Chapter 9

Many members of parliament, having risen to their position from coal-heaving or hotel-keeping, when going on the war-path a second time, take great pains to get themselves _up_ in accordance with their idea of the dignity of their office. Many old fellows, roaring "Gimme your votes, I'm the only bloke to save the country and see you git yer rights," dress this modest _rôle_ in a long-tailed satin-faced frock-coat, a good thing in the trouser line, and a stylish button-hole; but Leslie Walker, one of the champagne set, had made equally palpable efforts to dress himself _down_ to his present _début_.

For sure! his suit, which comprised an alpaca coat with a crumpled tail, must have been the shabbiest he had, while the glistening new white sailor hat had probably been procured at the last moment in the vain imagination that, dress as he would, it was not evident at a first glance that he had had the bread-and-butter problem solved for him by a provident parent before his birth, and that he had lived what is designated the cultured life, far and autocratically above sympathy with the vulgar and despised herds, upon whose sweat his class build the pretty villas fronting the harbour, charge haughtily along the roads in automobiles, and sail the graceful yachts on the idyllic waters of Port Jackson.

"By Jove! Les. has different ambitions from mine," said Ernest. "I'd rather have to stand up to a mill with the champion pug. than face what he's on for to-night. Doesn't he look a case in that get up? Supposing he gets in, what the devil good will it do then, and it takes such crawling to get into parliament nowadays. There are too many at the game. I could never face the way one has to flatter some of these old creatures for their vote. I'd rather plug them under the jaw."

Mr Oscar Lawyer having introduced the speaker, he came forward, and after explaining it was his first appearance in politics, charmingly proceeded, "I hope I shall not bore you with my remarks as I endeavour to outline the various planks in the platform of the party to which I have the honour to belong."

Quite superfluous for him to explain that he was a new chum in politics. Only a fledgling from a Brussels or Axminster carpeted reception-room would stand on the hustings and publish a fear that he might be boring his audience. One familiar with the trade of electioneering, as it has always been conducted by men, would strut and shout and brag, never for a moment worrying whether or not he came anywhere near the truth or feeling the slightest qualm, though he deafened his hearers with his trumpeting or bored them to complete extinction, and would refuse to be silenced even by "eggs of great antiquity."

"Les. ought to stick to society," observed his step-brother; "flipping around a drawing-room and making all the girls think they were equally in the running was more in his line."

"He's a nice, clean, good-looking young fellow at any rate, and doesn't look as if he gorged himself--hasn't that red-faced, stuffed look," said Dawn. "If I had a vote I'd give it to him just for that, as I'm sick of these red-nosed old members of parliament with corporations."

"He's the real lah-de-dah Johnny, isn't he?" laughed "Dora" Eweword.

"Don't you say he's any relation of mine," said Ernest. "It would give me away, and he thinks I'm in Melbourne. I told every one that's where I was bound. I hope he won't catch sight of me."

There was little fear of this; one has to be accustomed to facing a crowd before they can distinguish faces.

After the meeting, which dispersed early, Ernest and I hurried out into the galvanised iron-walled yard, in which those coming from a distance put their horses and vehicles.

Having noted the disconsolate manner in which a pair of dark eyes below a thatch of generous hue surreptitiously glanced towards a tormentatious maiden with ribbons of blue matching her eyes and fluttering on her bosom, I thought it time to come to his rescue.

"If you would care to talk to your friend, he can drive you home while I walk with 'Dora'; he says he has something to say to me," said Dawn in an aside.

"Are you sure you want to hear it?" I asked.

"How could I tell until I hear it?"

"That is not a fair answer, Dawn."

"Well, it wasn't a fair question," she pouted.

"Very well, I will not press you more, but you'll tell me of it after, will you not?"

"Well, what would you like me to do?" she asked.

"Oh, I'd like you to be naughty. Mr _Dora's_ complacence inspires me to inveigle him into having to drive me home while you walk with some one else."

"Very well, anything for fun," she responded with dancing eyes; and as Ernest had the horse in I got into the sulky and said--

"There is room for three here, Mr Eweword, and we would be glad of you to put the horse out when we get home."

He took the reins and a seat, and moved aside to make room for the loitering Dawn, but she said--

"No, I'll walk; I must keep Carry company, and she doesn't want to come just yet."

"Drive on," I commanded, and there was nothing for the entrapped "Dora" to do but obey.

I saw Carry go on with another escort. "Will you permit me to see you to your gate?" I heard Ernest saying as we went, and Dawn asserting that it was unnecessary.

It was a beautiful starry night, with a prospect of a slight frost, as we turned down the tree-lined streets of the friendly old town, whose folk on their homeward way dawdled in knots to discuss the interposition of the women's vote.

"Now the women will do strokes," said one.

"The men have things in such a jolly muddle it will take a long time to improve them," another retorted.

"The women will make bloomin' fools of themselves!"

"Couldn't be worse than the men!"

"The women'll all go for this chap because he's good-looking."

"Just as good a reason as going for another because he shouted grog for you," and similar remarks, drifted to my ears, but "Dora's" mind did not seem to be running on politics.

"Who was that red-headed fellow sitting the other side of you?" he inquired.

"Which one?"

"A short block of a fellow with a clean face."

"Oh, he's a man I know."

"Pretty cool of us leaving Dawn. The old dame won't like it."

"She won't mind, considering Dawn has about the most reliable escort procurable."

"I suppose it's all right if you know him, but to me he looked like a bagman or bike-rider or something in the spieler line."

"Oh no," and pulling my boa about me I smiled to think of the chagrin of Dora. He was so beautifully transparent too, but to do him justice did not seem to resent the scurvy trick I had played him, as soon his equanimity was restored, and we laboured cheerfully but unavailingly to promote a conversation.

"Do you really like farming--take a pleasure in it?" I inquired.

"When I'm knocking a decent amount of money out of it I do. There's not much fun in anything when it doesn't pay."

"Quite true."

"There might be a frost to-night, but they're nothing here--always disappear as soon as the sun is up. Great Scott! aren't these roads? The council want stuffing in the Noonoon. It would be an all right place only for the roads."

This brought us to Clay's gate, and no further conversational effort was necessary. I lingered outside till Eweword had disposed of the pony and trap, and by that time Ernest and Dawn, bearing evidence of quick walking, appeared, and we went into grandma and Uncle Jake in a body.

"The women are going to form a committee to work for Mr Walker if he's selected," announced Dawn, "and I want to join it, grandma. I am not old enough to vote, but I'd like to work for Mr Walker. He looks worth a vote. He's nice and thin, and speaks beautifully without shouting and roaring,--not like these old beer-swipers who buy their votes with drink."

"He is a decent-looking fellow," said Eweword.

"Oh, well, he'll go in then; that's all the women will care about," said Uncle Jake in one of his half-audible sneers.

"Well," contended Dawn, "men always sneer at women for doing in a small degree what men do fifty times worse. If a pretty barmaid comes to town all the men are after her like bees, and if a pretty woman stood for parliament the men would go off their heads about her, and yet they get their hair off terribly if a woman happens to prefer a nice gentlemanly man to a big, old, fat beer-barrel, with his teeth black from tobacco and his neck gouging over his collar from eating too much. Can I join the committee, grandma?"

"If it's proper, and he's my man, you can, an' work instead of me, but I must hear them both first."

"If Walker could get you to make a speech for him, we'd all vote for him in a body," laughed Eweword; but Dawn replied--

"Oh, you, I suppose you say that to every girl."

Eweword sizzled in his blushes, while Ernest's face slightly cleared at this rebuff dealt out to another.

Grandma brought in the coffee and grumbled to Dawn about Carry's absence.

"That Larry Witcom ain't no monk, and while a girl is in my house I feel I ought to look after her. I believe in every one having liberty, but there's reason in everythink."

The girl did not appear till after the young men had gone and Dawn and I had withdrawn, but we heard grandma's remonstrance.

"That feller, I told you straight, was took up about a affair in a divorce case, an' it would be as well not to make yourself too cheap to him. I don't say as most men ain't as bad, only they're not caught and bowled out; but w'en they are made a public example of, we have to take notice of it. Marry him if you want--use your own judgment; he'll be the sort of feller who'll always have a good home, and in after years these things is always forgot, and it would be better to be married to a man that had that against him (seein' they're all the same, only they ain't found out) and could keep you comfortable, than one who was _supposed_ to be different an' couldn't keep you. But if you ain't goin' to marry him, don't fool about with him. An' unless he gets to business an' wants marriage at once, don't take too much notice to his soft soap, as you ain't the only girl he's got on the string by a long way."

"He acknowledges about the fault he did in his young days, and he says it's terribly hard that it's always coming against him now," said Carry.

"Well, if a woman does a fault she has to pay for it, hasn't she?--that's the order of things," said grandma.

"But this was when he was young and foolish," continued Carry.

"Yes, the poor child, he was terribly innocent, wasn't he? an' was got hold of by some fierce designing hussy--they always are--and it was all her fault. It always is a woman's fault--only for the women the men would be all angels and flew away long ago," said grandma sarcastically. "They'll give you plenty of that kind of yarn if you listen to 'em; an' if you are built so you can believe it, well an' good, but the facts was always too much of a eye-opener for me," and with that the contention ended.

"Yes, Carry's the terriblest silly about that Larry Witcom," said Dawn; "she swallows all he says. She said to me yesterday, 'He seems to be terribly gone on me.' 'Yes,' I said. 'You keep cool about his goneness. Wait till he gets down on his knees and bellows and roars about his love, and take my tip for it he could forget you then in less than a week.' I've seen men pretending to be mad with love, and the next month married to some one else. Men's love is a thing you want to take with more discount than everything you know. You might be conceited enough to believe them if you went by your own lovers, but you want to look on at other people's love affairs, and see how much is to be depended on there, and measure your own by them, and it will keep your head cool," said this girl, who had the most sensible head I ever saw in conjunction with her degree of beauty.

She had contracted the habit of slipping into my room for a talk before going to bed, and as her bright presence there was a delight to me, I encouraged her in it. The gorgeous kimono was a great attraction; she loved it so that I had given it her after the first night, but did not tell her so, or she would have carried it away to her own room, where I would have been deprived of the pleasure of seeing it nightly enhance the loveliness of her firm white throat and arms.

"How did you and Dora get on together?" she presently inquired.

"Well, you see we didn't elope; how did you and Ernest manage?"

"Well, you see we didn't elope," she laughed.

"No, but you might have arranged such a thing."

"Arranged for such a thing!" she said scornfully. "I'm not in the habit of trucking with other people's belongings."

"What do you mean?"

"It was you who said something about his young lady this afternoon--as far as I can see he doesn't behave much as if he had one."

So it was my chance remark that had run her wheel out of groove during the last few hours!

"Does he not?" I replied. "I think he appears more as though he has a young lady now than he did during my previous knowledge of him."

"Well, I don't know how you see it," she said, as she tore down her pretty hair.

"What!" I ejaculated in feigned consternation. "He has not been making love to you, has he, Dawn? I always had such faith in his manliness."

"Well, he doesn't _say_ anything," said Dawn, with a blush. "But he glares at me in the way men do, and when I mention anything I like or want, he wants to get it for me, and all that sort of business."

"Perhaps he's falling in love unawares. Young men are often stupid, and do not recognise their distemper till it is very ripe. He ought to be removed from danger."

"Well, if I ever had a lover, and he liked another girl better, I'd be pretty sure he hadn't cared for me, and would not want him any more," she said off-handedly.

"But would it not be better to let him go away and be happy with the maid who loves him than to spoil his life by wasting his affection on you, when you only think him a great pug-looking creature that you'd be ashamed to be seen with?"

"Yes, I don't care for him," she said still more off-handedly; "but he doesn't look so queer now I've got used to him. I suppose any one who liked him wouldn't think him such a horror."

"No; I for one think him handsome."

"Handsome?"

"Yes, _handsome_."

"Well, I'll go to bed after that and think how some people's tastes differ."

"Well, take care you don't think about Ernest."

"Thank you; I don't want the nightmare," she retorted, tossing her head.

THIRTEEN.

VARIOUS EVENTS.

The following day was eventful. To begin with, after Andrew had discharged his early morning duties, he was to appear before his grandma for the execution of the sentence she had passed upon him the night before. I was assisting him to dry the parts of the cream-separator, a task which had become chronic with me, when Carry shouted from the kitchen, where she was putting in her week--

"Your grandma says not to be long; she's waiting for you."

Andrew unburdened his soul to me.

"Lord, ain't I just in for it! I'll hear how me grandma rared me since I was born! I'm dead sick of this born and rared business. It would give a bloke the pip. I didn't make meself born, nor want any one else to do it; there ain't much in bein' alive," he said with that pessimism which, like measles and whooping-cough, is indigenous to extreme youth.

"How could I help being rared? I didn't ask 'em to rare me. I didn't make meself a little baby that couldn't help itself, and they needn't have rared me unless they liked. Goodness knows, I'd have rather died like a little pup before his eyes were opened," he continued so tragically that I took the opportunity of smiling behind his back as he threw out the dish-water.

"Hurry up! your grannie is waiting!" called Carry once more.

"Blow you! you'll have to wait till I'm done," retorted the boy in a tone the reverse of genial.

"People is always chuckin' at their kids how much they owe them. I'm blowed if ever I can see it. I didn't want 'em to have me, and don't see why it should be everlasting threw at me."

It is a wise provision that youth cannot see what it owes the previous generation. This is a chicken that comes back to roost in heavier years.

"I wish I had a grandma like Jack Bray's ma. He nicked over to me w'en I was after the cows, an' Mrs Bray ain't goin' to kick up any row about the oranges. She says she never knew of a boy that didn't go into orchards in their young days, and that his dad did, and people don't think no more of a boy pickin' up a little fruit than they do of pickin' up a stick. Yet grandma will tan the hide off of me. She done it once before, and I was stiff for a week."

"Take a tip from me, Andrew! March into your grandma bravely; she's the best woman I've seen; you ought to be proud to have such a grandma! She's in the right and Mrs Bray's in the wrong. Let her hammer you for all she's worth, and every whack you get feel proud that she's able to give it at her time of life, and I bet when you're a man you'll be telling every one that you had a grandma who was worth owning. When she leaves off tell her that this is the last time she'll ever have to do it for anything like that, and see if you don't feel more a man than you ever did before. Promise me that's what you'll do."

"Is that what _you'd_ do if you was me?" he inquired with surprise.

"That's what you'd do if you were me," I replied with a smile. "Just try that. Never mind if your grandma does go for you hot and strong."

Andrew wiped the table, wrung out his dishcloth in the back-handed manner peculiar to his sex, hung it on a nail behind the door, dried his hands on his trousers, which for once were not "busted up," and with a less rueful expression than he had exhibited for several hours, went forth to meet his grandma.

About ten minutes later he returned blubbering, but it was a sunshiny shower, and I did not despise the lad for his tears, for he had a soft nature, and was quite a child despite his big stature and sixteen years.

"Well?" I inquired, recognising that he was anxious to relate his experience.

"She banged away with the strap of the breechin' till she was winded, and then I said I hoped she'd never have to beat me again for acting the goat in other people's gardens that didn't concern me, an' she didn't beat me no more then, but I had plenty as it was," he said, rubbing his seat and the calves of his legs.

"Well done, stick to that, and be thankful for such a grandma!"

"She ain't a bad old sort when you come to consider," he said with that patronage, also an attribute of extreme youth or unsubdued snobbishness, and when compared, snobbishness and youth have some similar characteristics.

Next item on the programme was Mr Pornsch, whom grandma invited to remain to midday dinner, and the old lady being sufficiently human to denounce a swell far more fiercely behind his back than to his face, in consideration of this one's presence, once more entrusted us to sugar our own puddings, regardless of consequences.

After luncheon she interviewed him about his niece's health. Mr Pornsch seemed really concerned, and said perhaps she needed to be diverted, and that he would see about a further change, which might prove beneficial. He then put up his eyeglass to inspect Dawn's beauty, and ogling her, attempted to engage her in conversation; but the girl didn't seem at all attracted by him or thankful for the favours he brought her in the form of an exquisite box of bonbons and the latest song.

"I don't accept presents, thank you," she said uncompromisingly.

"Do you never make exceptions?"

"Only from people I like _very_ much."

"Well, I trust I may some day be among the exceptions," he said, in a gruesome attempt to be ingratiating; but the girl replied--

"Then you hope for impossibilities."

Somewhat disconcerted though not the least abashed, Mr Pornsch persevered by asking if she ever went to Sydney, and stated the pleasure it would be to him to provide her with tickets for any of the plays; but even this could not overcome her unconquerable horror of the various intemperances suggested by his person, so he had to retreat.

Dawn's grandmother remonstrated with her afterwards.

"You ought to be a little more genteeler, Dawn, and you could refuse presents just as well. Even if he isn't the takin'est old chap, that is not any reason for you to be ungenteel."

"Well, I don't care," replied Dawn, whose exquisitely moulded chin, despite an irresistible dimple, was expressive of determination. "If I was a great old podge and had a blue nose from swilling and gorging, and was fifty if I was a day, and then went goggling after a young fellow of eighteen, he wouldn't be very civil to me, or be lectured if he spoke to me the way I deserved, and I think these old creatures of men ought to be discouraged by all the girls. What's sauce for the goose is the same for the gander."

Mr Pornsch had not long departed when Mrs Bray favoured us with a call, so grandma was spared a pilgrimage to her house. She and Carry exchanged a stiffly formal greeting, but the visitor beamed upon the remainder of us and seated herself in our midst.

"Oh, I say, ain't it a blessed nark to the men us going to have a vote? He! he! Ha! ha! It fairly maddens 'em to see us getting a bit of freedom--makes 'em that wild they don't know how to be sneerin' an' nasty enough. Every one of us will just roll up an' use our power now we've got it,--they've kep' our necks under their heel long enough."

"I wasn't thinkin' of the vote at present," said Grandma Clay. "I was just off to see you about what our noble nibbs have been doin' in that old Gawling's orchard; but I beat Andrew already in case. What did you think of 'em?"

Mrs Bray put back her handsome head, decorated by an extremely fashionable hat, and laughed boisterously.

"Fancy the old toad runnin' 'em down,--gave 'em a bit of a scare, didn't it? Old mongrel, to kick up a fuss over a few paltry oranges! As if we don't all know what boys is; why, there'd be no chance of rarin' them without touchin' nothing, unless you carted them off to the back-blocks where there wasn't no one within reach. I told him what I thought of him. 'How dare you!' says I. 'Bring witnesses of this,' said I."

Grandma Clay arose.

"Well, if that's your idea of rarin' a family, it ain't mine. Why, can't you hear the parson's everlastin' preaching and giving examples how taking a pin has been the start of a feller coming to the gallows; and this is a much worse beginning than a pin! If the only way of rarin' them not to steal was to put 'em where there was no possibility of stealing nothink, a pretty sort of honesty that would be; you might as well say the only way to rare a girl modest was to let her never have a chance of being nothink else. Some people, of course, has different views, but I believe in holding to mine; they've brought me up to this time very well."

"Oh, you are terrible strict; you wouldn't have no peace of your life rarin' boys if you cut things so fine as that. Now w'en women gets the rule it might become the fashion for men to be more proper. Look here, the men are that mad--"

Uncle Jake here interrupted her by appearing for four o'clock tea.

"Well, Mr Sorrel, now the women has come to show you how to do things, there might be something done in the country."

"Nice fools they'll make of themselves," he sneeringly replied.

"They couldn't make no greater fools of themselves than the men has always done,--lying in the gutter an' breakin' their faces," said Mrs Bray.

"Wait till the women go at it, they'll fight like cats," continued Uncle Jake, whose power to annoy depended not so much upon what he said as his way of saying it.

Dawn chipped into the rescue at this point.