, but deemed it wise to offer no explanation.
“Did you give it to him in mistake for a penny, Peter?” Tilly asked, with a nasty giggle, in which the others joined.
“No,” Peter answered; “a gentleman was leaving in a cab yesterday, and he left it with me to give to him,” and he let off a laugh that made even those at the most distant table look up.
Tilly and Polly and James felt ashamed of their brother, but old John saw only the joke.
“Wery good,” he said; “yow hed ’n all thet tahme, lad, yow hed ’n raht enoof.”
They finished breakfast.
“Well, we’re going for a trip in the Kangaroo to Bung Island,” Tilly said, rising, and speaking for the female portion of the party; “I don’t know what James and Peter intend to do.”
“I’m off again in that train that goes to America,” Peter said, with a cheerful chuckle. “It’s the best fun of th’ lot.”
“To Amerikee?” old John repeated curiously; “yow’ll want summat to go theer with, lad.”
“Well, I want a couple o’ shillings, anyhow,” Peter said, glad of the chance to apply for some more funds. “I haven’t a sixpence left,” and he turned a pocket of his vest inside out.
Polly and Tilly accused Peter of imposing upon the good nature of their parent, and declared he hadn’t spent a shilling of his money.
“H’m! … Ah-h,” said old John, thoughtfully, then turning to his other son: “An’ where be yow goin’, James?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” James drawled, “I mightn’t go anywhere.”
“What’s the use of asking him, father?” Peter said, with a grin, “he’ll be off to spend the day again in the Art Gallery, gaping at those old mares with their heads and tails cocked, squealing for their foals. ‘The Cry of the Mothers’; isn’t that what it is called, James” (grinning at his brother). “He looked at it for two hours yesterday.”
James treated his brother with contempt.
“Oh, well,” Polly said, fumbling with her gloves, and glancing round to see that no outsiders were listening, “when James goes home, Peter, perhaps he’ll be able to paint a picture of a donkey with its ears cocked, which he’ll call ‘The Bray of the Brother.’ ”
James treated his brother to a broad grin, while Peter forced a short “ha! ha!” and rolled his eyes about.
“She wer’ too smart for yow thet tahme, lad,” old John said, with a broad smile. “Too smart!” and, rolling his serviette into a heap, he rose and led the way out. The others followed in single file.
* * * * * * * *
The meeting of old John and Robert Staunton, the burly produce dealer, was a strenuous and boisterous affair. They greeted each other like two roaring lions conducting a courtship. Their handshake was an exhibition of strength and endurance.
“Blest if I ever saw you looking so well, John,” Robert hollered, caressing the plump hand of his country friend and looking into his eyes. “Why, you’re got up like a Suffolk Punch.”
“Ah-h,” rejoined old John, “An’ Ah’ve sin wus Clahdesdales nor yow, Robert. Hoh! hoh! hoh!”
Then they “hoh-hoh-hoh-ed” together, and hit each other on the back, and rocked about, and finally adjourned to the “Lounge” room, of which they soon became the sole occupants.
“Oh, Ah’ve been adoin’ well for a long tahme, now,” old John said, in answer to the other’s enquiries about his welfare. “Seasons baint be lahke ’n were in olden days, Robert. Markets are fairish, now, an’ lan’s gone oop won’erful. People on th’ lan’s doin’ pretty well, an’ they’ll do a lot better yet. There be soome as be a bit frahtent, tho’, o’ th’ Labour Party an’ th’ Lan’ Tax, but —”
“But surely you don’t believe in a Land Tax, John?” Robert broke in in tones of surprise.
“Ah do, then, Robert,” was the answer, “an’ Ah thinks it’s what ’ll make th’ country all round—anyways, thet’s how it seems to me.”
“For the life of me, John, I can’t see how it’s going to do anything of the kind. How can it, when it’s going to tax the farmer right off his land?”
Old John laughed.
“Robert,” he said, tapping his friend on the shoulder, “thet’s what th’ noospapers tells yow, them as will have to pay for theer footin’. But don’t yow believe ’n. They only wants th’ farmer to fight theer battles for ’n. No, no-h, th’ Lan’ Tax won’t hurt th’ farmer what farms, it’ll help him. But the one as don’t farm, but sits on the land lahke a dug in th’ manger, will have to skedaddle and make room for him as wants it; an’ where theer be only one farm now, theer will be three or four bahme-by, which will all mean, Robert, thet theer will be a lot more produce for yow to sell on commission, an’ a lot more boots an’ shoes an’ tea an’ kerosene sold by th’ storekeeper, and a lot more drays and waggons and horses used up. Anyway, thet’s what it all seems to me, Robert, but if yow can show as it waint be thet way, well, Ah’m prepared to listen to yow.”
But Robert held no views other than what he had already briefly expressed.
“Well, of course,” he said, slowly, “if they don’t touch the small farmer, it will be all right, I suppose. And if, as you say, it will mean more produce for me to sell, well, then, John, I’m with it all the time,” and he laughed cheerfully.
“Yow be a hopportunist, then, Robert,” and old John laughed on his own account.
The conversation turned to family affairs, and, according to Robert, two of his daughters were married and living happily with their respective husbands on allotments in the suburbs. Another, Mary Ellen, was only “engaged,” and was employed in the “fancy” department of one of the large establishments.
“But, Will, my eldest boy,” he went on, “I’m not sure what to make of him. I’d like him to take to the land if he would; but I wanted to get your advice about him first, John, before putting out money in a farm for him. You see, I don’t want to find out that he’s not fitted for it, or that it’s not fitted for him, when it’s too late. I want to be sure beforehand.”
“How old be ’n?” asked old John, with the air of a medico inquiring about the constitution of his patient.
“He’s getting on for twenty,” Robert answered, “but to look at him, I’m blowed if you would think he was more than fifteen,” and added, with a look of pride in his eye, “all our youngsters look a lot younger than they are, though. You remember how young and frisky my old father looked at seventy-five, and who would ever think that I was getting on for fifty?”
“Fefty,” soliloquised old John; “Ah thought yow wer’ a lot more ’n thet, Robert.”
“Get away with you,” and Robert worked back to the merits of his son Will.
“Is ’n any size?” inquired old John.
“Well, of course you know,” the other answered, “youngsters brought up in the town don’t grow like they do in the country.”
“H’m! Ah-h,” reflected old John; “an’ have he a lahkin’ for farmin’?”
“A liking!” and Robert laughed a grim sort of laugh. “Th’ blinded young scamp, he hasn’t got a liking for anything except billiards, and football, and hanging round street corners at night.”
Old John shook his head gravely.
“Well, my attitude in the matter is this,” said Robert; “I was thinking if I could only get him on to the land with someone, someone who would work the devil out of him, and, at the same time, take an interest in him, you know, that it would make a man of him.”
“H’m! … Ah-h!” mused old John.
Robert stroked his chin thoughtfully and waited.
“Ah-h!” old John murmured again.
Robert saw the futility of beating about the bush, and came right to the point.
“Would you take him for a while, John?” he asked. “He’d go to your place, I believe, and of course I wouldn’t expect a wage for him, or anything like that.”
“Well,” answered old John, slowly, “Ah only took one yoongster in thet way in mah life, Robert; an’ Ah sed to the wife at th’ tahme thet Ah would never take anoother.”
“Just so,” from Robert, disappointedly.
“But,” old John proceeded, “seein’ as it’s to do a good turn by yow, Robert, Ah might change mah mind.”
“I wouldn’t forget it if you did, John,” Robert said, with a pleased look.
“Well, then, Ah would lahke to have a talk along wi’ him,” the other suggested, “a talk wi’ himself, yow un’erstand, an’ without ’n knowin’ as who Ah em.”
Robert entered into the idea with enthusiasm.
“An’ Ah could tell yow then, Robert, if wert wise to spend mooney on ’n.”
“Well, if you’ll come along and jump on a tram with me, now,” Robert suggested eagerly, “we’ll go down to my office, and you can have a chat with him there without him knowing who the deuce you are. But, mind you, John” (the light of parential pride filling his eyes) “he’s as cute as you make them, is Will.”
“Ah-h,” from Old John.
Then they rose and left the hotel together.
* * * * * * *
“You know,” Robert said, when they were seated in the tram, “the young devil is full of brains if he likes to use them. ‘Look here, Staunton,’ his schoolmaster said to me one day, ‘don’t you take that boy away from me yet; you leave him at school for another couple of years, and I’ll make something of him for you. There’s nothing he can’t do if he only makes up his mind to it.’ ”
“Ah-h,” answered old John, with a humorous twinkle in his eye, “then it wer’ a pety, Robert, thet yow didn’t leave ’n at school.”
“Well, yes,” Robert mumbled, “it was, and I can see it now. No doubt, no doubt!”
They alighted from the tram while it was in motion, Robert landed on his feet, and old John on top of his head.
“God bless my soul, are you hurt?” Robert exclaimed, rushing to his friend and standing him up.
Old John spat out large samples of the city soil, and brushed some more from his swell suit, and tried to laugh, and said:
“Well, Ah dedn’t mean to come dahn thet way.”
“You might have been killed,” Robert said, with much concern.
“Well, Ah ain’t, Robert,” and old John laughed again, and pulled on his hat, which had left him when he struck the street.
They proceeded along a footpath to Robert’s place of business.
“Well, now,” Robert said on nearing the entrance, “I’ll go in first, John, and walk through to my own office, and you follow in a minute or two. You’ll see Will at the desk in the auction-room, along with young Henry, the message boy. You can’t mistake Will, and he won’t know who you —”
Old John motioned Robert off in a way that plainly indicated he required no instructions.
Robert passed in.
“Was anyone looking for me when I was out, Will?” he called on reaching the door of his office.
“Anyone looking for the boss?” Will said, in undertones to the message boy.
The message boy shook his head in the negative.
“No one,” Will shouted, confidently, and resumed the useless occupation of pasting “questionable” postcards into an album.
Presently old John, with an air of studied indifference, sauntered clumsily in and began mooning round the auction room. He paused before a rusty-looking oil-painting suspended from the wall with cob-web and vermin, and gaped at it. The oil-painting was supposed to represent the figure and features of a State Premier.
The message boy drew Will’s attention to the visitor.
Will looked up, and for a moment or two eyed the broad back and long coat of old John.
“It’s lost its mother,” he said.
The message boy giggled; Will was a constant source of humour to the message boy. But for Will the message boy’s existence would have been a dull and uninteresting one in the office.
Old John, in admiration of the work of art, grunted: “H’m,” and “Ah-h!”
Will, on hearing the noise, looked up again, and, placing a thumb to his nose, worked his fingers at old John.
The message boy ducked his head under the bench and gave way to mirth.
Old John fixed a pair of spectacles on his nose and proceeded to examine the picture closely, like a woman judging fancy work at a country show.
Will became interested. He reached to the floor, and, lifting a stray onion that lay there, pelted it hard at old John’s head. The onion hit the State Premier in the stomach and made a hole in him.
Old John jumped round.
“Nit yer bloomin’ larks, now!” Will said, seizing the message boy by the neck, “an’ garn outer this an’ do yer work. Chuckin’ onions about!”
The message boy snatched up a bunch of letters that required posting and fled, leaving a train of giggles behind as he disappeared.
Old John, with a serious expression on his face, approached Will.
“Yow should’nt let ’n do thet,” he said, pointing to the punctured Prime Minister. “Thet be a shame!”
“Let him!” Will answered, in a voice of scorn, “I can’t stop him! But if I was the boss here I would. I’d spear him without warnin’. But the ol’ man, he’s far too easy, mister. ’Tween you and me he ain’t fit to be over a hen coop.”
“Be yow a son o’ Mr. Staunton’s?” old John asked, tactfully.
“Well, so far as I know, I am, mister,” Will replied, “but I couldn’t swear to it,” and he grinned.
Old John looked shocked.
Will laughed, and added:
“They say it’s a wise bloke that knows his own Pa— ain’t that so mister?”
Old John, half inclined to laugh, half inclined to administer a rebuke, was lost for a reply.
But Will neither waited nor looked for one.
‘‘There’s a pair o’ good legs,” he said, shoving one of the postcards into old John’s hand.
Old John glanced at the card, then burst into a loud “hoh! hoh! hoh—hoh! hoh! hoh-h-h!” and dropped it on the floor.
“You wouldn’t guess in a year o’ Sundays where I got that from, mister,” Will said, picking up the card.
Old John, with tears in his eyes, stared curiously at the son of his friend Robert.
Will cast a cautious glance at his parent’s door.
“I got that one,” he whispered in confidence, “locked up in the old man’s private drawer.”
“Hoh! hoh! hoh! hoh!—hoh-h-h!” and old John swung round and stamped hard on the floor.
Hearing the roar of laughter, Robert stealthily opened his door and looked out and smiled.
“Will’s amusing Dashwood, as I thought he would,” he murmured proudly to himself, and quietly closed the door again.
But the turn the interview had taken was not what old John desired.
“What Ah’ve coome abaht, young man,” he said, approaching Will again, “is th’ price o’ maize. How have it been sellin’ wi’ yow people?”
“Maize?” said Will, assuming an important business air. “Dead, sir; a perfect drug. So’s wheat, and potatoes are a bally pest … Why, are you a farmer, mister?”
Old John saw his opportunity.
“Ah-h; Ah em, lad, an’ Ah’m proud on it.”
“You look it,” said Will, “you’re fat enough for one; but I’d have taken you for something better than a cocky.”
“There be things a lot wus nor cockyin’, don’t you think?” replied old John.
“Doing time would be, I suppose,” said Will, with a chuckle.
Under ordinary circumstances old John might have warmly resented the slander. But he overlooked it.
“No, don’t you thenk, lad,” he said, “thet yow would be mooch better orf settin’ behahnd a team o’ horses an’ a plough than cocked oop theer on thet stool every day?”
“Who, me!” indignantly from Will. “Dicken!”
“Ah-h, yow lad.”
Will laughed.
“Why, that’s what the old man is always preaching,” he went on, lighting a cigarette and blowing long thin streaks of smoke at old John. “The old cove” (glancing again at the door) “has tried lots of times to get me to go on the land. He wanted me to go with some old coot up Fairfield way— old Dashwood. Do you know him at all, mister?”
Will waited for a reply.
Old John appeared to be in difficulties with himself. “Ah-h,” he muttered at last, “Ah knows him a leetle.”
“A silly, religious old goat, ain’t he, says grace before pluggin’ into the pumpkin?” further enquired Will.
Old John’s eyes and mouth opened wide.
“He’s got a couple of jolly fine daughters, though, I believe,” Will went on, rummaging himself for a match, “as good-looking as he’s ugly.”
Old John’s features started to work as if he was chewing something hard, and his fists closed and opened automatically.
“It’s curious how a lot o’ these ugly old blokes,” Will went on, growing philosophical, “have such good-looking daughters.”
Old John made an effort to speak, but couldn’t.
“How do you account for that, mister?”
A volcano seemed to be silently at work somewhere m the interior of old John.
“I reckon,” said Will, “if I went to his place it wouldn’t be driving teams I’d be at, I’d be driving those tarts around pretty slick. An’ I’d be huggin’ ’em an’ muggin’ ’em in the dairy. Oh, laws!” (Will placed his hand over his heart and sighed.) “What a time I’d have, mister!”
Old John staggered back, and made a choking sound m his throat.
“I wouldn’t be there long,” laughed Will, “before old Johnny Dashwood would be wanting to know what I meant by—”
“Damn yow for a ill-bred city skunk!” old John burst out violently: “Do you know who yow be atalkin’ to?” and he leaned over and glared ferociously at Will.
Will, suddenly turning pale, deserted the stool and placed his back against the wall.
“Ah’m John Dashwood, Ah em,” fairly shouted the other.
“Strike me curly, what am I up against!” said Will, and, snatching up his hat, darted through a side door into the street.
In the heat of temper old John turned on his heel, and abruptly left the auction room without reporting his opinion or impressions of Will to Robert Staunton. Robert, in his office, sat waiting the result of the interview. He waited till the clock pointed to lunch hour. Then, curious as to the cause of the prolonged absence of his friend, he opened the door noiselessly, and looked out. There was no sign of John or of the “staff.” Robert lifted his voice and called: “Will!”
There was no answer.
He called “Henry!”
There was no Henry about, either.
“Will’s up to some of his games, I know,” Robert said to himself. “Slipped Dashwood home for dinner, I bet. That’s where I’ll find them,” and, turning to a basin that sat under a brass tap in a corner of his little den, he proceeded to wash his hands.
“About five minutes to catch the tram,” he murmured, glancing at the clock, when suddenly the door, as though a heavy horse troubled with mange had rubbed against it, burst in and revealed old John, with solemn, set countenance, standing like the statue of Captain Cook upon the threshold.
Robert experienced a pleasant surprise at the unexpected appearance of his country friend.
“Where the deuce have you been all the time?” he said, giving his hands a final rub in the towel. “Why, I was just going to run off home to hunt you up. I made sure Will had put you up to playing some joke on me—”
Then, as he adjusted the towel in its place: “What do you think of Will? How did you get on with him, John? Do you think you can make a farmer of him?”
“Robert!” began old John, in tones of sorrow mingled with anger, “Ah dersent want to saay nothink whatsoomever abaht yower son; let thet be oonderstud clear atween us, oncet an’ for ever!”
Robert opened his eyes and stared as though he had been hit with something.
“Ah dersent thehk,” old John continued, “thet he’s a credit to yow, Robert, or thet yow, as his faither, has been a credit overmooch to him.”
Robert was a man of quick temper, and there was a lot of conceit and false city pride about him.
“What!” he said, staring at old John as though he couldn’t believe what he had heard.
“Just what Ah sez, an’ nothink more, an’ nothink less,” replied the other, with firmness.
Robert was satisfied he had heard correctly.
“To h—l with you,” he shouted, upsetting his office stool by the excited motion he made with his hands, the noise of which made a fitting accompaniment to his outburst of temper. “Would you insult me and my son—an’—an’—an’ in my own office? It’s like your d— cheek! And I won’t stand it, not from you Dashwood, nor from anyone! I wouldn’t stand it from the King of England! By heavens I wouldn’t; and I’m an Englishman, as good an Englishman as was ever born!” He thumped the table hard with his soft, flabby fist. Then, puffing and blustering like a whale, glared at old John.
“Ah insults no one!” old John roared back, squaring his shoulders and standing his ground. “Do you hear thet?” (a dramatic pause). “Ah insults no one, Robert Staunton! But what Ah thenks Ah means to say, and—”
“You won’t!” Robert interrupted furiously. “You won’t! By heavens you won’t; not in my office!”
“Ah will,” yelled old John, “an’ Ah will say it here, an’ —”
“You d— well won’t, I say,” howled Robert, shoving his face close into John’s. “If you utter one more word you’ll go out of here—by—by—by—”
In his fury the right word failed him. “Dashwood!” he bellowed in a higher key, “don’t you compel me to strike you, or by my soul look here!” He seized a chair with both hands and waved it over old John’s head. At the same moment Will, who meanwhile had returned to his desk, overhearing the noise, stealthily approached the open door of his parent’s private office, and stood, a silent spectator of the quarrel.
“Don’t yow do anythink you’ll be sorry for, Robert Staunton!” roared old John, without flinching from the uplifted chair.
“Get out of here, then,” roared the other.
“When Ah’m ready!” said old John.
“Well, get ready, set, go!” came suddenly from Will, and with a violent pull of old John’s coat-tails he dragged him to the broad of his back and made a great noise with him on the floor.
Old John was never more surprised in his life than when he found himself on the floor. With the howls of an enraged animal he struggled to his feet and pursued Will round the auction room. For a moment or two it was all joy to Will. He gloried in the exhilarating sport of evading capture, and chuckled as he dodged in and out and round about bags and bales and miscellaneous cargo.
“Scotch him, Spider,” he shouted to the message boy, who chanced to return to his post just in time to share in the excitement. “Scotch him!”
The message boy seemed to understand well enough what Will required of him, but, like a growing pup that experiences for the first time a desire to take part in the frolics of older dogs, he hesitated and frisked nervously about in the one spot whenever old John shuffled past him. Once he made a half-hearted attempt to seize hold of old John, but courage seemed to fail him.
“Scotch him, darn it, Spider!” Will cried again, then slipped on a banana peel, and sprawled on the floor.
“Yow yoong dug!” cried old John, “Ah’ve got yer now!” and with open hands bent down to scoop him up.
“Yer fritent scowser, Spider!” Will yelled. “Scotch him!”
The messenger danced about like a chained monkey for a second or two, then finally rushed forward and shoved old John hard in the rear while he was in the act of stooping. Instead of securing his assailant old John fell head first over him, and made more noise than the dropping of several hundredweights of iron dumb-bells upon the boards. Will was relieved; and, struggling to his feet, he hopped away on one leg, and disappeared. The message boy had dived out in advance of him.
Old John rose and glared all about, then brushed himself with his hands. He groaned several times, then approached Robert’s office door again.
“What Ah coomed here to say te yow, Robert Staunton, wer’ this,” he said, doggedly. “If you dersent keep a taht rein on thet there son o’ yow’n, he’ll get ’n into trouble one o’ these days! Gud day!”
Then, turning away, he went into the street, and made for his hotel.
* * * * * * *
Will, delighted with the turn things had taken, frisked into his father’s office to glean further information about the quarrel.
“Did you ever in your life hear such infernal impudence?” puffed the parent, his passion not one bit abated, “for a d— pumpkin man like that to come here and insult me in my own office!”
“I’m blest if I could make out what the deuce had gone wrong when I heard yer both slingin’ off,” said Will, cheerfully, and added: “He wanted to deal it out to you, did he, dad?”
“He wouldn’t deal much to me, I’ll warrant!” and the burly produce man walked savagely round his dingy little den.
“I made sure yer was goin’ to spread him out with th’ furniture,” Will ventured, with a grin.
But other thoughts began to occupy the mind of the parent.
“What did you say to him?” he demanded, turning suddenly upon Will, and fixing him with angry eyes. “Did you say anything to offend Dashwood?”
“Me?” and Will struck a surprised attitude. “Offend Mister Dashwood? Why, I didn’t know he was Mister Dashwood!”
“That’s not answering the question I asked you! Did you say anything, or do anything to him at all?” and the parent lifted his voice in a way that made Will start.
“Oh, I spoke to him, of course, when he spoke to me,” Will answered slyly.
“What th’ devil was it you said to him, then?” demanded the parent.
“What was it I said to him?” Will repeated, sparring for time.
“Yes!” and the parent clenched his fists.
“Oh, he just asked me how produce was going, and—”
“And what?”
“Well, he said something er—about—er—”
“About what?” loudly from the parent.
“Er—about farming.”
“What about farming?”
“Well, I think” (hesitating) “that he asked me if I’d care to go on a farm!”
Robert felt he was on the right track for a solution of the trouble, and yelled at the top of his voice:
“And what th’ devil did you say in answer to that; out with it!”
“Oh, I said it would be just the glassy marble—the sort of thing I’d like to be at, that is, as near as I can remember.” Will was a brilliant liar.
Robert was baffled. He felt convinced of his son’s innocence, and old John’s attitude was surrounded with deeper mystery than before.
“An’ that was all he said to you?” he asked, in a calm mood.
“He went away then,” said Will, committing more perjury, “and I never saw him any more till I see you going to wooden him with the furniture.”
“Curious!” reflected the parent, “d— curious!” and, seating himself in his chair, sat thinking the matter over.
Will lost no time getting out of the office. It was too warm an atmosphere for Will’s frame of mind just then.
“The boss is in a devil of a pelt,” he informed the message boy, whom he encountered on his way in with a letter that had arrived for the “firm.” “Be careful what y’ say, Spider, if he asks anything, or he’ll sack y’ sure as yer livin’!”
If there was one thing in this world that the message boy dreaded more than another it was the thoughts of losing his five shillings a week. And, whenever the bare possibility of such a disaster was even suggested to Henry, painful visions of the distraction and penury his mother would be reduced to in consequence rose up before him and disturbed his peace of mind.
“Who’s that from?” his employer growled, as the boy nervously placed the letter before him on the table.
He ventured no reply, but commenced a hasty retreat.
“Henry, come here!” and Robert called him back.
Henry’s heart went cold, and he returned, looking pale as death, and trembling like a captured hare.
“H’m!” mumbled Robert, as he finished reading the letter. Then, putting the document aside and turning to the boy:
“Oh, I wanted to ask you, Henry, if by any chance you happened to say anything to Mr. Dashwood when he was in this morning that annoyed him, though I don’t think you did, did you?”
Henry went to pieces.
“It wasn’t me, sir!” be blubbered, “it—it was Will!” then he opened his mouth and bawled as though he were being tortured with hot coals and molten lead.
Robert sprang from his chair.
“It was Will, was it?” he repeated.
“Y-y-yes! howled Henry.
“Now, don’t be afraid, I’m not going to say anything to you, Henry; just be quiet and tell me what you know about it.”
“He—he” (sob) “he” (another sob) “he—he” (several sobs) “threw—threw” (some more sobs) “a onion at—at— him.”
“Who? At Mr. Dashwood? Will did?” Robert gasped. “By heavens!”
“Y-y-yes, s’!” moaned Henry. ‘
“That’s it, is it! Th’ d— young liar!” The outraged parent bit his lip. “I see it all now! Th’ confounded young blackguard!”
Then addressing Henry again:
“Just tell Will to come here; I want to see him.”
But Will, who had been listening at the door, made off, and, on reaching the street, turned and shook his fist threateningly at the message boy.
In the evening the family met together round the hotel tea-table. Peter and Tilly supplied the greater part of the conversation. All the fresh incidents and impressions they had to relate would alone have filled a book of fair dimensions. Old John himself was silent, and seemed in a melancholy mood. Mrs. Dashwood shared his reflective spirits, and sat as one over whom a cloud of gloom was resting heavily. At intervals, when appealed to to settle some point of difference, old John would grunt “h’m” or “hoh!”
“Any letter from William to-day?” James, who harboured a suspicion that something had gone wrong away back at the farm, enquired of his parent.
“Noh, noh; not to-day, lad, not to-day,” was the reply. And, leaning back in his chair old John seemed to become deeply absorbed in the senseless chatter, and the bowing and pawing of the bare-necked, white-fronted group of superior people who occupied the adjoining table. But in reality he neither heard nor saw one of them.
“How did you get on with Mr. Staunton, father; did you see him?” Peter asked abruptly.
Mrs. Dashwood, who was already in her husband’s confidence as regards the day’s doings, turned her eyes sympathetically upon old John.
Peter repeated the question, and the absent-minded parent came to his senses with a start.
“Ah-h! oh! Ah-h yes; I seed him, lad!” he answered, clumsily striving to treat the question in his most natural way.
“Father and Mr. Staunton had a good fly round together, I’ll be bound,” Tilly ventured, playfully, and added, with a deep sigh: “Oh, I’d just love to be a man in a big city!”
Peter drained a glass of ginger-beer, and, setting the glass down, chuckled:
“Yes; you’d make such a splendid man, you would, Til. Ha!, ha! Remember when you put on James’s trousers?”
Tilly scowled at her brother, and then choked back a giggle.
“Sh!” Polly said, nudging Peter, “don’t let people hear you, you silly!”
“Well, she might make a good enough man,” Maria growled, “for she ain’t such a great success at what she is, or someone would be wanting her before this.”
“Well I won’t be afraid to refuse the first one that does come along lest I should never get another, Maria!” Tilly fired back, with blood in her cheeks.
Just here a waiter, plying for custom, broke in on them.
“No more for me,” old John said, and the rest of the family nodded their heads in the negative. The waiter bowed like a willow stick, and fluttered off on his rounds.
“Are we going to th’ play to-night, father?” Peter asked, folding his serviette anyhow.
Old John shook his head dismally and mumbled: “Ah-h dern’t know, lad!” and Tilly said she “guessed father would be going out somewhere with Mr. Staunton.”
Old John stared pathetically at his daughter.
“I think father has seen all he will ever want to see of Mr. Staunton,” Mrs. Dashwood remarked, meaningly.
The family began to “smell a rat,” and looked hard and wonderingly at their downcast parent.
“Ah! H’m!” murmured old John, and rising, once more led the way from the noisy, busy dining-room.
They all ascended in the lift together, and, arriving at No. 2 floor, collected in a circle at one end of the luxuriantly furnished sitting-room. Then by degrees, and in disjointed fragments, full particulars of the episode in which Will Staunton played such an interesting part were passed from one to the other, and feelingly discussed.
“And do you mean to say the old scoundrel was going to hit you with a chair, father?” James asked, with an angry frown on his face.
“Well, Ah thenk he would ’a’ done, lad!” old John answered quietly.
“And fancy that Willie Staunton pulling father down on the floor!” Tilly flared. “I could wring his neck!”
Polly summed the Staunton family up as “a bad lot,” and reckoned they weren’t worth talking about.
“Did you say as someone wer’ shot, my dear?” Granny enquired of Polly. But no one was in the humour to go into details in the interests of Granny.
“By Xmas! I wish I’d been there!” Peter broke out, with fight in his eye. “I’d have settled mister Bill Staunton,”
“It mighn’t be too late yet,” James remarked, with a quiet, no-confidence smile at his brother.
“By Xmas I would!” Peter said louder.
“It would be just as effective to-morrow,” James drawled advisedly.
“No mistake I would!” Peter repeated.
“We might come across him before we leave town,” James suggested knavishly.
“Who th’ deuce is Bill Staunton, I’d like to know!” Peter stormed, unmindful of James.
James winked at Tilly.
“Well, Peter,” Tilly said, “really, you just look as if you would hit somebody.”
“Oh, well,” Maria growled, as she danced the baby up and down, “I’m glad it’s happened for my part; we won’t have to be bothered calling on them now, and they never did like to see anyone come with a baby to their place, anyway!”
A porter, with his hair beautifully arranged for the evening, and a silver tray in his hand, entered the sitting room and stared about from guest to guest.
“Mr. Dashwood?” he said, addressing a sour, grizzled-featured, bald-headed old swell who sat by himself, scowling on all around him.
The bald-headed one shook his head. Our friends all turned their faces towards the porter. “Ah-h, here,” cried old John, catching his eye. And those hotel porters have eyes! The reputation enjoyed by the Australian aboriginal for seeing things early is a fraud in comparison to the quickness of their vision.
Gliding lightly and gracefully across the crowded room, the porter placed a card in old John’s hand.
“The gentleman is waiting to see you down stairs, sir,” he said; “most important.”
Old John stared at the card; Mrs. Dashwood stared at it; the whole family crowded round and stared at it.
“Mr. Robert Staunton, ah-h,” murmured old John.
The family looked at each other.
“Wants to see you?” said Peter.
“Perhaps Will is with him,” James remarked, looking meaningly at Peter.
“Don’t you go, father; don’t you,” Polly and Tilly advised earnestly, and Mrs. Dashwood murmured: “Don’t mind him.”
“What answer, sir?” from the porter, who was becoming restless.
“Well, noh!” blustered old John; “Ah won’t see him.”
“Tell him you’re not in, sir?” suggested the porter, from force of habit.
“But Ah em in,” cried old John. “Yow tell him Ah dersent want to have ennerthin’ more to do with th’ lahkes o’ him.”
The porter smiled. “Yessir,” he said, and glided off again.
“Did yer ever hear th’ lahkes o’ thet!” said old John, tearing the card to pieces. “Noh! Ah’m done wi’ Robert Staunton. Ah’m done wi’ him.”
For quite a while the family sat in silence.
“Have you been to the theatre to hear ‘In Australia’ yet, Mr. Hall-Smith?” a female voice rang out across the room.
“Bai Jove! Ai reallay am ashamed. Ai hev not, Miss Brown,” came the answer, “but Ai’m told it’s awfullay delightful.”
“Terribly funnay,” from a second female. “We were there the naight His Excellency attended, and we literally screamed the whole taime.”
Our friends from the country looked enquiringly into each other’s faces.
“That’s where we should go to-night,” Peter said, and Polly and Tilly quickly approved of his suggestion.
Mrs. Dashwood looked kindly at old John, and thought it would do him a world of good to go out for an hour or two and forget unpleasant things.
Old John brooded on in silence a while longer; then, as though his senses had suddenly returned, said with a glow of enthusiasm:
“Ah-h, why not; the whole lot on us. You too, Maria.”
Polly and Tilly cast an anxious glance towards Maria, with a hope in their wildly-beating hearts that their married sister, with the squawking encumbrance, would elect to remain behind and take care of the hotel. But to their chagrin Maria was delighted with the idea. She hadn’t seen a play “since Joe Miller’s niggers performed in the goods shed at Chatswood,” but they would have to wait until she “put another dress on the baby.” She went off and put another dress on the baby; also an extra pink ribbon or two on herself. And when all were ready Maria was curious to know if the baby would understand anything of the play. Polly nudged Tilly, and Tilly nudged Polly; then they all hurried down the stairs, dragging each other after them.
* * * * * * * *
The Company’s manager, the courteous “Goody,” smiled a droll sort of smile as he turned to watch the last of old John’s numerous party trail in at the door of the theatre.
They were late. The play was in full swing when they entered, and the trouble they had to discover seats for themselves exasperated a section of the audience. City people take their “theatres” as they take themselves, seriously. They called upon the late comers to “sit down” before they could see where to sit, or what to sit on.
“Don’t yow be in a hurry,” old John called back to them. “We got plenty to sit on, but where to put it be th’ trouble.” This caused a laugh, which brought a number of people at distant parts of the house to their feet. They seemed to think the play had shifted venue, and that they were missing some of it. Others then followed their stupid example till the whole audience, except those near by, were staring in the direction of our country friends.
“Why didn’t yer bring th’ plough with yer?” enquired a thin voice from a dark corner of the pit, and a burst of merriment rang out in that quarter. Finally, however, our friends all sank down out of sight. Then Granny, thinking she was at home on the farm, started to make more trouble. At the top of her wheezy voice she desired to know if Mrs. Dashwood was “quite comfortable,” and if she was “sitting in a draught.”
“Oh, dry up!” came from the seat behind; and Polly and Tilly took Granny in hand to silence her. But they were up against a difficult proposition.
“Have yow th’ little yun wrapped well up, my dear?” she enquired of Maria. Then Maria began a conversation with her on the amiable characteristics of the infant.
“Order! Order!” commanded a number of angry people, and one was heard to growl: “They’ve come to the wrong shop; it’s at Dunwich they ought to be!”
Tilly pinched Granny hard to suppress her, but only provoked her to loud remonstrance. She rebelled in a sharp, squeeky voice and addressed her grand-daughter in an incoherent sort of way.
“Put them out!” came from away back in the pit, while a voice that seemed affected by a bad cold cried: “Sit on their chest!”
“Oh, ain’t it awful!” Tilly murmured to Polly, and old John at last shook Granny hard, and warned her to be silent, by holding up his big finger and shaking it close to her nose.
Then Granny settled down, and the family fixed its eyes on the play.
A bush scene was before them. An old selector in his shirt sleeves, and with large patches on his pants, was wildly haranguing his daughter into marrying the fellow for whom she had no love.
“You’re mad—mad as a March hare,” he exclaimed. “Could you compare the two men, could you? Is there any comparison between them?”
“No, there is not, father,” the girl answered, looking very love-sick and pretty, “Jim is poor, and hard-working and good-looking and honest, and—and—he loves me.”
“Well, and what is th’ bother?” yelled the boisterous match-making parent.
“Oh, well, he’s an Inspector of Police, father, that is all.”
The old selector walked at racing-pace up and down the boards for several turns and threw his sledge-hammer fists wildly about before he spoke again.
“That is all, eh?” he yelled. “Where’s his big screw, and his hinfluence in th’ country, eh? Ain’t he got them?”
He walked up and down again, and, when he got tired, paused before the girl, and bellowed: “Damnation to it! are yer goin’ to have him—yes or no?”
“No, a thousand times no, father!”
“Then damn yer! yer’ll have to!” and off he went again in a canter.
Just here the person involved, the uniformed Inspector himself, entered in a most unexpected sort of way.
“God bless me, Inspector,” said the artful old selector, suddenly becoming as cheerful-looking as a bridal party, “it’s you, is it? Why, we was just talkin’ about you and sayin’ how long it is since you were here,” and he nearly wrung the official’s arms out.
At this period of the performance Peter thought “it up to him” to have a laugh. And a man sitting in front of him who received the full blast of the mirth in his right ear looked round and said: “Steady, old man!”
“Well, I hope I am not intruding,” spoke the brilliant Inspector, with one eye on the girl, “but an important case which I have in hand in this locality brings me here at this late hour.” Here he gazed at the audience and sighed: “Ah, what a divine creature! If she will only be mine!” Then he faced the old selector’s daughter, and bowed profusely to her, and addressed her as “Kate,” and assured her of the pleasure it gave him to find her looking so cheerful and well. “Kate” bowed coldly and stiffly to him, and plunged a needle into a scrap of calico she was supposed to be sewing.
“A case in this district, eh, Inspector?” the old selector said, fussing round.
“Yes. Some rascals have been slaughtering Grey’s cattle for him, and doing it pretty clumsily, too, I can tell you.”
“Yer don’t tell me,” gasped the old selector.
“Quite true, confound them! We came across the head of one scratched out of the ground by the dingoes, and the tail of another in an old fire.”
The old selector thought he saw some humour in it, and said:
“Heads you win and tails they lose, eh, Inspector, ha! ha! ha!”
“Well, win or lose, I’m making a house to house investigation and asking them all to turn out what hides they’ve got about their places.”
“Well, I’ll very soon show yer mine,” said the old selector, and off he bolted. At the door be paused and observed to the audience: “I’ll give them plenty of time ter themselves. That’s all he’s after.”
Then, while the audience breathed heavily, the Inspector addressed himself affectionately to the daughter.
“I hope she won’t have him!” Tilly murmured excitedly into Polly’s ear, and at the same moment something went wrong with Maria’s baby. It squealed without giving any warning of its intention, and Maria shook it, and “cooed” and crooned to it. “Sit on it!” cried a disagreeable individual. “Chuck it out!” another, with no sympathy for children, advised. Maria scowled all round like a lioness at bay, and said: “I’d like to see any of you try it!” A great number of silly people laughed, and Mrs. Dashwood pulled at Maria and told her to take no notice, which Maria did forthwith.
“Why this silence, why are you so cold to me, Kate? Have you not one little word of love for me? Ah-h!” and the Inspector went through a series of tragic antics peculiar to people who love to excess. But it was no use. All the response he could extract from the girl was a long, far-away sigh. The Inspector tugged at his sleeves and displayed symptoms of desperation.
“Then you refuse my love?” he yelled in a violent outburst.
Kate answered with a faint bow.
“Ah-h-h! Then you love another?”
“Yes, she loves another!” came unexpectedly from the hero of the play, who strolled in and calmly confronted the Inspector. “And what have you to say to him?”
The official one was knocked all of a heap for a second or two.
“Oh, Jim!” gasped the girl, clutching at space.
“Scoundrel!” yelled the disappointed Inspector, “who admitted you here?”
Jim drew out and delivered the police his best punch, and knocked him longways across the sofa. Then, while the audience cheered and hurrayed and laughed, Jim took Kate in his big, hairy arms and hugged her. He enjoyed the hugging process so much, and kept to it so long, that the prostrate Inspector was given time to regain consciousness and to calmly consider what was best for him to do: He considered the best thing to do was to draw his revolver. And, notwithstanding that Peter called lustily to him to “look out,” Jim neglected to turn his head until requested in a triumphant voice by the Inspector to “leave this house or die the death of a villain!” When he did turn he found himself looking down the barrel of the regulation revolver.
The audience clutched each other for support. Polly and Tilly closed their eyes. “Oh, my God!” Maria said, “he’s going to shoot!”
Then the awful suspense was broken by Jim calmly spitting into the barrel, and defying the revolver to go off. A loud yell of delight rang out, and Jim spat into the barrel again. Then down went the curtain.
“Ah-h, he’s a proper Hostralian, that cove!” old John observed, as he wiped the excitement from his brow with a handkerchief.
Then the light was turned full on, and a murmur of voices filled the house as the audience began to converse freely with itself.
In the babel of tongues about our friends a female voice was heard to say, in a grievous way:
“Fancy bringing a baby in arms to a theatre! How ridiculous!” Maria turned her head quickly and located the owner of that voice.
The proprietor of it was a lady with a long, lean neck, and a bare, bony chest. She looked through a pair of gold-rimmed glasses that were secured to some part of her by a magnificent chain, and she sat up very straight and dignified behind a fan that would have made a peacock weep with envy.
“If you had one like it,” Maria said, straight at her, “you’d bring it, too; but I don’t suppose you ever had one, or ever will,” and concluded by making an ugly face.
The lady with the long, bare neck screened her blushing face behind the gorgeous fan, and whispered things into the ear of a male companion. Tilly and Polly both tugged at Maria, and threatened to leave and return to the hotel if she “went on like that any more.” Maria growled audibly to herself and hugged the precious infant closer to her bosom.
“Chocolates here! One shilling a box!” cried a youthful vendor of sweets, pushing his way between the rows of seats.
“Got a shilling, father?” Peter whispered to his parent.
“Ah-h!” answered old John, pushing his fist into his pocket.
Peter beckoned the youth along, and plunged into the chocolates. Old John paid for them with a half sovereign.
“She’s enjoyin’ herself, mister,” the chocolate boy said, with a grin at Granny. Old John glanced quickly at the aged one and discovered she was fast asleep.
The boy laughed sociably.
“Wake up, moother!” said old John, giving Granny a shake; “it’s going to begin agen now!”
Granny declined to wake up.
“Don’t you disturb her, mister,” the boy said advisedly; “she won’t miss anythink!”
“Yes; leave her, John,” Mrs. Dashwood urged; “she’ll be all right!”
John left her, and the boy moved off without leaving any change.
Then the curtain rose again, and showed to the world some more of the Australian bush. It was a wild, grand sort of scene. A mountain pass in all its ruggedness stood within several feet of the audience. Wild birds were calling and whistling and laughing among the mountains. A police constable and two black-trackers were pitching a camp at the mouth of the mountain pass. All their baggage and accoutrements lay about. The audience murmured in admiration.
“It’s too bad to let her miss all on it,” old John said, and made another attempt to wake Granny. But the effort was futile.
One of the black-trackers stared up into the foliage above his head, and said: “Moomoomby.” His brother tracker shook his woolly head, and contradicted him: “Baal, moomoomby,” he jabbered. “That pfellow petebroo.” Then they argued the point until the constable tossed an empty billy-can at their feet and hollered:
“Shut ye’s jabbering jaw and go and fill that at the creek. Hurry up, or befure we have the tea ready the Inspector will be here, and there’ll be th’ divil to pay.”
“You been fetch it, Charlie,” the first tracker grumbled, shunting the job on to his brother. “I been bring it water alonga dinner-time.”
Charlie also demurred.
“Oh, by cripes,” he growled, “I been bring it water last night two times twice.”
The audience laughed at the simple humour of its countrymen.
“Go arn wid y’; the two of ye,” thundered the constable. “Y’ pair o’ lazy divils. All ye’re good fer is stuffin’ ye’re skin, and shleepin’. And look here, when I think of ud: Let ye’s keep me awaake to-night the way ye’s did larst night wid ye’re snorin’ like pigs, and be my soul I’ll put a hot fire-stick up ye’re noshtrils!”
Howls of delight from every part of the house.
“You been do that,” said Charlie; “we couldn’t smell it no more to make it a livin’ for our missis, and we get it compersation then from it Labour Party.” (Yells of laughter from the “fat” section of the house.)
“Oh, my word, yes,” Norman said, in confirmation, “we get it plenty pfellow compersation then all right for not bein’ able to smell it track no more,” and both niggers laughed and grimaced like children.
“Shmell a thrack!” snarled the constable, “the only thrack ever I knew ye’s to shmell wer’ th’ thrack of a damper, or a lump o’ beef. Go arn wid ye’s and fetch the water, or I’ll kick ye’re ribs in!” and he aimed a place kick with his number ten at Charlie, which went wide of the mark. (More joy for the audience, during which Peter wriggled in a sort of fit across the knees of his parent and kicked Granny back into the land of the living again for several seconds.) Charlie started off, billy in hand, and, hanging over the edge of the stage while Norman held him by the two legs, dipped some water out of the creek.
“Now, gather plenty o’ wood fer th’ night!” ordered the constable, “so as we won’t be scratchin’ about in th’ dark forrit, and be pickin’ up shnakes.”
“By cripes!” gasped Charlie, suddenly becoming reminiscent, “I been pick it up two big pfellow snakes one night.”
“Ye’s did, yer black divil! And what did ye’s do?”
“By cripes, I been jump it nearly into th’ plurry moon,” answered Charlie. And the laugh he raised would have emptied a hospital.
“Well, be th’ saints above,” said the constable, “I wish ye’d pick one up now!”
Charlie proceeded cautiously to collect wood. As he bent down Norman threw a stick, which fell at his feet. Charlie, with snakes on his mind, took fright. He bounded into the air like a piece of whalebone, then stared about suspiciously. The audience entered into the joke with enthusiasm. Satisfied nothing had attacked him Charlie continued to scrape up more wood. As he stooped again a snake of tremendous dimensions gradually lowered its length from the limbs above till its large head, with wide, open mouth, was within a foot of Charlie’s woolly head. (The audience started to get excited, while Norman fled at sight of the reptile and took refuge behind the constable.) Charlie filled his arms with sticks, then straightened up. His head bumped into the dangling boa-constrictor. He looked up quickly to see what was there. He saw what was there, and dropped his bundle to the accompaniment of an unearthly yell. The snake concluded the time was ripe to commence operations. It commenced by falling in a number of long, heavy coils upon Charlie, and winding itself around him. Talk about excitement! A wild, desperate struggle started off, and rolled itself several times across the stage. The audience began to kneel on each other’s shoulders.
“Don’t y’ think we had better get out of here, father?” Peter cried, with fright and frenzy in his rolling eyes. Old John didn’t hear him.
The struggle for life on the one hand, and for a meal on the other, continued to roll across the stage. The constable seized a rifle, and, pointing it in the direction of the danger, sat prepared to defend himself. The snake coils slackened and Charlie slipped out into the fresh air. He lay full length on his stomach, exhausted. The snake struck a similar attitude. Their heads were near each other’s. They glared at each other. Charlie groaned. The snake opened its mouth. Charlie gazed far away into the recesses of its lengthy interior. He groaned more. (“Oh, we’d all better go; it’s going to swallow him!” came apprehensively from Maria). Something seemed to go wrong with the reptile internally. It suddenly developed several bulging compartments along its stomach. It was all stomach. It opened its mouth wider—still wider. It struggled, strained, wriggled and contorted; then a kangaroo rat jumped out of him, and raced for dear life across the stage. (Yells of surprise from the house.) Then “bang!” went the constable’s rifle and the rat fell just as it was in the act of jumping upon the orchestra. Such howls and yells and jeers as followed were never heard in any play house before. And before the people could calm themselves the snake let loose two half-bald old ’possums upon the evening. “Bang! bang!” from the constable’s rifle, and both ’possums lay shivering on their backs.
“Well, damme!” said John Hop (popping more cartridges into the magazine) “if this ain’t th’ besht bit of spoort I’ve had since I jined the foorce!”
Then the voice of Charlie was heard to call out in feeble, pleading tones:
“Oh, why you not been shoot it th’ plurry snake!”
“I wud,” cried the constable, “but how do I know there isn’t a mahn in him, and twud be manslaughter!”
But Mrs. Dashwood had reached the limit. She could stand no more of that play.
“I’m going!” she said, rising; “I’m going. Some one will be shot, and it might be one of us!”
Maria, in the interests of her offspring, agreed with her mother.
“Just as yer like,” old John said, and off they all went.
After breakfast, old John, as he left the hotel alone, stood on the large stone steps for a moment or two, gazing in wonder at the volume of traffic that seemed to be ever and ever increasing. A well-fed, greasy, sleeky individual, accompanied by a lean, pallid person in a small straw hat and a large paper collar, and one who would have had difficulty in passing for anything other than what he was, an attorney’s overworked and underpaid office-hack, hung about the pavement, eyeing him closely.
“Are you sure he’s the man?” the well-fed one murmured sotto voce, as he pulled some papers from his pocket, and examined them.
“Sure? Absolutely,” replied the clerk. “I saw him as he left the boat yesterday. But don’t let him bluff you. Our principals say he is as cunning as a fox.”
Old John descended slowly, and, as he reached the pavement, the greasy, sleeky man, who, of course, was none other than the boss bailiff of the State, smiled an oily smile, which was the most valuable part of his stock-in-trade, and accosting him, said:
“Oh—er— Mister Brownloe, half a moment, please.”
Old John paused and stared at them both.
“You’ll excuse me, won’t you?” and the bailiff proceeded to grapple with a number of documents, which seemed to evade the touch of his fat fingers.
“Ah’ll excuse yow,” answered old John, with a broad smile, “but Ah ain’t Mister Brownloe.”
The bailiff laughed affably.
“Oh, we understand each other, Mister Brownloe,” he said. “It takes an old dog for a hard road, eh, Mister Brownloe?” and he laughed some more. “But if you won’t mind stepping round the corner for a moment where it will be more private, we—”
“Dang you!” blurted old John indignantly. “What do I want to go round the corner with yow fer? Who be yow, eh?”
“Well, really,” and the bailiff laughed pleasantly, “you’re about the hardest case I’ve met, Mister Brownloe, and I’ve met some queer ones—thousands of them. You know well enough” (producing a sealed document) “that I’ve got a warrant of Ca. Re. against you! Really I don’t know how you can take it so calmly,” and another pleasant ripple of official mirth came from him.
“A w-what!” cried old John.
“Well, you are a caution,” pursued the hypocritical bum. “I’ll just read it to you:
‘To James Ballantyne, my Chief Bailiff, greeting:— By virtue of a writ of Capias ad Respondurdum to me directed, I command you that you take Robert Brox Brownloe if he be found in my bailiwick, and him safely keep until he shall have satisfied the sum of £850, which sum was ordered to be paid by the said Robert Brox Brownloe to William Smith, plaintiff in this suit, together with office fees, legal and incidental expenses, besides interest at the rate of £8 per centum per annum. Hereof fail not. William Thomas, Sheriff.’”
“What have all thet rigermarole got to do wi’ me?” exclaimed old John. “Ah ain’t Brownloe, or ennerone else; Ah’m John Dashwood. And look yow here, and just listen to me: Ah’ve heerd o’ your sort often enoof, so just yow get on abaht your business and doan’t interfere wi’ me else Ah’ll call a perleeceman and give the two on yow in charge.”
The bailiff rubbed his hands, and laughed in a most friendly fashion. “Well, if you ain’t just the coolest fellow that ever I have come across in all my experience, Mr. Brownloe, and I can’t help but admire you. It’s a pleasure to meet a man like you. But, really, you know, and you mustn’t blame me or my friend Mr. Tomkins, here. I’ll make it as pleasant as I can for you, but you must consider yourself my prisoner until the sum is paid, together with the office fees.” He repeated “office fees” several times, and each time smiled most seductively, for that was where he himself came in. Then he placed his hand on old John’s shoulder to administer the legal official “touch,” without which, according to George the Fourth or someone of ancient descent, the “arrest” would not be good business.
Old John side-stepped and, striking a Jack Johnson attitude, used threatening language.
“Now really,” and the bailiff laughed once more, “you are a gallant old man, Mr. Brownloe, but I wouldn’t fight with you for a good deal, no, not me! Many a fellow you’ve knocked over, I know! But we musn’t waste too much time, for I’ve got to be back at the court at 11.30, and here is a copy of the summons, and a copy of the judge’s order.” He calmly offered the documents to old John.
Old John punched a hole in the judge’s order and danced on the summons; then invited his interviewers to stand up and be made chopping blocks of.
The affable bum deemed it judicious to enter into further particulars.
“Like a good fellow,” he said, in his best smoodging voice, “just listen to me, just listen to me for one minute, will you, Mister Brownloe?
“I’m the sheriff’s chief officer” (he never encouraged the use of the term “bailiff” at all). “This gentleman”—turning to the sweated hack—“represents Messrs. Jones and Robertson, Town Agents for the Plaintiff’s Solicitor. Now, like the sensible man that I’m sure you must be, if you will only think the matter over one minute and just come along and see the sheriff it will save a lot of trouble. If you refuse, you know, I must only call a policeman, and oh! really, Mr. Brownloe, I wouldn’t like to cause a scene here, more for your sake than for my own.” And, gathering up the scattered documents, he tried old John with them once more.
Old John took them in his hand and savagely tore them into many pieces.
A look of horror filled the eyes of the astonished bum. He saw sacrilege and contempt of court written all over the scraps that were fluttering innocently away, and making off down the street.
“Oh, you bad old man!” he gasped. “Do you know what you’ve done, Mr. Brownloe?”
“Ah knows what John Dashwood’s done,” was the answer, “he’s tore ’em up.”
At this stage a stalwart policeman strolled along on the opposite side of the street.
The bailiff hailed him by name. The bailiff was intimately acquainted with the police of the city; and the police of the city were acquainted with the chief bailiff of the State. John Hop, scenting trouble, puffed out his chest, and responded to the call.
The bailiff explained the position to his contemporary in the law.
The policeman frowned upon old John, and said in a voice of tremendous authority:
“Now, get along wid Mister Ballantyne and pay ye’s debts!”
Old John looked bewildered.
“But, policeman, Ah’ve told him Ah dersen’t owe ennerone mooney. And mah name’s John Dashwood. Ah’m a farmer, coome here fer—”
“Go arn! Go arn wid ye’s!” interrupted the policeman, “that’s an old yarn! Get awaay to th’ sheriff!”
Old John began to see the matter was genuine and that further resistence was useless, and the humorous side of the situation started to strike him.
“Well, if this doan’t beat all,” he said, with a broad smile, “an’ Ah coomed here to th’ city wi’ mah wife fer a holeeday—”
“An’ ye’ll get it, Oi’m thinkin’,” grinned the bobbie, “though Oi wudn’t say ye’ll spend it wid your wife.”
The bailiff smiled pleasantly again, and addressed old John:
“Well, shall we take a cab and drive down, Mr. Brownloe?”
“Takes whatever yow likes, seems to me,” and old John laughed. “Ah dersen’t seem to have mooch say in it atween th’ lot on yow.”
“Oh, you won’t be kept long, I’m sure of that,” said the cheerful bailiff. “You’ve got a pretty long cheque book. Oh, I’ll bet you have Mister Brownloe!” and, clapping old John affectionately on the back, added: “Come along; come along!”
Old John went along, and the cabman scarcely pulled rein till he drew up at the large front door of the Supreme Court.
It was a busy morning at the court. The criminal sittings were to open at ten o’clock. The calendar was a heavy one. It was full of charges of murder, burglary, forgery, bigamy, robbery, horse stealing, and attempted suicide. Officials of the court—registrars, deputy registrars, associates, tipstaffs, chief clerks, first clerks, ordinary common barn-door clerks, messengers, bailiffs, assistant bailiffs, bum-bailiffs and sundry other servants of the Crown were running here and there with books and papers in their hands, and an air of great importance on their faces. It was one of the red letter days of the court, and a great day for the officials. They bounded up the broad staircase that led to the temple of justice like kangaroos ascending the wall of a range, and bounded down it again. Along the main corridor of the building moved a stream of humanity which included all sorts and conditions of people—people with money and position, people with neither; people with ambition, people without any; people fresh from the university, people who had never heard of such an institution; people who preached the gospel of Christ, people who picked pockets. And mingled with the mob were lawyers laden with bundles of papers tied with green tape; pressmen trailing walking sticks after them; doctors in gold-rimmed spectacles; inspectors of police in uniform; jurymen, lost and helpless looking, enquiring of others where they were to go; witnesses making similar enquiries; the downcast father, the broken-hearted mother of an unfortunate son on trial; then last but by no means least, quite a small army of clean-shaven gentlemen wearing long black gowns that flogged their heels, and crowns of horse-hair, with idiotic “pumpkin” curls dangling to them, swaggered along as though their absurdly-decorated heads contained all the brains of the world. In their hands they carried, by way of advertisement, imposing-looking volumes of the law. And from out this profane medley of humanity old John emerged at the sheriff’s office. The bailiff opened a door which had printed upon it in large ornamental letters: “Chief Bailiff,” and invited his prisoner to take a chair and make himself comfortable and happy. Removing his coat, which he brushed carefully, he washed his hands and face and combed his hair and whiskers. Then, after considering himself in a shabby little mirror, which he extracted from a cedar press, he looked at his watch, a Waterbury, secured to his vest by a magnificent brass chain.
Old John sat and stared about the room. It was a cold, dingy-looking crib, that deserved to be tenanted by a bailiff. The kalsomined walls were as bare as blazes and disfigured with blobs of grease and ink-splashes and pencil writings of every hue. A photo print of the Attorney General of the day, cut from the morning newspaper, was pasted over the fire-place. It was pasted there in the hope that the original of it might look in one day and, seeing it, decide upon giving the bailiff a rise of screw for his devotion and loyalty. The bailiff learnt this wrinkle from his under-secretary, an imported cuss who, by similar servility, achieved the sensational act of scaling the walls of the service in a pair of policeman’s boots.
No covering was upon the floor, but the presence of stained borders and a number of battered tacks bore testimony that it had been carpeted before the bailiff entered into possession of it. “Higher officials” have no respect for the comforts of a bailiff, except when their tailor issues a writ against them. And then, but only then, they weep on his neck and hold his hand in a brotherly way.
Standing stolidly in the centre of the room was a large pine table, on which stood three glass ink-bottles labelled “red,” “black,” and “purple” respectively, a grimy old tumbler half filled with dirty shot, a wonderful variety of pens and pencils, sufficient to set up a country school, and a large quantity of foolscap, some of it torn, some of it scribbled on, some envelopes of all lengths and shapes, and blank, printed forms galore, some headed in large type: “Jury Summons”; some “Warrant on Ca Re”; some “Warrant on Ca Sa”; some “Warrant on Ha Fa”; some “Warrant on Fi Fa”; and some more “Instructions to Bailiffs.”
And it was all chucked about in any order, and no order at all.
Before this jumble of stationery the bailiff calmly seated himself in a heavy chair, the legs of which scratched channels in the floor when he dragged it under him, and proceeded to arrange the papers “Smith v. Brownloe.”
“Well, now, Mr. Brownloe,” he said, turning to our patient friend with a winning smile, “before we go in and see the sheriff I’ll just endorse the warrant with your answers. You refuse to pay me this £850 because you say you are not the defendant mentioned in the warrant. Is that so, Mr. Brownloe?”
“Just as Ah told yow afore,” answered old John.
The bailiff nodded, and proceeded to write things on the back of the warrant. When he had finished his face assumed a serious, saintly expression, a habit he had acquired from long practice as a lay-preacher.
“Of course you know, Mr. Brownloe,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “and I only mention the matter now in your interests, you know, entirely in your own interests, and you’re a man I can’t help respecting, really I can’t; in fact I’ve taken quite a fancy to you in the short time that we’ve known each other, so I have, and what I would impress on you to be really very careful about is that the plaintiff’s solicitors, you know, will fight this matter to the bitter end, and if it should turn out after all that you really are the defendant mentioned, my word, then I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, Mr. Brownloe, oh, not for thousands, not for all the gold in Australia”; and the bailiff opened his eyes and shook his head gloomily. Then, breaking into a friendly laugh. “Oh, I fancy I can see you in that box upstairs with Mr. Bumpkins, the barrister, at you! Besides,” he added, “you would have to stump up a lot more then than it will cost you now. Even my own costs would be ever so much greater. They don’t come to very much just yet. Let me see” (makes a calculation), “yes, only five pounds ten, including cab fare. But just think for a moment what the solicitors’ costs would come to” (here he leaned back and laughed loud). “I don’t suppose anyone in this world, Mr. Brownloe, could say what they would come to.”
“Well, all that’s got nothing to do wi’ me!” old John answered, shortly; and the bailiff lost hope.
“Well, you are a determined man, Mr. Brownloe,” he said. “I do admire you for it,” and jumping up he opened a small trap window in the thick brick wall and looked out upon a nest of clerks assembled in the next room, munching fruit.
“Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed. “Did I give you a fright, Mr. Maypole?”
“I thought you were that rotter of an under-secretary spying round again!” a voice was heard to say, which was followed by a burst of clerical laughter, and a large banana that whizzed through at the bailiff’s beard.
The bailiff closed the trap window with a loud bang, and stood listening to things rapping the other side of it that sounded like hail-stones pelting a roof.
“They’re such awful beggars in there,” he said to old John, “for playing jokes. Oh, dear me, I would enjoy myself if the under-secretary were to pop in here just now and open this window. He would get such a one in the eye!”
“Ah-h,” remarked old John; “who be he?”
“Who is he!” and the bailiff looked as though amazed to find that any person living did not know that exalted being, the under-secretary!
“Oh, he’s the head of the department—the head of us all.”
Cautiously he opened the trap window again, and, finding the clerks had settled down to work, called out:
“Mr. Maypole, is the sheriff in his office do you know?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” came the answer, “if he’s not gone into court.”
“Well, look here, Mr. Maypole, I’ve Mr. Brownloe with me, and I must see the sheriff most urgently.” Then, catching Mr. Maypole’s eye, the bailiff winked a wink, the meaning of which was perfectly understood by the gentleman at the head of the clerks’ quarters.
The bailiff seated himself at his table again and commenced writing at a wonderful rate of speed.
Next moment Mr. Maypole, with a pile of papers in his hand that might have referred to all the matters in the department for ought he knew at the moment, entered the room, and, as an excuse for his appearance, asked a fictitious question about the service of a jury summons.
“I’ll tell you all about it in two minutes, Mr. Maypole, if you just sit down for a while,” answered the busy bailiff; “I want to catch the sheriff first, before he goes into court,” and, rising, he rushed off to capture his boss.
And Mr. Maypole, the clerk, was left in charge of the prisoner, which, of course, was the object of his entering the room. From behind the folds of a closely-written document, which he pretended to study very hard, he started to stare curiously at old John. Old John took little or no notice of Mr. Maypole. Old John was lost in meditation. Mr. Maypole went red in the face. He smiled a little; then, taking his eyes off the prisoner, he rose quickly and referred to defendant’s name in the official documents lying on the bailiff’s table.
Looking up at old John, he asked, with a broad smile:
“Your name is not Brownloe, is it?”
“Well,” old John answered slowly, “Ah can’t get this gentleman yere to believe as it ain’t, and that’s why Ah’m yere.”
“You’re Mr. Dashwood, ain’t you, from Fairfield?” this with a broad grin of proud recognition.
Old John gave a start, and stared at Mr. Maypole.
“Do you know me, then?” he cried, the light of joy rushing to his eye.
“Oh, yes, I ought to know you,” with a continuation of the grin of recognition, “I’m Jim Maypole, Mr. Dashwood.”
Old John gave a bigger start.
“Why bless my ’eart, where wer’ me eyes! Yower father’s place be just next to mine. Hoh! hoh! lord yes, why yower th’ one as we used to call little Jimmy, an’ yow went to school wi’ my James!” And old John nearly shook the clerk’s arm out of joint.
“I was over at your place last Christmas,” said he, “when on a holiday.”
“Oh, don’t Ah remember,” gushed old John, “but you’ve growed lad; you’ve growed.”
“And what the deuce are you doing here on this matter?” asked Mr. Maypole, pointing to the official documents.
All old John’s good humour had returned to him.
“Hoh! hoh! hoh!” he laughed, “this man yere” (meaning the bailiff) “and a policeman, and another fellow as left us dahn th’ street, and a cab wi’ two grey horses in it fetched me here, Jimmy.”
“Jimmy” laughed.
“Ah-h,” went on old John, “and the missus and Granmoother and all of ’em don’t know where I are.”
“What! are they all down with you?” cried the clerk.
“All on ’em were inside the poob when Ah were collared ahtside!”
The clerk saw the humour of the situation and broke into mirth.
“Ah-h,” continued old John, “and them wer’ sure my name was Brownloe or summit, and ’em only asks me to pay eight oondered for th’ tahtle, Jimmy.”
Jimmy had to hold his sides. And old John rocked about in the chair.
Their enjoyment was interrupted by the hurried entrance of the excited bailiff.
“I’m awfully sorry, Mr. Brownloe,” he gasped, “I really must apologise, but the sheriff has gone into court and—”
“Well, you are a chump, Ballantyne!” the clerk said, wiping the tears from his eyes, “this is not Brownloe, this is Mr. Dashwood from Fairfield, an old friend of my father’s, and I’ve known him since I was a kiddy.”
“Ah knowed Jimmy yere,” old John laughed, “since he wer’ in napkins!”
The bailiff went white, and sunk backward against the closed door.
“Our nearest neighbour for years,” added the clerk. “How on earth did you come to make such a bloomer?”
“Oh, I can’t be blamed! I can’t! I can’t! It’s not my mistake. Oh, that awful fool of a clerk that Jones and Robertson sent to point him out!” and the bailiff showed symptoms of becoming seriously ill.
Mr. Maypole stood and grinned.
“Oh, dear, this is awful!” whined the bailiff. “Oh, do ring up Jones and Robertson like a good fellow and ask one of the firm to come up at once! I’m too unnerved to do anything myself. Oh, there will be trouble over this! Oh, let me have a drink of water!”
“That last case of wrongful arrest,” remarked the clerk maliciously, “cost the office what, about nine hundred pounds, and two men their billets.”
“Oh, do ring up the solicitors!” cried the miserable bailiff, while his knees rattled together like the hangman’s when on duty.
The clerk rang up Jones and Robertson, and, after answering several questions, and chuckling cheerfully into the machine, turned and said:
“Mr. Jones is coming himself, and is bringing along a gentleman who knows the defendant Brownloe well.”
The bailiff attempted to make a grateful response, but lost control of his bottom jaw. “R-r-r-r-r-r R-r-r-r-r!” went his teeth, as though set in motion by intense cold.
Old John, taking compassion upon him, assured the bailiff that so far as he “wer’ concerned no harm wer’ done.” The bailiff pulled himself together, and paced restlessly about the room.
Suddenly a messenger, out of breath, burst into the room, and gasped out that William James, a juror, had failed to answer when his name was called, and that the judge was in a terrible rage, and the sheriff in a blue funk. “You’re to come up to court at once Mr. Ballantyne,” he concluded, in a shout, and rushed away again.
The poor bailiff! He collapsed again. “Oh, my heavens!” he moaned, “oh, my stars!” and placed his hands to his head.
But just then the clatter of shoe-leather was heard racing up the corridor and the form of the absent juror streaked past the open door.
“There he is!” shrieked the bailiff, “there’s Mr. James!” and he bounded out in pursuit. Next moment he was hanging round the juryman’s neck beseeching him in the name of heaven, in the name of himself, in the name of the judge, to hurry into court.
“Oh, to th’ devil with th’ judge! My watch just makes it five minutes past ten!” growled Mr. James, and on he trotted.
“Oh, what a blessing he’s come!” sighed the bailiff, returning to his table and mopping the perspiration from his brow. “I needn’t go up now! Oh, there will be a row when he goes in!”
And there was a row! In less than three minutes juror James came rushing back to the bailiff’s room.
“Where’s your telephone?” he roared, angrily. “That infernal old dog up there has fined me ten pounds! But I’ll show him if I’ll pay or not!”
He turned the handle of the machine with great violence. “Give me the Attorney General!” he shouted. “Confound it, are you deaf! The Attorney General! No, d— it! I don’t want your under-secretary. I want to speak to Mr. McBrown himself! Eh? Mr. James of James and Black speaking!”
The clerk looked across at the bailiff; the bailiff looked across at the clerk.
“Is that Mr. McBrown?” continued juror James. “Oh, how are you, Dan. Look here, Dan, I’m in trouble. I was five minutes late on the jury just now—and the common jury, no less—and this old barbarian that you keep on the bench here fined me ten pounds!”
There was a silence, during which the conversation was conducted by “Dan,” the Attorney General.
Then juror James began again:
“Oh, right you are, Dan,” he said, “I’ll come round and see you right away!” and, dropping the ’phone he winked triumphantly at the bailiff and hurried away.
“That’s strong, if you like!” remarked the clerk.
The bailiff chuckled.
“Catch Mr. James paying a fine,” he said; “not while he’s one of Mr. McBrown’s chief political.supporters!”
“And they say the course of justice is never interfered with in Australia!” remarked the clerk again.
“Oh, never!” said the bailiff, with a broad smile; “never! never! never!”
And the incident had hardly closed when Mr. Jones, of Jones and Robertson, accompanied by the gentleman acquainted with defendant Brownloe, arrived.
One glance at old John satisfied the said gentleman. He turned to the lawyer and shook his head in the negative. The lawyer flew off the handle.
“Have you arrested this gentleman as the defendant?” he asked, in scornful tones of the bailiff.
The bailiff fairly trembled.
“Your clerk pointed him out, Mr. Jones, and I couldn’t—”
“I don’t know anything about what our clerk did!” interrupted the lawyer, “but I presume the sheriff’s office knows its business, and if it is pleased to arrest the first man it meets in the street, while the real defendant is allowed to escape by its neglect, then of course it must put up with the consequences. We want that writ against Brownloe executed, Mr. Ballantyne,” and the lawyer, with his companion, turned and left.
A cold shiver came over the bailiff and he sunk in a limp heap into his chair.
“Well, Ah suppose they don’t want me any more, Jimmy?” old John said, addressing the clerk.
“No, Mr. Dashwood,” the clerk answered, “not unless you are going to issue a writ against the office for wrongful arrest!”
Old John shook his head contemptuously, and held out his hand to say good-bye.
“Good-bye, Mr. Dashwood,” the clerk said, “but you ought to go up and spend half an hour in the court now that you are here. You might hear something amusing up there.”
“Ah-h,” said old John, falling in with the idea, “an’ which way do yow go, Jimmy, to get in there?”
“Just round the corner of the passage, here, Mr. Dashwood,” answered the clerk, pointing out through the door. “The stairs are there on your right; you can’t miss them. Just go up them and you’ll see a crowd of people hanging about the door. Go right in; but I don’t think you’ll be able to get a seat.”
“Ah, well, Ah don’t soopose they’ll hang me,” answered old John cheerfully, and, shaking hands with Jimmy again, added: “Ah’ll tell father as how Ah saw yow when we goes back to Fairfield.” And off he rocked in search of the courtroom.
The mouth of another wide corridor leading to the judges’ private chambers was all that caught old John’s eye, and down that dull and gloomy corridor he fearlessly stalked. At the bottom of it he found a staircase, a narrow staircase, sacred to the use of judges only, and by which their Honours always ascended to the bench. For any other court official to make use of that staircase was a felony!
Without a moment’s thought or hesitation old John mounted those stairs and, with the clumsiness of an elephant, up he climbed, step after step, until finally and suddenly he landed on a Brussels carpet and stood in full gaze of the crowded court-room and the bar, and within a kick of the sheriff and the gorgeously-gowned and heavily-wigged judge. Oh, horror! Had the Kelly Gang, armed to the teeth and with its hat and armour on, arrived on the bench by those stairs at that moment the court and spectators could not have looked more staggered or astonished. The hair on the head of every policeman reared up on its end, and their mouths opened like caves. The crown prosecutor, in the middle of his address to the jury, shut up like a shop, and stared as though the ghost of all his past sins had suddenly risen up before him. The judge, hearing something grunt behind him as old John negotiated the last step, swung half way round in his chair, and, suddenly crouching low as one in the act of dodging a revolver shot, held up his bejewelled hands as if silently imploring mercy. The sheriff, whose duty it was to protect the person of His Honour, even at the sacrifice of his own life, rose to the occasion. The sheriff had been a military man, and was no coward. In fact it was the one opportunity he had often longed for through his long, sleepy official career. But before he could grapple with the intruder the latter had disappeared down the stairs again. The sheriff disappeared in pursuit. Then there was a commotion! Every policeman, plain and fancy, every official in court rushed out by the front way and threw himself down the broad staircase in order to intercept the offender before he could reach the street. Arriving at the ground floor they encountered the sheriff in tow with the runaway. The former had a pleasant smile on his face, and old John was waving his large hands about and making loud efforts to explain that he had merely wandered up the stairs to see how the court managed its affairs. “Jimmy Maypole,” he said, “told me the way, but Ah moost have made a mistake.” Along with a score more excited-looking clerks Mr. Maypole came skipping along to witness the fun. He got a surprise when he found it was his friend Mr. Dashwood who was the cause of the trouble. And the truth of the situation dawned on him at once.
“Why,” he said, pushing his way through the crowd to the side of old John, “you must have taken the wrong stairs, Mr. Dashwood!”
The sheriff didn’t want any further explanation. “Merely a mistake,” he said, smiling pleasantly upon old John and the police. Then he left and returned to court to console His Honour.
“Well, Jimmy,” said old John, addressing Mr. Maypole once more, “Ah thinks Ah better get out o’ this yere city an’ be off back to th’ farm afore Ah gets into more trouble.”
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.
“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 leathernecked 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.
“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.
MONDAY.
“Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-g-g-g.” And the great town-clock, towering in solitary state above the noisy, dirty city, proclaimed it one o’clock. One o’clock! The hour when the great army of poorly-paid clerks, clerks with little lungs, little vitality, and less prospects, clerks with wives and large families dependent upon them, put down their pens with weary sigh, and, turning to the modest sandwich bulked in the packet with a banana, begin their mid-day meal; the hour when ministers of the crown, heads of departments, proprietors, directors and managers of business houses, bank managers, promoters of gold mines, coal mines and delusive oil mines, and the horde of affluent purse-proud members of city society swagger forth with air of rare importance into the main thoroughfares to advertise their persons and prosperity and to dine largely and expensively at the clubs, the grand hotels, and the swell tea-rooms. One o’clock! the hour when doors of smellsome factories open to emit teams of men and women, boys and girls, into the open for a mouthful of fresh air, some to collect in circles about the doors, munching their bit of lunch, some to hang round the nearest street corner, others to play quoits or gamble for pence on some vacant allotment or down a dark lane; the hour when followers of the turf or football and cricket congregate before the sporting rendezvous to smoke cigars and cigarettes, and to criticise all that happened, or that should have happened, on the Saturday before; the hour, too, when the labour agitator, seizing time by the forelock, takes the stump in park and square to straighten out the political question of the day and arrange things with the working man for the effective belting of “boodle” with the heavy end of the ballot box.
And, standing beneath that great clock, old John and Peter stared up at its giddy height and wondered by what means it was ever elevated to such a position. And while they debated the matter with each other a burly, hairy form in a new roomy tweed suit and a new hat waddled from the crowd and greeted them in cheery, familiar voice.
“Mah gracious me if ’n ain’t Duncan McClure!” cried old John, holding out his hand, while Peter started to laugh with delight at the welcome and unexpected appearance of their good-natured country cousin.
“By criky!” said Duncan, his humorous little eyes twinkling merrily from behind the rolls of fat that gathered in his hairy cheeks, “I was standin’ ower there a’maist cryin’ harrd, while I was listenin’ tae a chap singin’ ‘Th’ Bonnie Hills o’ Scotland’ when I keeked ower here an’ saw ye. ‘By cripes!’ I said, ‘if that’s no auld John Dashwood an’ Peter, I’ll eat ma bloomin’ bonnet.’”
“Ah-h,” laughed old John, “you’ve good eyes, Duncan; an’ yow won’t have to eat yow’re hat.”
“By gosh, an’ I’m jolly glad aboot it, for Ah jist bocht it oot o’ a shop the noo, and it cost me five an’ saxpence,” and, taking his hat off, McClure invited his friends to pass their friendly opinion upon the merits of his purchase.
They both gazed on the felt and at McClure’s bare head and smiled.
“Dae ye no think it’s dirt cheap at five an saxpence?” asked McClure proudly. “It’s sic a lang time sin’ I bocht onything mysel wi’oot th’ wife that I had maist forgotten hoo tae make a deal wi’ th’ skaff-raff ahind th’ coonter.”
Old John dragged his own “nail-can” off, and answered: “Well, Ah paid fourteen shillins for yon.”
“Holy Smoke!” and McClure pulled a long and serious face. “Ye maun be gaun balmy.”
“It’s a good het, though,” John said, in justification of the expenditure.
“Weel, it’s a different sorrt tae mine,” Duncan drawled, “that ane o’ yours is th’ sorrt Tam o’ Todshaw an’ auld George Reid an’ some o’ th’ blackfellows that gets hats gi’en tae them for naething wears. I dinna care for that style mysel’ a bit. They look well eneuch on you, though, Dashwood; a lot better than on George Reid.”
Peter removed his head-gear and remarked that he only paid “eight bob” for it.
“I wadna be seen deid wi’ a hat like that, Peter,” Duncan said. “By cripes, I dinna ken where ye got ane like it.”
Peter laughed, and all three replaced their hats on their heads, quite oblivious of the fact that a number of people standing by were smiling hard at them.
“I didn’t know yow were dahn here, McClure,” old John remarked, opening up fresh conversation.
“Tae tell th’ truth,” Duncan answered, “I didna mean tae come doon till I kent ye were here yoursel’, Dashwood. ‘I’ll swear be ma soul,’ I said tae the wife, ‘auld Johnny Dashwood’s hae’n a deil o’ a gude time o’ it,’ an’ she said: ‘Well, can ye nae gang doon yoursel’?’ ‘By cripes, now,’ I thocht, ‘I just will,’ and I had nae sooner thocht it than a chap frae th’ railway came along an’ telt us a’ aboot th’ cheap fares—”
Here a sudden gust of wind lifted McClure’s hat from his head and propelled it into the centre of the street, amongst the traffic. Peter pursued it on Duncan’s behalf. Before he could rescue it, however, a cabman’s horse put his foot in it, and cut gashes in the crown of it. Peter, smiling, returned with it in his hand.
“By cripes, now!” Duncan said, staring at the ruin, “isn’t that a holy terror. It’s eneuch tae make a bloomin’ pairson swear.”
Old John went off into laughter: “Hoh! hoh! hoh! hoh! hoh!” he roared, while he rocked and rolled about on the pavement.
“Bust ye!” Duncan said, and, punching the damaged felt into some sort of shape with his fat fist, pulled it over his head again, leaving a tuft of his hair sticking up through it like the comb on a cock’s head.
Old John and Peter laughed more.
“Yow can’t wear yon now, McClure,” old John said, advisedly, “yow moost get anoother.”
“I’ll need tae get a bit o’ a snack first,” answered Duncan, plunging both hands into his roomy pockets and looking quite happy as he stared about him. Then after a silence:
“Hae you fellows had a feed yet?”
Neither old John or Peter had had lunch, but both were hungry.
“There’s a rrattlin’ gude place just roon this corner,” McClure suggested. “A blackfellow keeps it—weel he’s na exac’ly a blackfellow, either, he’s mair o’ a yaller fellow, but he keeps gude stuff, an’ he gi’es ye a grreat lump o’ steak what’s a’ fu’ o’ juice. By crikey! an’ when ye takes a mouthfu’ o’ it ye hae tae eat like a rracehorse tae keep it frae a’ rinnin’ oot down yer cheeks,” and, waddling off through the thronging people, McClure conducted John and Peter to his favoured restaurant.
When they had comfortably seated themselves at a small table, and given their orders to a robust-looking waiter, Duncan, staring before him, observed dryly:
“By Christmas, that’s a braw necktie ye hae on, Dashwood. I can see it quite plain i’ that lookin’-glass ower there!”
Peter, starting to giggle, began adjusting his tie in the mirror.
“Oh, yours isn’t nearly sae gran’, Peter,” Duncan added, noticing the action of the other.
But old John offered no remark. He neither excused nor denied the gaiety of his neck adornments. He merely groaned, and glared about to see if there were any signs of the lunch arriving.
Duncan, catching Peter’s eye in the mirror, winked and remarked further:
“It reminds me o’ a grreat joke I used tae hae wi’ auld Sam Snather and Paddy O’Regan th’ first year that I started selectin’ at Craig-lea. I’ them days we a’ had tae borrow quite a lot o’ things frae each ither, an’ these twa auld beggars that I’m gaun tae tell ye aboot were as harrd as th’ deil hissel to borrow a thing frae. De ye recollec’ any o’ them, Dashwood?”
Old John said he remembered them well.
“But Peter wadna,” Duncan continued, “he was anely a wean then crawlin’ aboot pu’in’ th’ cat’s tail. Weel, when it became rreal necessary tae beg th’ lane o’ onything frae auld O’Regan I used tae pu’ roon’ ma neck a wallopin’ grreat green muffler, an’ bring th’ end o’ it richt back roon’d me waist an’ ride ower wi’ it showin’ like a rainbow. An’ auld O’Regan he’d be sae awfu’ pleased that he’d gie me anything he had aboot th’ farm. In fac’ I believe he’d hae gi’en me his auld saw o’ a wife tae take away on ma shouther for th’ askin’.”
“I didn’t know he had a wife,” old John remarked.
“By cripes, then,” said McClure, “if it wasna his ane it was some ither yin’s. There was ane there. But wi’ auld Sam Snather,” he went on, “it was dufferent. Sam, he was one o’ them wild, blatherin’ orangemen, an’ when Ah wantit tae borrow onything frae Sam I was a’ways maist carefu’ tae pit on a grreat yaller muffler. An’ soon’s I came beside th’ hoose wi’ mae heid concealed frae view ahint th’ peach trees, I’d start whusslin’ ‘Th’ Battle o’ th’ Boyne’ michty harrd. By crikey, auld Sam wad be awfu’ pleased. He’d bring me intae th’ hoose tae show me a pictur’ o’ th’ grreat battle whaur William fought an’ bled—”
Here the waiter turned up with the “juicy” steak, and all three eagerly settled down to business.
“Dinna yae think it’s gude beef, Dashwood?” Duncan enquired, eating noisily.
Old John agreed that it was.
“D’ ye like it, Peter?” and Duncan looked to see how Dashwood junior was faring.
Peter’s mouth was too full to reply at the moment, but his eyes and bulging cheeks conveyed all the answer that Duncan required.
For quite a long interval no conversation was carried on, but as the steak disappeared from his plate Duncan found his tongue again.
“Auld Dill Mackay’s a grreat Orangeman,” he said. “Hae ye ever heard him preach, Dashwood?”
Old John said he hadn’t.
“Naither hae Ah,” said Duncan, “but Ah hae seen a pictur’ o’ his legs i’ th’ Bulletin. D’ ever ye rread th’ Bulletin, Dashwod?”
Old John shook his head.
“I suppose you rread th’ Maissenger. Ah rread that, too, sometimes, but there’s a deil o’ a lot o’ religion in it. Th’ Bulletin is deefferent tae th’ Maissenger. It’s a maist irreverent bloomin’ paper, an’ I dinna see what’s tae preevent them as write it frae a’ gaun tae hell thegither; but this pictur’ Ah’m tellin’ ye aboot wi’ auld Dill’s twa legs wi’ his trews rolled abune th’ knee, would make th’ deil himsel’ laugh, by cripes it would. An’ by crikey, he’s got sic’ grreat legs, too. Oor auld pairson hasna got legs near like them. We keep him too beggarin’ puir tae let them get as fat as Dill Mackay’s. Cripes, he maun eat an awfu’ lot tae get legs like what he has. Mine are pretty big anes—”
Duncan was interrupted by the waiter enquiring if he’d take plum-pudding or rice pudding.
“Weel,” he said, “Ah’m no a beggarin’ Chinaman. I’ll hae a lump o’ ye’re plum-puddin’.”
Peter said he’d have some rice pudding.
“By cripes!” Duncan said, staring solemnly at Peter, “ye’ll hae tae eat it wi’ twa lang sticks!”
Peter’s eye started to dance with painful apprehension, and he gasped:
“Eh?”
“Ye will that, Peter!” and the solemnity of Duncan’s face increased the other’s feelings of apprehension.
“Oh, here; heigh! heigh!” Peter called to the departing waiter, “I’ll have plum-pudding, too!”
Duncan laughed inwardly at the simplicity of Peter.
“I don’t want any of their sticks,” Peter growled in a determined sort of way.
“It’s a gude job ye had me wi’ ye, Peter,” Duncan said, slyly, “or ye wad hae had them, though!”
Peter agreed that it was.
Luncheon over the three were ready to leave.
“That adds a big lump tae th’ expense o’ my trip doon here, Dashwood,” Duncan said, with a sorrowful look on his face as he regarded his damaged hat reflectively.
“But hadn’t yow better make haste an’ buy anoother yun,” replied old John, “yow might as well go bare-head as wear that!”
Duncan thought hard for a while.
“Ah’ll telt ye what Ah’ll dae, Dashwood,” he said, with a roguish look in his eye, “Ah’ll toss ye tae see whither ye pey for th’ three dinners or buy me a new hat,” and he took out a silver coin and began spinning it in the air.
Old John was in sporting humour. “Spin yow th’ coin, then,” he said.
“Wha’ ever wins takes th’ choice,” Duncan explained, as he twirled the coin.
“Heads!” cried old John excitedly.
“Gosh, no! it’s a bloomin’ tail!” shouted Duncan, securing the coin again. “Ye’ve tae buy me a new hat, Dashwood.”
Peter laughed and jeered at his parent for having lost.
Old John accepted the verdict in silence.
Duncan paid three shillings in settlement of the bill of fare, and off they trooped into the street again.
“By crikey!” Duncan said, as they approached a draper’s shop, “that’s the first time I ever won a wager!”
A few steps further on and a shopman in a long-tailed coat greeted them as lost brothers.
Old John acted as spokesman.
“This way, sir,” and the shopman led the way past piles of drapery and goods of all descriptions to a small counter at the far end of the building, where he introduced old John to a pale, youthful counter-hand.
McClure and Peter loitered in the rear, examining the general display.
“Listen here, lad,” old John whispered hoarsely to the pale, youthful counter-hand, “Ah only wants a shellin’ hat. I don’t want any other kahnd!”
“About what size, sir?”
“The biggest yow can get. It’s to fit mah friend comin’ along there,” and he pointed down the floor to the burly McClure.
“We have a line of shilling hats, sir,” said the counterhand, “but I couldn’t recommend them. If—”
“It doesn’t matter what they be lahke so long as they’re only a shellin’,” old John interrupted eagerly.
The counter-jumper went away and returned with a pile of flimsy felt hats and stacked them on the counter.
Old John beckoned Duncan forward.
Duncan breasted the counter and breathed heavily on the display of head gear.
“Now, dinna ye buy anything that’s rreal dear, Dashwood,” he said, as though his conscience was smiting him.
Old John winked at the counter-hand. The counterhand seemed to sum up the situation, and assured Duncan that “they were a very reasonable line.”
Duncan selected one from the pile, and, removing his own, fitted it on his head.
“By crikey!” he said, “th’ vera first fits me like a glove.”
“And it suits yower complexion,” old John remarked.
“There’s a glass there, sir,” from the counter-hand.
Duncan turned and surveyed himself from head to toe in a large mirror.
“Crikey!” he remarked philosophically, “I never thocht I was sae fat as that.” Then, as he straightened the hat and pulled it well over his ears. “This one ’ll do gran’ if it’s nae costin’ a lot o’ money.”
“I don’t think you’ll find it too dear, sir,” the counterhand said reassuringly.
“Oh, Ah have na got tae pay for it,” Duncan said, with a pleased laugh. “I won it i’ a toss.”
Old John winked at Peter. Peter had a vague sort of idea that there was a joke lurking somewhere about his parent, but he couldn’t exactly locate it.
“Is there anything else, sir?” asked the counter-hand, as he handed old John a slip for the amount of his purchase.
“Ye’ll get nae mair oot o’ him th’ day,” Duncan informed the shopman, with a chuckle.
The counter-hand smiled and bowed, and his custom departed.
When they reached the street, Duncan said:
“I don’t want tae be too harrd on ye, Dashwood; an’ sae as tae make things a little bit even I think th’ three o’ us ’ll gang an’ hae a drink o’ something.”
Old John consented, and the three of them marched into the nearest hotel and drank eighteenpennorth, for which Duncan promptly paid.
“That clears ma conscience a bit anyway,” Duncan said, with a feeling of satisfaction, as they reached the street again.
Old John winked at Peter, and Peter felt more mysterious than ever as to the whereabouts of the suspected joke.
“Weel, noo,” McClure said, “I’ve got a lot o’ things tae look after yet, sae I hae’d better gang awa’. I’ll call roon’ though sometime and see ye a’ at yer pub.”
“Well, yow had better take this with yow,” old John said, handing Duncan the shopman’s slip for the price of the hat.
“Oh, by crikey, yes,” Duncan said, putting the slip into his vest pocket. “It’ll do when I get hame tae show th’ wife hoo I got th’ best o’ auld John Dashwood,” and off Duncan wobbled along the street.
“Hoh! hoh! hoh! Hoh! hoh-h-h!” laughed old John as he and Peter went off the other way. “Do you know how much Ah paid for the hat, lad?”
Peter hadn’t the slightest idea.
“A shellin’!”
“Hah! hah! hah! Hah! hah!” and Peter jumped about and slapped himself on the knee and attracted the attention of the police and passers-by. “By George it takes you, father! It takes you! I knew you had something on!”
SUNDAY.
Old John, Granny, Mrs. Dashwood and the girls had accepted an invitation to tea and to spend the evening in the suburbs. James and Peter were alone at the hotel. They moped about all the afternoon, and time hung heavily on their hands. After tea they retired to their room and moped more. For want of something better to do James turned his pockets out and counted his money.
“That’s all I’ve got left of my lot,” he said, producing a half sovereign and two sixpenny pieces.
Peter chuckled and said it was more than he had. “I’ve none at all,” he added, “unless I can get some more out of father!”
James doubted Peter’s chances of raising any more funds from his parent, giving as a reason, that “father was buying a traction engine to-morrow!”
“Well, lend us five bob of yours?” Peter said.
James smiled and returned the money to his pocket.
James had lent Peter “five bob” before.
They lay across their beds and stared at the ceiling. After a while James said:
“Suppose we go to church somewhere?”
“Anywhere you like,” Peter answered, with a chuckle, and off they went.
Out in the street James paused and said:
“Well, where are we going—to what church?”
“The Scotch church,” Peter answered. Peter had an idea that the Scotch church was better than other churches. Peter held curious ideas about churches.
“Well, it’s down this street and up the next,” James said, leading the way.
“Are you going to walk there?” Peter asked in surprise.
“And back, too,” James answered, “unless you’re going to pay for the tram.”
Peter laughed. He also walked.
Presently they were approaching the sacred edifice. They could see the lights in every window. The bell was tolling in their ears.
At the large gates guarding the entrance they paused a while and held a silent consultation.
“Well, what do you think?” James said. James’s spiritual courage was dwindling.
Peter glanced at the imposing-looking building and chuckled. “I dunno,” he answered, “perhaps we had better let it rip and come some other evening.”
James glanced wonderingly toward the open door, then up at the sky to see if there was any signs of rain. But it was a bright night, without a cloud in sight.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he drawled doubtfully, “perhaps we had better go in now that we’ve come so far.”
The last of the congregation passed in.
James and Peter sauntered closer to the door. They posted themselves, one each side it, and took observations. They could see the interior of the building ablaze with light. They could see the draped pulpit. They could see the great organ. They could see a sea of heads packed together, like sheep in a yard.
The last bell rang dolefully.
“Well,” James whispered, “what do y’ think?”
Peter thought the place was full.
James said he could see an empty seat “on the right.”
There was a brief silence.
“Well, you go first,” Peter suggested, “and I’ll follow. Ha! ha!”
“Sh-h-h!” from James. Peter’s mirth sounded like sacrilege to James.
Peter craned his neck to locate the empty seat that James had in view.
He drew back and said he “couldn’t see it,” but he “could see a Chinaman.”
James shook his fist threateningly at Peter.
“Well, go on,” Peter said, with a grin.
James almost took a step forward, but halted in the middle of it. Peter stifled a laugh. James scowled at him.
The organ started to play low and soft. James glanced wistfully back at the street, but only moths and night flies, fluttering round a dim gas-lamp, were there. Then he glanced interrogatingly at Peter. Peter glanced at James.
Suddenly the organ burst into loud thundering peals that startled them.
James couldn’t stand any more. He gripped his hat firmly in his fist and took the fatal step. In long, quick strides he set out for that empty seat. Peter started after him, taking even larger strides and tramping on James’s heels, and attracting the attention of the congregation. Peter thought James would never arrive at that empty seat. It seemed more than a mile away. But James reached it at last and dropped with all his weight into it. Peter dropped on James. It was a swell seat, too—covered with a luxurious cushion. They both breathed hard, and stared silently and strangely about. On a card let into the cedar panel before them was the name of the Premier of the State. Their eyes rested on the name, then they looked meaningly at each other and thought hard. An ugly suspicion that they were trespassing crept all over them and made them go cold.
Several moments of heavy suspense passed. Then a venerable churchwarden glided down the aisle and hovered over them. His long, grey whiskers fell about their necks. They both thought their hour had come. The ancient warden whispered things to them through his hands, and pointed with his thumb to the rear of the church. But he might as well have talked to them on his fingers. They didn’t understand.
At last he gave them up and retired to consult with a brother official.
A broad man with a red face and a double chin and a heavy gold chain linked across his stomach, carrying a kid glove and a walking stick in his hand, closely followed by a tall lady, covered with finery and perfume, paused at the seat James and Peter had “jumped,” and glared at them. It was a trying moment for James and Peter. They “shoved up,” and crouched together till they resembled compressed fodder. The lady clutched her skirts in her hand and hesitatingly sat down beside Peter. The burly Premier, glaring at the occupants of his “reserved” seat, sat with a series of grunts.
The lady opened a large fan and talked behind the battlements of it to her Premier husband.
James and Peter heard her say: “Outrageous!” and “all sorts of people!” and it made them feel faint.
A moment later the parson appeared, and the service commenced. It commenced with a hymn. The congregation stood to it. So did James and Peter—stood like fools, for they were unprovided with “hymnaries.” Not that this made any difference to the singing. But in the absence of “Sankey” they felt that the eyes of the congregation were all upon them. Suddenly the gloved hand of a lady in the seat behind thrust an open book under their nose. Her thoughtfulness went near to ending their lives. That all the eyes of the congregation were upon them now they had no doubt. Peter wished James had been seized with appendicitis before he started to induce him to go to that church. James mechanically reached for the book, and holding it upside down, nudged Peter to join with him in song. Peter responded in a series of hysterical laughs, which were drowned by the voices around him. All the same that hymn-book helped them on a long way. It made them feel a little at home, and more like the rest of the congregation.
* * * * * * * *
The parson rose and preached his sermon. It must have been a good sermon. No one disagreed with it. There was not a solitary dissenting voice. When he concluded his “third part” and sat down, a mild commotion set in away at the rear of the church. Several church officials left their places and moved about the aisles. The organ played again. James and Peter wondered what was going to happen. A coin dropped on the floor and rolled round on a solemn excursion of its own. Some more started to jingle in a plate; then they fell thicker and thicker. A collection! Peter’s heart gave a jump. He became uneasy. The Premier’s wife took out a purse and rattled the contents. Peter remembered seeing “escape door” printed up on the walls of the theatre. He looked round to see if there was one in the church. There wasn’t. By the ring of the silver Peter knew the plate was coming nearer and nearer. He began to perspire. James dug his hand down into his trouser pockets. Peter glanced pleadingly at him.
“I’ve two sixpences,” James whispered, and pressed his hand against Peter’s. Peter clutched at the proffered coin and nearly took a joint of one of James’s fingers with it.
The plate arrived. Peter planked his piece on top of the pile. It gave the man behind the plate a surprise. It gave Peter one, too; and it nearly took James’s breath away. It was a gold-piece—James’s only half sovereign.
The Premier and his wife seemed to take a different view of Peter. They looked as though they would be pleased to know him. Peter, himself, suddenly felt on an equality with them; He sat up straight, and his eyes gleamed with the light and consciousness of wealth and philanthropy. But James felt different to Peter. A heavy, sinking feeling seemed to come over him. His teeth rattled, and he dug his finger nails into Peter’s thigh. But Peter only listened to the organ.
The benediction was pronounced, and the congregation rose and started to file out. James and Peter were almost last to leave.
At the door the man who took up the collection was waiting with beaming countenance. He shook hands with Peter, and enquired if he was a stranger. Peter said he was, and told him where he came from. The churchman said nothing to James.
He shook hands with Peter again, and hoped to see him become a regular attendant at the services. Peter smiled and hurried after James. They passed out the gate and walked through the streets for about a mile before James spoke.
At last he looked at Peter, and said:
“Of course I only lent you that half sovereign, remember!”
“Hah! hah! hah! Hah! hah! hah-h-h!” came loudly from Peter. And a solitary policeman standing on the opposite side of the street stared wonderingly across.
Sunday again. The whole family rambling through the great public park. Mrs. Dashwood and the girls in heaven amongst the panoply of flowers, ferns, artistic nooks, and bowers and shapely shaven lawns. They dragged old John here, there, and everywhere, around this bed, down that path, and from hill-top to water’s edge. They searched for historical spots and monuments, for sights they had heard others talk of, and for sights they had never heard of at all.
Peter and James struck out on their own account. Flowers and ferns, with a gloomy weather-worn old monument or two thrown in, were not in their line. They became interested in the forms and types of humanity that were around them. And such forms, such types! Verily, it were as though all the freaks and misfortunes of nature had been gathered together from all parts of the earth and emptied into that domain. The blind, the stunted, the lame, the halt, the limbless, the lungless, the hopeless, the homeless, all were in evidence there. On every hand, at every turn, they were crouched beneath the spreading trees, unnoticed by the hordes of leisure seekers, as unregarded by the world in general as though they had never lived.
Aged and decrepid pensioners hobbled feebly about on sticks; careless nurse-girls, with other peoples’ infants hanging anyhow in their arms, loitered around; girlish wives, with boyish husbands at their sides, pushed the precious first-born along in its new gorgeous perambulator; crowds of merry children, let loose for the day, romped riotously over everything. From improvised platforms stump-orators shouted themselves hoarse for the benefit of jeering, cheering crowds that out of curiosity assembled to hear their mouthsport. Cricket pitches, tennis courts, and bowling greens were in full play. And as interested spectators of the latter James and Peter, in the course of an hour or so, found themselves seated at the butt of a large shade tree.
The rinks were sprinkled with tottering old grey-beards and grandfathers, big-bingied, stiff-backed old fogies who did nothing all the week but smoke cigars and pose as “leading citizens.” There were a hundred or more of him in short sleeves and flannels, and a faithful portrait of any one of him would have been a valuable asset in the days of the humorous valentine.
What the game was all about or what constituted the skill of it or what didn’t, James and Peter hadn’t the remotest idea, but they saw great fun in it, and sometimes laughed till they nearly hurt themselves.
“Look, look at the old cove in the middle, with the braces; watch him!” Peter cried, tugging hysterically at James.
James fixed his gaze on that “old cove” and followed his movements closely.
The “old cove,” with one withered hand supporting the bowl, the other pressed against his left hip, bent down, carefully and cautiously, till he was almost sitting or lying on the lawn. A blatant, breathless sort of individual of the larrikin class, standing in the vicinity of James and Peter, groaned a loud, satirical groan, in the interests of the feeble bowler, that added to the enjoyment of our two friends. They turned their attention to the larrikin. Delighted to find he was affording amusement to some one he lifted his voice a note or two higher and called: “Now, then, Spofforth!”
The hoary bowler bent some more, and, satisfied that his feet had a grip of the earth, and that his sight was correct, slowly extended the bowl to arm’s length.
“Now, then! ah-h!” bellowed the larrikin, and James and Peter broke into fresh merriment.
But the warrior didn’t deliver the bowl just then; he drew his hand back again until the bowl touched his side, then once more he pushed it to arm’s length, and for several moments repeated these movements until he seemed to be imitating a man with a saw. Finally the bowl slid from his palm and started off on a peaceful rolling excursion down the rink. As it travelled the old cove’s arms went out each side of him, his chin went forward, his eyes started to jump out of his head. The bowl started to deviate to the right. The aged sportsman resorted to will-power to guide it. He hung over his left side and strained all his shrunken sinews to haul that bowl to leeward. Instead of responding the bowl started to show symptoms of spent energy before it had travelled half way down the rink. It got down to snail pace and began to flounder. The old cove worked his head and hands up and down like a pump and “hooshed” it. The bowl wobbled, then made one more revolution and stubbornly lay down on the green and sulked. The old cove spun stiffly round on one leg and, in a hollow, broken voice, shouted:
“Ech! damn it a’!”
“Hoh! hoh! hoh! Poor old Daddy Christmas!” cried the larrikin, sympathetically, and, swinging round, walked abruptly away. James and Peter, having had their fill of excitement, followed his example.
“Well, I dunno!” James murmured, coming to a standstill, after they had explored the great park from end to end, “but it beats me where they can have got to!”
Peter, with tears in his eyes, gazed about like one abandoned to the heartlessness of the cruel world, and whined: “I’d know them if I saw them, though, by Maria’s red dress!”
They moved on, and strolled round the base of a drowsy old monument that never got tired of standing in the one place on the brow of a hill. Numbers of people of all kinds were lounging round, reading newspapers and feasting on fruit in the vicinity of that monument. James and Peter scanned the faces of them all, but no! there was no father, no mother, no Polly, no Tilly amongst them!
They were in the act of abandoning the search and returning to the hotel when Peter’s eyes suddenly lit up like the morning star, and he uttered a short, happy laugh.
“There they are! Ha! ha!” he said, pointing to a red dress, amongst a number of others, on a long rustic seat, and off he scampered. James followed him slowly. James always took his joy calmly, and suppressed all symptoms of excitement. Besides, James wasn’t so confident about the discovery as Peter. But Peter’s assurance increased as the distance between himself and the objects of his sudden happiness was reduced. Once he glanced round to see if James was following, then raced on again.
The female in the red dress sat with her back to Peter, so did her companions. They were talking about the next Government House Ball, and the lady in red had just remarked that she “was afraid Sir Thomas would be leaving for Japan,” when Peter, stealing up on tip-toe, and smiling like a picture, blindfolded her with his hot, clammy hands, and held her back hair firmly against his manly bosom. The lady gasped and strained and tried to rise, but Peter had a firm grip of her. Her friends on either side turned their heads and glanced up curiously at Peter. Peter, still smiling, glanced down at them. But instead of encountering the eyes of Polly and Tilly he beheld the faces of two absolute strangers. Peter nearly dropped dead. He staggered back several yards. He was still staggering when the outraged one, finding her feet, demanded to know why “he dared lay hand on her?”
“Call a policeman, Lady Fitzsmith!” one of her companions, both of whom were now facing Peter, excitedly advised.
Peter didn’t wait for any more. He bolted, and didn’t draw breath or look round till he reached the iron gates opening on to the busy street. There he waited until James came up. James, who had also deemed it advisable to run, came up with perspiration and a scowl on his face.
“Well, you are an idiot of a fellow,” he said, “an awful d— idiot!”
Peter sparred for wind, then gasped:
“By—by Jove, I thought she was” (puff) “Maria, didn’t you:?”
Since arriving in the metropolis the family had witnessed many scenes and sights that had filled them with wonder and surprise, but when they stepped from the jangling tram-car to the great sand beach by the sea and beheld the mixed mass of humorously-clad humanity plunging and flopping in the roaring, rolling breakers, the limit was reached.
“Dear, oh dear! oh dear!” Mrs. Dashwood gasped, “just look at the women!”
Polly and Tilly giggled. Old John and James and Peter stared hard, then burst into laughter.
So that visitors might study and enjoy the awful sights that rolled and stalked about the sand an enterprising management had furnished the beach with chairs at a penny a time. Old John took ten pennorth of chairs, and secured positions of advantage in the front row. Then the eyes of the family began to roam over the scene before them.
And such a scene! Such a display of bare arms, bare necks, bare legs! Such a hideous exhibition of ill-shaped humanity! Such clumsy, clothes-bag corporations! Such crooked trunks and winding limbs! Such a galaxy of fat, flabby women of forty! Such a multitude of thin, skinny women of fifteen and fifty! And such odd women, with no chests, and legs rolling with fat to the ankles! Verily it was a great sight, worthy of a great city. It seemed as though nature were out for the day, as though she were holding a grand parade, a parade of all her best jokes, her most humorous works of art!
And as the mellow, moaning breakers rolled in on the heels of each other, flinging and flashing flakes of froth and foam before them, the bathers were tossed sportively about on the crests like so many scraps of cork.
Now and again a large female would be lifted off her legs and thrown into the arms of some frail, bald-headed old fool, who, in his excitement, had forgotten to remove his spectacles when undressing, and together they would turn turtle to the great delight of the spectators.
A broad-backed man, with a heavy stomach and bow legs, arrayed in a suggestion of blue short pants and a handkerchief, crawled out of the water and stood with his back obscuring the view of our friends. There was sand in his hair and his ears. The salt water trickling down his hairy back dripped off him on to the sand. The Dashwoods looked at each other, then blushed and laughed. This man was the mayor of the great city, but he might just as well have been one of the council cart-horses for all the notice that was taken of him.
Mrs. Dashwood voiced a desire to return to the city; but old John opposed the proposition. Old John was beginning to see the fun of surf-bathing. So was Peter.
“By Jove, I don’t know,” Peter said enthusiastically, “I wouldn’t mind having a dip in it. Will you come in, father?”
“Go on with you, boy!” Mrs. Dashwood interposed, “your father would never be so stupid.”
“Well, now, Ah bain’t be sure,” old John put in, with a short laugh. “Everyone be agoin’ in, an’ Ah thenks it’s good for yow.”
Tilly took alarm.
“Oh, father’s going in, too!” she said to Polly, with a look of horror.
“He’s not!” sceptically from Polly. Polly was sure her parent would never do anything that would lower the family pride.
“Well, only for the baby,” Maria said bluntly, “I’d go in myself. I don’t see where the harm comes in so long as you have got something on.”
At this Polly and Tilly tittered, and Mrs. Dashwood said: “Maria!”
But Maria was prepared to argue the matter.
“Now, what’s wrong about it?” she insisted, turning to her mother.
“There bain’t be nothin’,” old John put in, “an’ Ah’ll go wi’ yow, lad,” he added, addressing Peter.
Peter jumped at the suggestion.
“Come on, then, father,’ he said, and off they went to join the throng of fresh arrivals that were crowding into the paling yards which served for dressing-rooms.
They were absent for quite a while.
At intervals Mrs. Dashwood and the girls would glance nervously around to see if old John really meant to join the surf-bathers.
Eventually old John and Peter appeared, garbed like a pair of circus clowns. Stepping tenderly over the pebbles in their bare feet they advanced to the water’s edge. Old John, with his ponderous corporation covered with red, his long, hairy arms dangling about, and his long feet poking out before him, formed an interesting addition to the many humorous surf sights. Peter, in blue pants that were mostly trunk, might, at a distance, have passed for a girl.
At sight of them Mrs. Dashwood felt the family virtue had gone for ever.
“I never thought they could be such fools!” she moaned plaintively.
“I don’t think they’re fools!” Maria growled stubbornly. “Do you, James?” she asked of her staid brother.
But James didn’t know what to think. He could only stare and chuckle.
“Good gracious me!” Tilly murmured, as she felt cause for fresh alarm, “I do hope they won’t come over here, near us.”
“Well, I won’t stay if they do,” and Polly glanced along the crowded beach.
Old John and Peter took boldly to the water. They paddled through the shallow parts, one behind the other, like King Sandy and his gin out ration-hunting. The tail-end of a wave flew up at their heads. It was a cold tail-end. They gasped, and laughed and pranced about. They waded further, until the water rose above their knees, then anchored awhile. And while Peter scooped up fistsful of brine to wet his head as a protection again sunstroke, old John gave his whiskers a drenching, and adjusted his red garment, which showed an inclination to part company with him. Both looked back at their friends on shore and waved.
“Don’t notice them!” Mrs. Dashwood advised.
“Pretend you don’t see them!” Tilly added.
But Maria’s heart was with the surf-bathers. She took out her handkerchief and waved back, and waved again, until the front seats resembled a flag station. Then, elevating her infant in her arms, she called upon it to gaze afar out upon “grandfather.” People sitting near her smiled and turned their eyes upon the attractive form of old John.
Old John and Peter ventured some more. The water was now up to their waist. A great wave came breaking in, bearing back to shore scores of bathers on its bosom. Quite a column of them were shooting straight for old John. John saw the breaker coming. He put out his chest and stood to it bravely. The breaker struck him, and the head of a flying female struck him too. It bunted him in the stomach and knocked him back. Like a sunken ship old John went down in three feet of water. At the same time, though, his hands went out like grappling-irons. They gripped the offending female and dragged her under also. Then for a moment two pairs of unevenly balanced legs were seen walloping the surface water into foam and fury, just as though two monsters of the deep were there engaged in deadly combat. The half-smothered female came to the surface first, and, with a gurgle and a splutter and an hysterical squeal, floundered off in pursuit of her friends. Then up rose old John like a whale, and, discharging quite a cargo of salt water, dragged at his whiskers and joyfully roared his appreciation of the rough-and-tumble. The spectators joined with him in his merriment. The more they saw of old John the more they enjoyed him, and so as no mistakes would be made when they were pointing him out to each other they designated him “whiskers” and “old red-skin.” Some others who had overheard Maria familiarly referred to him as “grandfather.”
At intervals Polly and Tilly would glance round to see what like those people were who would make their parent a butt for jokes. In fact, they became very uneasy, and as a way out of the predicament Tilly suggested they all take a walk along the beach. But receiving no encouragement from the others she contented herself through the few remaining miserable moments by prodding the sand at her feet with the point of her parasol.
Encouraged by the example of experienced bathers around him, Peter set his mind upon swimming out to meet the breakers. He swam out. In fresh water creeks Peter was a fair swimmer; amongst the breakers, of course, he was a fool. Peter swam out further than the boldest of them. Then he attracted notice. A chorus of voices called warningly to him. He rounded and turned his head for shore again. Then suddenly something went wrong. He struggled, and splashed, but made no headway. He lost ground. The angry sea was carrying him out, bearing him off another victim! Peter yelled. A hundred others yelled. All hit out hurriedly for shore till all that could be seen in the surf was Peter’s black head bobbing about afar out. The alarm went up and down the beach. Everyone rushed to the same spot, and the crowd thickened and thickened. The spectators stood upon the chairs.
“It’s Peter!” Tilly shrieked.
“Oh, my God!” and Mrs. Dashwood fainted into the arms of James. Then lusty cries of “Marcee! Marcee!” rang out, and were echoed all around. The stalwart, sinewy, scarred form of the hero of a hundred rescues, life-line in hand, eyes open wide, nostrils distended, raced from the dressing-room and took to the water. The crowd watched silently, breathlessly. Out forged Marcee, arm over arm. Nearer and nearer he drew to Peter. Still not a murmur from the multitude on the beach. The dropping of a pin on the sand would have made a big dint in the silence. Then, like a clap of thunder the break came. “He’s got him!” burst on the air like the belching of twenty thousand guns. For just a moment Marcee and Peter seemed to grapple with each other. Then the iron-like fist of Marcee was uplifted and Peter received the punch of his life on the head.
“It was to stun him so as he wouldn’t hold me!” Marcee explained afterwards.
* * * * * * *
When Peter came to again he was lying in a hotel by the beach, and a doctor in bathing costume, and the whole family and a number of sympathetic old women, were watching over him.
“Why—what th’ deuce are you all doing, eh? Is it dinner time? What?” and Peter stared strangely about.
Then Mrs. Dashwood fell on his neck and shed tears all over him and called him her “darling boy.”
Old John, who had been bellowing like a pen of bull calves, threw his arms round the doctor.
“He’ll be all right now,” the latter said, with a smile, and went off to the beach again.
A fortnight since the family, weary and dusty, with all the parcels, bundles and battered baggage, arrived home at the farm. A fortnight! And that holiday still fresh and green and going strong! The trip to the city was thought of, talked of, laughed over, morning, noon and night. Incidents were recalled, re-enacted and served up at breakfast, dinner and tea. Friends who called at the home to welcome the family back were treated to the minutest detail of the things that happened. They heard it all from Mrs. Dashwood, from Tilly and Polly and from old John; heard it from them severally; heard it from them jointly; heard it from them backwards; heard it from them frontwards; heard it from them endwards and sidewards. It was a great holiday —the greatest of all holidays—that holiday of the Dashwoods. It was excelled only, if excelled at all, by Noah and his ark and all his animals.
But the trip did the family some visible good. It worked wonders in their methods, and gave a universal aspect to their outlook.
And upon none was the influence more marked than upon Peter. Peter showed reform in his very walk, in the cut of his hair, in the shape of his boots, in the odour and quality of his pocket handkerchiefs, and in the wonderful variety of tooth-brushes and razors that now adorned his bedroom. But it was the distinct and complete change in his studious pursuits that rendered the reformation of Peter complete. Ambition set in strong upon him. He hungered for fame. In his heart he secretly longed to do something that would put all the great minds of the world in the shade.
Peter turned his attention to invention.
Once, for about six months, while it was new, Peter rode a bicycle with tremendous enthusiasm, but, tiring of the toy, which cost old John fifteen guineas, discarded it in favour of a mule that arrived on the farm, and hung the wheels up on the walls of the barn to harbour vermin.
Peter’s attention now reverted to that bicycle. Acting upon an inspiration which came to him in the city, he locked himself in the barn along with that bicycle and worked hard and mysteriously upon it for many weeks. But what service it was that Peter hoped to render humanity and the world per medium of said bike no one had any idea. Whether he had any himself or not remains to be seen.
“Goodness only knows,” James sniggered, in answer to his sisters one day upon the matter, “I don’t think he knows himself. A new sort of life-buoy, perhaps, to take with him the next time he goes for a swim in the breakers!”
The peels of laughter that came from the sisters reached the ears of Peter. He threw open the door of the barn and thrusting out his head enquired the cause of their mirth.
“Oh, something good, Peter!” from Tilly.
“They’re laughing at this invention of yours,” James said, with a grin.
“By Jove, then,” Peter answered, in a self-satisfied sort of way, “it’s all right. It’s finished now, and I’m just going out to give her a trial!”
The girls threatened to go off their heads with joy. They ran inside for their hats, and loudly proclaimed Peter’s announcement to their parents. “The great invention is finished!” they cried. “Come and see it working.”
The parents, grinning broadly, came and saw.
Old McMurdy and his wife, passing in a sulky, pulled up at James’s invitation and waited near the gate to witness the unveiling of the miracle.
They hadn’t long to wait. The barn door opened wide again and Peter, with the bicycle rigged in full canvas like a sailing boat, appeared.
His appearance was greeted with loud merriment.
But the mirth didn’t disconcert Peter.
“Wait till you see her going!” he said, with a grin.
James, who had laughed least of any, suddenly evinced an interest in the invention. He stepped forward and held its head while Peter re-adjusted the setting and rigging.
When a number of small things were attended to Peter mounted, and, seating himself somewhere between the lower topsail and the flying jib, invited James to give the brig a shove off. James shoved her, and Peter, grinning, peddled cautiously to keep her balanced. Suddenly a gust of wind came up and, catching in the topmast staysail, the craft made a lurch to leave port per the open gate-way.
“Hah! hah! hah! h—” roared old McMurdy from the seat of the sulky, but his mirth was short-lived. It was the first time his sulky horse had set eyes on a sailing craft, and it reared, then flew round and bolted up the road as though suddenly possessed of several devils.
When the brig cleared port and arrived in the middle of the road-way it stopped and languished for want of wind. The sails started to flap uselessly, and Peter had to pedal hard to keep her afloat.
Fresh merriment and jeers came from the family. But Peter propelled assiduously with his feet, and worked his passage for about fifty yards. Then a change came over the weather conditions. Up sprang a breeze with some life and devil in it. It filled the flapping sails till they looked like balloons, and hurried the barque off up the road at full speed. Peter’s bosom filled with joy. He felt he had achieved a triumph. He was sure he had conquered the world. Raising his legs he rested them on the handle-bars as he whirled along. Peter believed in taking success calmly and contentedly. Talk about ploughing the deep and the main! Peter was ploughing the main stock route.
As she glided and wobbled along, the craft looked a strange quadruped.
Terence Blaises, a Justice of the Peace, who had just turned in at his slip-rails, with a cart of empty milk-cans from the factory, observed the strange white object floating calmly up over the horizon. Terence put up the rails and, leaning both arms on them, waited wonderingly.
“Now, what th’ divil is it at all?” he murmured, as the brig came rattling and “swishing” along in the wind. But the banging of milk-cans in the rear caused Terence to jump round quickly and shout: “Woa, boy! woa!” The horse didn’t “woa” worth considering. It flashed its glaring mongrel eye upon the craft, then off, knocking down trees and throwing empty milk-cans at the clouds. Terence pursued him till he fell over a milk-can, and gave up. He looked back pathetically at the sailing craft. The sails dipped and ducked as though saluting Terence in passing, but further than that no communication passed between him and Peter.
Successfully negotiating a corner in the road without going to pieces, Peter set sail for the township. The township was situated in the middle of a great plain. It sat, simmering there like a steak on a grid-iron. The road to it was level, and as good as could be expected from the average Australian Shire Council. There were numerous deformities along it, of course, many of which bore evidence of the Council’s intention to wipe them out some day. In fact, like the road to hell, the township road was paved with good intentions.
A fair wind and a flowing sail drove the barque over the rolling plain in gallant style.
A mile or so ahead a hooded gig, drawn by a sleepy rheumatic steed, hove in sight. It was the township lawyer making for his branch office, the local store at the next railway station, where, amongst the rock-salt and empty crockery cases, as per advertisement in the Settler, he journey bi-weekly to consult with farmers and dairymen having grievances, and to lead them into trials and tribulation for a modest fee. A few moments more and the distance between the brig and the gig was reduced to chains. Then the sleepy, rheumatic steed, suddenly waking up, stopped dead and stared like a brumby for the first time looking at a wind-mill. The craft came on like a great white eagle. The township lawyer, to satisfy himself it was not a hallucination, popped on his gold-rim glasses and eyed the advancing brig closely. He gave a short chuckle. He raised a hand and was about to hail the captain to enquire the name of the vessel when that rheumatic steed gave one decisive snort, and, swinging round, flew like the wind for the township. The lawyer’s hat came off and flew out the back way; then his glasses followed. The barque rode tranquilly over the lost apparel. For about a mile Peter kept just behind that flying quadruped; and whenever the lawyer got a pull on, and the animal seemed inclined to reason with the bit, the “swish” of the barque in the breeze would put fresh terror into the brute, and away he would go again.
“D—n you!” the lawyer shouted, but his blasphemy didn’t reach Peter. Then for fully three miles, until a crossroad afforded a haven of safety, that lawyer was driven before Peter like Cain flying before Jehovah.
Having lost so much ground, the lawyer abandoned his mission and decided to return to the township, permitting his steed to jog along at a safe distance behind the offending craft.
With a full sail, and the mast dipping and bobbing as the brig rode over the hills and hollows in the ill-formed street, Peter started to enter the township. No band played; no chorus of voices sang the “Conquering ’Ero”; there was nothing to greet or cheer Peter. But there must have been as many as fifty horses standing calmly between the shafts of vehicles outside the shops, and as many more fastened to posts by their bridles. And Peter had not proceeded twenty yards along that street when there wasn’t an animal in sight. They all became obscured in a cloud of dust that was rolling out at the other end of the township. And all that was to be seen in the street was a mob of excited men and women, pieces of sulkies, broken lamp-posts and the maimed and mangled remains of a Councillor, whom the Shire Clerk and the newspaper editor were supporting in their arms.
“Don’t! Don’t hold her there!” Peter cried, when the rough hands of two furious policemen seized hold of the sails of his craft. “You’ll spoil her!”
“Phwat game is this?” yelled one of the bobbies, while the other, seizing hold of Peter, hissed: “Yis ’ll paay fer this me mahn, if yis ever paid fer anythin’!”
Peter started to protest wildly. Peter was in trouble. But soon numbers of friends had gathered round him.
The township lawyer, having arrived in good time, pushed himself forward, and, planting a card in Peter’s hand, said:
“I’ve seen the whole thing; I’ll defend you.” Then the local representatives of six banks jostled with each other for possession of Peter’s ear.
“On deeds, or any security like that,” each of them said, “I can let you have whatever you want.”
“Deeds!” growled the police, “there is his deeds!” and they pointed scornfully to the maimed Councillor being borne off on a hurdle.