The Workingman's Paradise: An Australian Labour Novel
by John Miller · English · Gutenberg #16366 · 512,917 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Workingman's Paradise: An Australian Labour Novel
Author: John Miller
Release date: July 27, 2005 [eBook #16366]
Most recently updated: December 12, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16366
Credits: Produced by Col Choat
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKINGMAN'S PARADISE: AN AUSTRALIAN LABOUR NOVEL ***
Produced by Col Choat
The Workingman's Paradise: An Australian Labour Novel
by 'John Miller' (William Lane) (1861-1917)
* * *
IN TWO PARTS.
PART I. THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM.
PART II. HE KNEW HIMSELF NAKED.
First published 1892
* * *
PREFACE
The naming and writing of THE WORKINGMAN'S PARADISE were both done
hurriedly, although delay has since arisen in its publishing. The
scene is laid in Sydney because it was not thought desirable, for
various reasons, to aggravate by a local plot, the soreness existing
in Queensland.
While characters, incidents and speakings had necessarily to be adapted
to the thread of plot upon which they are strung, and are not put forward
as actual photographs or phonographs, yet many will recognise enough in
this book to understand how, throughout, shreds and patches of reality
have been pieced together. The first part is laid during the summer of
1888-89 and covers two days; the second at the commencement of the
Queensland bush strike excitement in 1891, covering a somewhat shorter
time. The intention of the plot, at first, was to adapt the old legend
of Paradise and the fall of man from innocence to the much-prated-of
"workingman's paradise"--Australia. Ned was to be Adam, Nellie to be Eve,
Geisner to be the eternal Rebel inciting world-wide agitation, the Stratton
home to be presented in contrast with the slum-life as a reason for
challenging the tyranny which makes Australia what it really is; and so on.
This plot got very considerably mixed and there was no opportunity to
properly re-arrange it. After reading the MSS. one friend wrote advising
an additional chapter making Ned, immediately upon his being sentenced for
"conspiracy" under George IV., 6, hear that Nellie has died of a broken
heart. My wife, on the contrary, wants Ned and Nellie to come to an
understanding and live happily ever after in the good old-fashioned style.
This being left in abeyance, readers can take their choice until the matter
is finally settled in another book.
Whatever the failings of this book are it may nevertheless serve the
double purpose for which t was written: (1) to assist the fund being
raised for Ned's mates now in prison in Queensland and (2) to explain
unionism a little to those outside it and Socialism a little to all
who care to read or hear, whether unionists or not. These friends of
ours in prison will need all we can do for them when they are released,
be that soon or late; and there are too few, even in the ranks of
unionism, who really understand Socialism.
To understand Socialism is to endeavour to lead a better life, to regret
the vileness of our present ways, to seek ill for none, to desire truth
and purity and honesty, to despise this selfish civilisation and to
comprehend what living might be. Understanding Socialism will not make
people at once what men and women should be but it will fill them with
hatred for the unfitting surroundings that damn us all and with passionate
love for the ideals that are lifting us upwards and with an earnest
endeavour to be themselves somewhat as they feel Humanity is struggling
to be.
All that any religion has been to the highest thoughts of any people
Socialism is, and more, to those who conceive it aright. Without blinding
us to our own weaknesses and wickednesses, without offering to us any
sophistry or cajoling us with any fallacy, it enthrones love above the
universe, gives us Hope for all who are downtrodden and restores to us
Faith in the eternal fitness of things. Socialism is indeed a
religion--demanding deeds as well as words. Not until professing
socialists understand this will the world at large see Socialism as it
really is.
If this book assists the Union Prisoners assistance Fund in any way or if
it brings to a single man or woman a clearer conception of the Religion of
Socialism it will have done its work. Should it fail to do either it will
not be because the Cause is bad, for the cause is great enough to rise
above the weakness of those who serve it.
J.M.
CONTENTS
PART I. THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM.
CHAPTER I. Why Nellie Shows Ned Round.
CHAPTER II. Sweating In The Sydney Slums.
CHAPTER III. Shorn Like Sheep.
CHAPTER IV. Saturday Night In Paddy's Market.
CHAPTER V. Were They Conspirators?
CHAPTER VI. "We Have Seen The Dry Bones Become Men."
CHAPTER VII. A Medley of Conversation.
CHAPTER VIII. The Poet And The Pressman.
CHAPTER IX. "This Is Socialism!"
CHAPTER X. Where The Evil Really Lies.
CHAPTER XI. "It Only Needs Enough Faith."
CHAPTER XII. Love And Lust.
PART II. HE KNEW HIMSELF NAKED.
CHAPTER I. The Slaughter Of An Innocent.
CHAPTER II. On The Road To Queensland.
CHAPTER III. A Woman's Whim.
CHAPTER IV. The Why Of The Whim.
CHAPTER V. As The Moon Waned.
CHAPTER VI. Unemployed.
CHAPTER VII. "The World Wants Masters."
CHAPTER VIII. The Republican Kiss.
CHAPTER IX. Ned Goes To His Fate.
"On the Flinders.
"In a western billabong, with a stretch of plain around, a dirty waterhole
beside me, I sat and read the WORKER. Maxwellton Station was handy; and
sick with a fever on me I crawled off my horse to the shed on a
Sunday. They invited me to supper; I was too ill. One gave me medicine,
another the WORKER, the cook gave me milk and soup. If this is Unionism,
God bless it! This is the moleskin charity, not the squatter's dole. The
manager gave me quinine, and this is a Union station. I read 'Nellie's
Sister' (from THE WORKINGMAN'S PARADISE) in you last. A woman's tenderness
pervades it. Its fiction is truth. Although my feelings are blunted by a
bush life, I dropped a tear on that page of the WORKER."
--FROM A LETTER.
PART I.
THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM.
* * * * *
Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen, Marked cross from the womb and
perverse! They have found out the secret to cozen The gods that constrain
us and curse; They alone, they are wise, and none other; Give me place,
even me, in their train, O my sister, my spouse, and my mother, Our Lady
of Pain.--SWINBURNE.
THE WORKINGMAN'S PARADISE
CHAPTER I.
WHY NELLIE SHOWS NED ROUND.
Nellie was waiting for Ned, not in the best of humours.
"I suppose he'll get drunk to celebrate it," she was saying,
energetically drying the last cup with a corner of the damp cloth. "And I
suppose she feels as though it's something to be very glad and proud
about."
"Well, Nellie," answered the woman who had been rinsing the breakfast
things, ignoring the first supposition. "One doesn't want them to come,
but when they do come one can't help feeling glad."
"Glad!" said Nellie, scornfully.
"If Joe was in steady work, I wouldn't mind how often it was. It's when
he loses his job and work so hard to get--" Here the speaker subsided
in tears.
"It's no use worrying," comforted Nellie, kindly. "He'll get another job
soon, I hope. He generally has pretty fair luck, you know."
"Yes, Joe has had pretty fair luck, so far. But nobody knows how long
it'll last. There's my brother wasn't out of work for fifteen years, and
now he hasn't done a stroke for twenty-three weeks come Tuesday. He's
going out of his mind."
"He'll get used to it," answered Nellie, grimly.
"How you do talk, Nellie!" said the other. "To hear you sometimes one
would think you hadn't any heart."
"I haven't any patience."
"That's true, my young gamecock!" exclaimed a somewhat discordant voice.
Nellie looked round, brightening suddenly.
A large slatternly woman stood in the back doorway, a woman who might
possibly have been a pretty girl once but whose passing charms had long
been utterly sponged out. A perceptible growth of hair lent a somewhat
repulsive appearance to a face which at best had a great deal of the
virago in it. Yet there was, in spite of her furrowed skin and faded eyes
and drab dress, an air of good-heartedness about her, made somewhat
ferocious by the muscularity of the arms that fell akimbo upon her great
hips, and by the strong teeth, white as those of a dog, that flashed
suddenly from between her colourless lips when she laughed.
"That's true, my young gamecock!" she shouted, in a deep voice, strangely
cracked. "And so you're at your old tricks again, are you? Talking
sedition I'll be bound. I've half a mind to turn informer and have the
law on you. The dear lamb!" she added, to the other woman.
"Good morning, Mrs. Macanany," said Nellie, laughing. "We haven't got yet
so that we can't say what we like, here."
"I'm not so sure about that. Wait till you hear what I came to tell you,
hearing from little Jimmy that you were at home and going to have a
holiday with a young man from the country. We'll sherrivvery them if he
takes her away from us, Mrs. Phillips, the only one that does sore eyes
good to see in the whole blessed neighborhood! You needn't blush, my
dear, for I had a young man myself once, though you wouldn't imagine it
to look at me. And if I was a young man myself it's her"--pointing
Nellie out to Mrs. Phillips--that I'd go sweethearting with and not
with the empty headed chits that--"
"Look here, Mrs. Macanany!" interrupted Nellie. "You didn't come in to
make fun of me."
"Making fun! There, have your joke with the old woman! You didn't hear
that my Tom got the run yesterday, did you?"
"Did he? What a pity! I'm very sorry," said Nellie.
"Everybody'll be out of work and then what'll we all do?" said Mrs.
Philips, evidently cheered, nevertheless, by companionship in misfortune.
"What'll we all do! There'd never be anybody at all out of work if
everybody was like me and Nellie there," answered the amazon.
"What did he get the run for?" asked Nellie.
"What can we women do?" queried Mrs. Phillips, doleful still.
"Wait a minute till I can tell you! You don't give a body time to begin
before you worry them with questions about things you'd hear all about it
if you'd just hold your tongues a minute. You're like two blessed babies!
It was this way, Mrs. Phillips, as sure as I'm standing here. Tom got
trying to persuade the other men in the yard--poor sticks of men they
are!--to have a union. I've been goading him to it, may the Lord
forgive me, ever since Miss Nellie there came round one night and
persuaded my Tessie to join. 'Tom,' says I to him that very night, 'I'll
have to be lending you one of my old petticoats, the way the poor weak
girls are beginning to stand up for their rights, and you not even daring
to be a union man. I never thought I'd live to be ashamed of the father
of my children!' says I. And yesterday noon Tom came home with a face on
him as long as my arm, and told me that he'd been sacked for talking
union to the men.
"'It's a man you are again, Tom,' says I. 'We've lived short before and
we can live it again, please God, and it's myself would starve with you a
hundred times over rather than be ashamed of you,' says I. 'Who was it
that sacked you?' I asked him.
"'The foreman,' says Tom. 'He told me they didn't want any agitators
about.'
"'May he live to suffer for it,' says I. 'I'll go down and see the boss
himself.'
"So down I went, and as luck would have it the boy in the front office
wasn't educated enough to say I was an old image, I suppose, for would
you believe it I actually heard him say that there was a lady, if you
please, wanting to see Mister Paritt very particularly on personal
business, as I'd told him. So of course I was shown in directly, the very
minute, and the door was closed on me before the old villain, who's a
great man at church on Sundays, saw that he'd made a little mistake.
"'What do you want, my good woman?' says he, snappish like. 'Very sorry,'
says he, when I'd told him that I'd eleven children and that Tom had
worked for him for four years and worked well, too. 'Very sorry,' says
he, my good woman, 'but your husband should have thought of that before.
It's against my principles,' says he, 'to have any unionists about the
place. I'm told he's been making the other men discontented. I can't take
him back. You must blame him, not me,' says he.
"I could feel the temper in me, just as though he'd given me a couple of
stiff nobblers of real old whisky. 'So you won't take Tom back,' says I,
'not for the sake of his eleven children when it's their poor
heart-broken mother that asks you?'
"'No,' says he, short, getting up from his chair. 'I can't. You've
bothered me long enough,' says he.
"I So then I decided it was time to tell the old villain just what I
thought of his grinding men down to the last penny and insulting every
decent girl that ever worked for him. He got as black in the face as if
he was smoking already on the fiery furnace that's waiting for him below,
please God, and called the shrimp of an office boy to throw me out.
'Leave the place, you disgraceful creature, or I'll send for the police,'
says he. But I left when I got ready to leave and just what I said to
him, the dirty wretch, I'll tell to you, Mrs. Phillips, some time when
she"--nodding at Nellie--"isn't about. She's getting so like a
blessed saint that one feels as if one's in church when she's about,
bless her heart!"
"You're getting very particular all at once, Mrs. Macanany," observed
Nellie.
"It's a wonder he didn't send for a policeman," commented Mrs. Phillips.
"Send for a policeman! And pretty he'd look with the holy bible in his
hand repeating what I said to him, wouldn't he now?" enquired Mrs.
Macanany, once more placing her great arms on her hips and glaring with
her watery eyes at her audience.
"Did you hear that Mrs. Hobbs had a son this morning?" questioned Mrs.
Phillips, suddenly recollecting that she also might have an item of news.
"What! Mrs. Hobbs, so soon! How would I be hearing when I just came
through the back, and Tom only just gone out to wear his feet off,
looking for work? A boy again! The Lord preserve us all! It's the devil's
own luck the dear creature has, isn't it now? Why didn't you tell me
before, and me here gossiping when the dear woman will be expecting me
round to see her and the dear baby and wondering what I've got against
her for not coming? I must be off, now, and tidy myself a bit and go and
cheer the poor creature up for I know very well how one wants cheering at
such times. Was it a hard time she had with it? And who is it like the
little angel that came straight from heaven this blessed day? The dear
woman! I must be off, so I'll say good-day to you, Mrs. Phillips, and may
the sun shine on you and your sweetheart, Nellie, even if he does take
you away from us all, and may you have a houseful of babies with faces as
sweet as your own and never miss a neighbour to cheer you a bit when the
trouble's on you. The Lord be with us all!"
Nellie laughed as the rough-voiced, kind-hearted woman took herself off,
to cross the broken dividing wall to the row of houses that backed
closely on the open kitchen door. Then she shrugged her shoulders.
"It's always the way," she remarked, as she turned away to the other door
that led along a little, narrow passage to the street. "What's going to
become of the innocent little baby? Nobody thinks of that."
Mrs. Phillips did not answer. She was tidying up in a wearied way.
Besides, she was used to Nellie, and had a dim perception that what that
young woman said was right, only one had to work, especially on Saturdays
when the smallest children could be safely turned into the street to play
with the elder ones, the baby nursed by pressed nurses, who by dint of
scolding and coaxing and smacking and promising were persuaded to keep it
out of the house, even though they did not keep it altogether quiet. Mrs.
Phillips "tidied up" in a wearied way, without energy, working stolidly
all the time as if she were on a tread-mill. She had a weary look, the
expression of one who is tired always, who gets up tired and goes to bed
tired, and who never by any accident gets a good rest, who even when dead
is not permitted to lie quietly like other people but gets buried the
same day in a cheap coffin that hardly keeps the earth up and is doomed
to he soon dug up to make room for some other tired body in that
economical way instituted by the noble philanthropists who unite a keen
appreciation of the sacredness of burial with a still keener appreciation
of the value of grave-lots. She might have been a pretty girl once or she
might not. Nobody would ever have thought of physical attractiveness as
having anything to do with her. Mrs. Macanany was distinctly ugly. Mrs.
Phillips was neither ugly nor pretty nor anything else. She was a poor
thin draggled woman, who tried to be clean but who had long ago given up
in despair any attempt at looking natty and had now no ambition for
herself but to have something "decent" to go out in. Once it was her
ambition also to have a "I room." She had scraped and saved and pared in
dull times for this "room" and when once Joe had a long run of steady
work she had launched out into what those who know how workingmen's wives
should live would have denounced as the wildest extravagance. A gilt
framed mirror and a sofa, four spidery chairs and a round table, a
wonderful display of wax apples under a glass shade, a sideboard and a
pair of white lace curtains hanging from a pole, with various ornaments
and pictures of noticeable appearance, also linoleum for the floor, had
finally been gathered together and were treasured for a time as household
gods indeed. In those days there was hardly a commandment in the
decalogue that Mephistopheles might not have induced Mrs. Phillips to
commit by judicious praise of her "room." Her occasional "visitors" were
ushered into it with an air of pride that was alone enough to illuminate
the dingy, musty little place. Between herself and those of her
neighbours who had "rooms" there was a fierce rivalry, while those of
inferior grade--and they were in the majority--regarded her with an
envy not unmixed with dislike.
But those times were gone for poor Mrs. Phillips. We all know how they
go, excepting those who do not want to know. Work gradually became more
uncertain, wages fell and rents kept up. They had one room of the small
five-roomed house let already. They let another--"they" being her and
Joe. Finally, they had to let the room. The chairs, the round table and
the sofa wore bartered at a second-hand store for bedroom furniture. The
mirror and the sideboard were brought out into the kitchen, and on the
sideboard the wax fruit still stood like the lingering shrine of a
departed faith.
The "room" was now the lodging of two single men, as the good old
ship-phrase goes. Upstairs, in the room over the kitchen, the Phillips
family slept, six in all. There would have been seven, only the eldest
girl, a child of ten, slept with Nellie in the little front room over the
door, an arrangement which was not in the bond but was volunteered by the
single woman in one of her fits of indignation against pigging together.
The other front room was also rented by a single man when they could get
him. Just now it was tenantless, an additional cause of sorrow to Mrs.
Phillips, whose stock card, "Furnished Lodgings for a Single Man," was
now displayed at the front window, making the house in that respect very
similar to half the houses in the street, or in this part of the town for
that matter. Yet with all this crowding and renting of rooms Mrs.
Phillips did not grow rich. She was always getting into debt or getting
out of it, this depending in inverse ratio upon Joe being in work or out.
When the rooms were all let they barely paid the rent and were always
getting empty. The five children--they had one dead and another
coming--ate so much and made so much work. There were boots and clothes and
groceries to pay for, not to mention bread. And though Joe was not like
many a woman's husband yet he did get on the spree occasionally, a little
fact which in the opinion of the pious will account for all Mrs.
Phillips' weariness and all the poverty of this crowded house. But
however that may be she was a weary hopeless faded woman, who would not
cause passers-by to turn, pity-stricken, and watch her when she hurried
along on her semi-occasional escapes from her prison-house only because
such women are so common that it is those who do not look hopeless and
weary whom we turn to watch if by some strange chance one passes. The
Phillips' kitchen was a cheerless place, in spite of the mirror that was
installed in state over the side-board and the wax flowers. Its one
window looked upon a diminutive back yard, a low broken wall and another
row of similar two-storied houses. On the plastered walls were some
shelves bearing a limited supply of crockery. Over the grated fireplace
was a long high shelf whereon stood various pots and bottles. There were
some chairs and a table and a Chinese-made safe. On the boarded floor was
a remnant of linoleum. Against one wall was a narrow staircase.
It was the breakfast things that Nellie had been helping to wash up. The
little American clock on the sideboard indicated quarter past nine.
Nellie went to the front door, opened it, and stood looking out. The view
was a limited one, a short narrow side street, blinded at one end by a
high bare stone wall, bounded at the other by the almost as narrow
by-thoroughfare this side street branched from. The houses in the
thoroughfare were three-storied, and a number wore used as shops of the
huckstering variety, mainly by Chinese. The houses in the side street
were two-storied, dingy, jammed tightly together, each one exactly like
the next. The pavement was of stone, the roadway of some composite, hard
as iron; roadway and pavement were overrun with children. At the corner
by a dead wall was a lamp-post. Nearly opposite Nellie a group of excited
women were standing in an open doorway. They talked loudly, two or three
at a time, addressing each other indiscriminately. The children screamed
and swore, quarrelled and played and fought, while a shrill-voiced mother
occasionally took a hand in the diversion of the moment, usually to scold
or cull some luckless offender. The sunshine radiated that sickly heat
which precedes rain.
Nellie stood there and waited for Ned. She was 20 or so, tall and slender
but well-formed, every curve of her figure giving promise of more
luxurious development. She was dressed in a severely plain dress of black
stuff, above which a faint line of white collar could be seen clasping
the round throat. Her ears had been bored, but she wore no earrings. Her
brown hair was drawn away from her forehead and bound in a heavy braid on
the back of her neck. But it was her face that attracted one, a pale sad
face that was stamped on every feature with the impress of a determined
will and of an intense womanliness. From the pronounced jaw that melted
its squareness of profile in the oval of the full face to the dark brown
eyes that rarely veiled themselves beneath their long-lashed lids,
everything told that the girl possessed the indefinable something we call
character. And if there was in the drooping corners of her red lips a
sternness generally unassociated with conceptions of feminine loveliness
one forgot it usually in contemplating the soft attractiveness of the
shapely forehead, dashed beneath by straight eyebrows, and of the
pronounced cheekbones that crossed the symmetry of a Saxon face. Mrs.
Phillips was a drooping wearied woman but there was nothing drooping
about Nellie and never could be. She might be torn down like one of the
blue gums under which she had drawn in the fresh air of her girlhood, but
she could no more bend than can the tree which must stand erect in the
fiercest storm or must go down altogether. Pale she was, from the close
air of the close street and close rooms, but proud she was as woman can
be, standing erect in the door-way amid all this pandemonium of cries,
waiting for Ned. Ned was her old playmate, a Darling Downs boy, five
years older to be sure, but her playmate in the old days, nevertheless,
as lads who have no sisters are apt to be with admiring little girls who
have no brothers. Selectors' children, both of them, from neighbouring
farms, born above the frost line under the smelting Queensland sun,
drifted hither and thither by the fitful gusts of Fate as are the
paper-sailed ships that boys launch on flood water pools, meeting here in
Sydney after long years of separation. Now, Nellie was a dressmaker in a
big city shop, and Ned a sun-burnt shearer to whom the great trackless
West was home. She thought of the old home sadly as she stood there
waiting for him.
It had not been a happy home altogether and yet, and yet--it was better
than this. There was pure air there, at least, and grass up to the door,
and trees rustling over-head; and the little children were brown and
sturdy and played with merry shouts, not with these vile words she heard
jabbered in the wretched street. Her heart grew sick within her--a
habit it had, that heart of Nellie's--and a passion of wild revolt
against her surroundings made her bite her lips and press her nails
against her palms. She looked across at the group opposite. More children
being born! Week in and week out they seemed to come in spite of all the
talk of not having any more. She could have cried over this holocaust of
the innocents, and yet she shrank with an unreasoning shrinking from the
barrenness that was coming to be regarded as the most comfortable state
and being sought after, as she knew well, by the younger married women.
What were they all coming to? Were they all to go on like this without a
struggle until they vanished altogether as a people, perhaps to make room
for the round-cheeked, bland-faced Chinaman who stood in the doorway of
his shop in the crossing thorough-fare, gazing expressionlessly at her?
She loathed that Chinaman. He always seemed to be watching her, to be
waiting for something. She would dream of him sometimes as creeping upon
her from behind, always with that bland round face. Yet he never spoke to
her, never insulted her, only he seemed to be always watching her, always
waiting. And it would come to her sometimes like a cold chill, that this
yellow man and such men as he were watching them all slowly going down
lower and lower, were waiting to leap upon them in their last
helplessness and enslave them all as white girls were sometimes enslaved,
even already, in those filthy opium joints whose stench nauseated the
hurrying passers-by. Perhaps under all their meekness these Chinese were
braver, more stubborn, more vigorous, and it was doomed that they should
conquer at last and rule in the land where they had been treated as
outcasts and intruders. She thought of this--and, just then, Ned turned
the corner by the lamp.
Ned was a Down's native, every inch of him. He stood five feet eleven in
his bare feet yet was so broad and strong that he hardly looked over the
medium height. He had blue eyes and a heavy moustache just tinged with
red. His hair was close-cut and dark; his forehead, nose and chin wore
large and strong; his lips were strangely like a woman's. He walked with
short jerky steps, swinging himself awkwardly as men do who have been
much in the saddle. He wore a white shirt, as being holiday-making, but
had not managed a collar; his pants were dark-blue, slightly belled; his
coat, dark-brown; his boots wore highly polished; round his neck was a
silk handkerchief; round his vestless waist, a discoloured leather belt;
above all, a wide-brimmed cabbage tree hat, encircled by a narrow leather
strap. He swung himself along rapidly, unabashed by the stares of the
women or the impudent comment of the children. Nellie, suddenly, felt all
her ill-humour turn against him. He was so satisfied with himself. He
had talked unionism to her when she met him two weeks before, on his way
to visit a brother who had taken up a selection in the Hawkesbury
district. He had laughed when she hinted at the possibilities of the
unionism he championed so fanatically. "We only want what's fair," he
said. "We're not going to do anything wild. As long as we get £1 a
hundred and rations at a fair figure we're satisfied." And then he had
inconsistently proceeded to describe how the squatters treated the men
out West, and how the union would make them civil, and how the said
squatters were mostly selfish brutes who preferred Chinese to their own
colour and would stop at no trick to beat the men out of a few shillings.
She had said nothing at the time, being so pleased to see him, though she
determined to have it out with him sometime during this holiday they had
planned. But somehow, as he stepped carelessly along, a dashing manliness
in every motion, a breath of the great plains coming with his sunburnt
face and belted waist, he and his self-conceit jarred to her against this
sordid court and these children's desolate lives. How dared he talk as he
did about only wanting what was fair, she thought! How had he the heart
to care only for himself and his mates while in these city slums such
misery brooded! And then it shot through her that he did not know. With a
rapidity, characteristic of herself, she made up her mind to teach him.
"Well, Nellie," he cried, cheerily, coming up to her. "And how are you
again?"
"Hello, Ned," she answered, cordially, shaking hands. "You look as though
you were rounding-up."
"Do I?" he questioned, seriously, looking down at himself. "Shirt and
all? Well, if I am it's only you I came to round up. Are you ready? Did
you think I wasn't coming?"
"It won't take me a minute," she replied. "I was pretty sure you'd come.
I took a holiday on the strength of it, anyway, and made an engagement
for you to-night. Come in a minute, Ned. You must see Mrs. Phillips while
I get my hat. You'll have to sleep here to night. It'll be so late when
we get back. Unless you'd sooner go to a hotel."
"I'm not particular," said Ned, looking round curiously, as he followed
her in. "I'd never have found the place, Nellie, if it hadn't been for
that pub, near the corner, where we saw that row on the other night."
The women opposite had suspended their debate upon Mrs. Hobbs' latest, a
debate fortified by manifold reminiscences of the past and possibilities
of the future. It was known in the little street that Nellie Lawton
intended taking a holiday with an individual who was universally accepted
as her "young man," and Ned's appearance upon the stage naturally made
him a subject for discussion which temporarily over-shadowed even Mrs.
Hobbs' baby.
"I'm told he's a sort of a farmer," said one.
"He's a shearer; I had it from Mrs. Phillips herself," said another.
"He's a strapping man, whatever he is," commented a third.
"Well, she's a big lump of a girl, too," contributed a fourth.
"Yes, and a vixen with her tongue when she gets started, for all her prim
looks," added a fifth.
"She has tricky ways that get over the men-folks. Mine won't hear a word
against her." This from the third speaker, eager to be with the tide,
evidently setting towards unfavorable criticism.
"I don't know," objected the second, timidly. "She sat up all night with
my Maggie once, when she had the fever, and Nellie had to work next day,
too."
"Oh, she's got her good side," retorted the fifth, opening her dress to
feed her nursing baby with absolute indifference for all onlookers. "But
she knows a great deal too much for a girl of her age. When she gets
married will be time enough to talk as she does sometimes." The chorus of
approving murmurs showed that Nellie had spoken plainly enough on some
subjects to displease some of these slatternly matrons.
"She stays out till all hours, I'm told," one slanderer said.
"She's a union girl, at any rate," hazarded Nellie's timid defender.
There was an awkward pause at this. It was an apple of discord with the
women, evidently. A tall form turning the corner afforded further reason
for changing the subject.
"Here's Mrs. Macanany," announced one. "You'd better not say anything
against Nellie Lawton when she's about." So they talked again of Mrs.
Hobbs' baby, making it the excuse to leave undone for a few minutes the
endless work of the poor man's wife.
And sad to tell when, a few minutes afterwards, Ned and Nellie came out
again and walked off together, the group of gossipers unanimously
endorsed Mrs. Macanany's extravagant praises, and agreed entirely with
her declaration that if all the women in Sydney would only stand by
Nellie, as Mrs. Macanany herself would, there would be such a doing and
such an upsetting and such a righting of things that ever after every man
would be his own master and every woman would only work eight hours and
get well paid for it. Yet it was something that of six women there were
two who wouldn't slander a girl like Nellie behind her back.
CHAPTER II.
SWEATING IN THE SYDNEY SLUMS.
"Well! Where shall we go, Nellie?" began Ned jauntily, as they walked
away together. To tell the truth he was eager to get away from this poor
neighborhood. It had saddened him, made him feel unhappy, caused in him a
longing to be back again in the bush, on his horse, a hundred miles from
everybody. "Shall we go to Manly or Bondi or Watson's Bay, or do you know
of a better place?" He had been reading the newspaper advertisements and
had made enquiries of the waitress, as he ate his breakfast, concerning
the spot which the waitress would prefer were a young man going to take
her out for the day. He felt pleased with himself now, for not only did
he like Nellie very much but she was attractive to behold, and he felt
very certain that every man they passed envied him. She had put on a
little round straw hat, black, trimmed with dark purple velvet; in her
hands, enclosed in black gloves, she carried a parasol of the same
colour.
"Where would you like to go, Ned?" she answered, colouring a little as
she heard her name in Mrs. Macanany's hoarse voice, being told thereby
that she and Ned were the topic of conversation among the jury of matrons
assembled opposite.
"Anywhere you like, Nellie."
"Don't you think, Ned, that you might see a little bit of real Sydney?
Strangers come here for a few days and go on the steamers and through the
gardens and along George-street and then go away with a notion of the
place that isn't the true one. If I were you, Ned, right from the bush
and knowing nothing of towns, I'd like to see a bit of the real side and
not only the show side that everybody sees. We don't all go picnicking
all the time and we don't all live by the harbour or alongside the
Domain."
"Do just whatever you like, Nellie," cried Ned, hardly understanding but
perfectly satisfied, "you know best where to take a fellow."
"But they're not pleasant places, Ned."
"I don't mind," answered Ned, lightly, though he had been looking
forward, rather, to the quiet enjoyment of a trip on a harbour steamer,
or at least to the delight of a long ramble along some beach where he
thought he and Nellie might pick up shells. "Besides, I fancy it's going
to rain before night," he added, looking up at the sky, of which a long
narrow slice showed between the tall rows of houses.
There were no clouds visible. Only there was a deepening grey in the hard
blueness above them, and the breathless heat, even at this time of day,
was stifling.
"I don't know that you'd call this a pleasant place," he commented,
adding with the frankness of an old friend: "Why do you live here,
Nellie?"
She shrugged her shoulders. The gesture meant anything and everything.
"You needn't have bothered sending me that money back," said Ned, in
reply to the shrug.
"It isn't that," explained Nellie. "I've got a pretty good billet. A
pound a week and not much lost time! But I went to room there when I was
pretty hard up. It's a small room and was cheap. Then, after, I took to
boarding there as well. That was pretty cheap and suited me and helped
them. I suppose I might get a better place but they're very kind, and I
come and go as I like, and--" she hesitated. "After all," she went on,
"there's not much left out of a pound."
"I shouldn't think so," remarked Ned, looking at her and thinking that
she was very nicely dressed.
"Oh! You needn't look," laughed Nellie. "I make my own dresses and trim
my own hats. A woman wouldn't think much of the stuff either."
"I want to tell you how obliged I was for that money, Ned," continued
Nellie, an expression of pain on her face. "There was no one else I could
ask, and I needed it so. It was very kind--"
"Ugh! That's nothing," interrupted Ned, hiding his bashfulness under a
burst of boisterousness. "Why, Nellie, I'd like you to be sending to me
regular. It might just as well come to you as go any other way. If you
ever do want a few pounds again, Nellie,"--he added, seriously, "I can
generally manage it. I've got plenty just now--far more than I'll ever
need." This with wild exaggeration. "You might as well have it as not.
I've got nobody."
"Thanks, just the same, Ned! When I do want it I'll ask you. I'm afraid
I'll never have any money to lend you if you need it, but if I ever do
you know where to come."
"It's a bargain, Nellie," said Ned. Then, eager to change the subject,
feeling awkward at discussing money matters because he would have been so
willing to have given his last penny to anybody he felt friends with,
much less to the girl by his side:
"But where are we going?"
"To see Sydney!" said Nellie.
They had turned several times since they started but the neighborhood
remained much the same. The streets, some wider, some narrower, all told
of sordid struggling. The shops were greasy, fusty, grimy. The groceries
exposed in their windows damaged specimens of bankrupt stocks, discolored
tinned goods, grey sugars, mouldy dried fruits; at their doors, flitches
of fat bacon, cut and dusty. The meat with which the butchers' shops
overflowed was not from show-beasts, as Ned could see, but the cheaper
flesh of over-travelled cattle, ancient oxen, ewes too aged for bearing;
all these lean scraggy flabby-fleshed carcasses surrounded and blackened
by buzzing swarms of flies that invaded the foot-path outside in clouds.
The draperies had tickets, proclaiming unparalleled bargains, on every
piece; the whole stock seemed displayed outside and in the doorway. The
fruiterers seemed not to be succeeding in their rivalry with each other
and with the Chinese hawkers. The Chinese shops were dotted everywhere,
dingier than any other, surviving and succeeding, evidently, by sheer
force of cheapness. The roadways everywhere were hard and bare,
reflecting the rays of the ascending sun until the streets seemed to be
Turkish baths, conducted on a new and gigantic method. There was no green
anywhere, only unlovely rows of houses, now gasping with open doors and
windows for air.
Air! That was what everything clamoured for, the very stones, the dogs,
the shops, the dwellings, the people. If it was like this soon after ten,
what would it be at noon?
Already the smaller children were beginning to weary of play. In narrow
courts they lolled along on the flags, exhausted. In wider streets, they
sat quietly on door-steps or the kerb, or announced their discomfort in
peevish wailings. The elder children quarrelled still and swore from
their playground, the gutter, but they avoided now the sun and
instinctively sought the shade and it is pretty hot when a child minds
the sun. At shop doors, shopmen, sometimes shopwomen, came to wipe their
warm faces and examine the sky with anxious eyes. The day grow hotter and
hotter. Ned could feel the rising heat, as though he were in an oven with
a fire on underneath. Only the Chinese looked cool.
Nellie led the way, sauntering along, without hurrying. Several times she
turned down passages that Ned would hardly have noticed, and brought him
out in courts closed in on all sides, from which every breath of air
seemed purposely excluded. Through open doors and windows he could see
the inside of wretched homes, could catch glimpses of stifling bedrooms
and close, crowded little kitchens. Often one of the denizens came to
door or window to stare at Nellie and him; sometimes they were accosted
with impudent chaff, once or twice with pitiful obscenity.
The first thing that impressed him was the abandonment that thrust itself
upon him in the more crowded of these courts and alley-ways and
back-streets, the despairing abandonment there of the decencies of
living. The thin dwarfed children kicked and tumbled with naked limbs on
the ground; many women leaned half-dressed and much unbuttoned from
ground floor windows, or came out into the passage-ways slatternly. In
one court two unkempt vile-tongued women of the town wrangled and abused
each other to the amusement of the neighborhood, where the working poor
were huddled together with those who live by shame. The children played
close by as heedlessly as if such quarrels were common events, cursing
themselves at each other with nimble filthy tongues.
"There's a friend of mine lives here," said Nellie, turning into one of
these narrow alleys that led, as they could see, into a busier and
bustling street. "If you don't mind we'll go up and I can help her a bit,
and you can see how one sort of sweating is done. I worked at it for a
spell once, when dressmaking was slack. In the same house, too."
She stopped at the doorway of one of a row of three-storied houses. On
the doorstep were a group of little children, all barefooted and more or
less ragged in spite of evident attempts to keep some of them patched
into neatness. They looked familiarly at Nellie and curiously at Ned.
"How's mother, Johnny?" asked Nellie of one of them, a small pinched
little fellow of six or seven, who nursed a baby of a year or so old, an
ill-nourished baby that seemed wilting in the heat.
"She's working," answered the little fellow, looking anxiously at Nellie
as she felt in her pocket.
"There's a penny for you," said Nellie, "and here's a penny for Dicky,"
patting a little five-year-old on the head, "and here's one to buy some
milk for the baby."
Johnny rose with glad eagerness, the baby in his arms and the pennies in
his hand.
"I shall buy 'specks' with mine," he cried joyfully.
"What's 'specks?'" asked Ned, puzzled, as the children went off, the
elder staggering under his burden.
"'Specks!' Damaged fruit, half rotten. The garbage of the rich sold as a
feast to these poor little ones?" cried Nellie, a hot anger in her face
and voice that made Ned dumb.
She entered the doorway. Ned followed her through a room where a man and
a couple of boys were hammering away at some boots, reaching thereby a
narrow, creaking stairway, hot as a chimney, almost pitch dark, being
lighted only by an occasional half-opened door, up which he stumbled
clumsily. Through one of these open doors he caught a glimpse of a couple
of girls sewing; through another of a woman with a baby in arms
tidying-up a bare floored room, which seemed to be bedroom, kitchen and
dining room in one; from behind a closed door came the sound of voices,
one shrilly laughing. Unused to stairways his knees ached before they
reached the top. He was glad enough when Nellie knocked loudly at a door
through which came the whirring of a sewing machine. The noise stopped
for a moment while a sharp voice called them to "come in," then started
again. Nellie opened the door.
At the open window of a small room, barely furnished with a broken iron
bedstead, some case boards knocked together for a table and fixed against
the wall, a couple of shaky chairs and a box, a sharp featured woman sat
working a machine, as if for dear life. The heat of the room was made
hotter by the little grate in which a fire had recently been burning and
on which still stood the teapot. Some cups and a plate or two, with a cut
loaf of bread and a jam tin of sugar, littered the table. The scanty bed
was unmade. The woman wore a limp cotton dress of uncertain colour,
rolled up at the sleeves and opened at the neck for greater coolness. She
was thin and sharp; she was so busy you understood that she had no time
to be clean and tidy. She seemed pleased to see Nellie and totally
indifferent at seeing Ned, but kept on working after nodding to them.
Nellie motioned Ned to sit down, which he did on the edge of the bed, not
caring to trust the shaky chairs. She went to the side of the
sharp-featured woman, and sitting down on the foot of the bed by the
machine watched her working without a word. Ned could see on the ground,
in a paper parcel, a heap of cloth of various colours, and on the bed
some new coats folded and piled up. On the machine was another coat,
being sewn.
It was ten minutes before the machine stopped, ten minutes for Ned to
look about and think in. He knew without being told that this miserable
room was the home of the three children to whom Nellie had given the
pennies, and that here their mother worked to feed them. Their feeding he
could see on the table. Their home he could see. The work that gave it to
them he could see. For the first time in his life he felt ashamed of
being an Australian.
Finally the machine stopped. The sharp-faced woman took the coat up, bit
a thread with her teeth, and laying it on her knee began to unpick the
tackings.
"Let me!" said Nellie, pulling off her gloves and taking off her hat. "We
came to see you, Ned and I," she went on with honest truthfulness,
"because he's just down from the bush, and I wanted him to see what
Sydney was like. Ned, this is Mrs. Somerville."
Mrs. Somerville nodded at Ned. "You're right to come here," she remarked,
grimly, getting up while Nellie took her place as if she often did it.
"You know just what it is, Nellie, and I do, too, worse luck. Perhaps
it's good for us. When we're better off we don't care for those who're
down. We've got to get down ourselves to get properly disgusted with it."
She spoke with the accent of an educated woman, moving to the make-shift
table and beginning to "tidy-up." As she passed between him and the light
Ned could see that the cotton dress was her only covering.
"How are the children?" asked Nellie.
"How can you expect them to be?" retorted the other.
"You ought to wean the baby," insisted Nellie, as though it was one of
their habitual topics.
"Wean the baby! That's all very well for those who can buy plenty of
milk. It's a pity it's ever got to be weaned."
"Plenty of work this week?" asked Nellie, changing the subject.
"Yes; plenty of work this week. You know what that means. No work at all
when they get a stock ahead, so as to prevent us feeling too independent
I suppose." She paused, then added: "That girl downstairs says she isn't
going to work any more. I talked to her a little but she says one might
just as well die one way as another, and that she'll have some pleasure
first. I couldn't blame her much. She's got a good heart. She's been very
kind to the children."
Nellie did not answer; she did not even look up.
"They're going to reduce prices at the shop," went on Mrs. Somerville.
"They told me last time I went that after this lot they shouldn't pay as
much because they could easily get the things done for less. I asked what
they'd pay, and they said they didn't know but they'd give me as good a
show for work as ever if I cared to take the new prices, because they
felt sorry for the children. I suppose I ought to feel thankful to them."
Nellie looked up now--her face flushed. "Reduce, prices again!" she
cried. "How can they?"
"I don't know how they can, but they can," answered Mrs. Somerville. "I
suppose we can be thankful so long as they don't want to be paid for
letting us work for them. Old Church's daughter got married to some
officer of the fleet last week, I'm told, and I suppose we've got to help
give her a send-off."
"It's shameful," exclaimed Nellie. "What they paid two years ago hardly
kept one alive, and they've reduced twice since then. Oh! They'll all pay
for it some day."
"Let's hope so," said Mrs. Somerville. "Only we'll have to pay them for
it pretty soon, Nellie, or there won't be enough strength left in us to
pay them with. I've got beyond minding anything much, but I would like to
get even with old Church."
They had talked away, the two women, ignoring Ned. He listened. He
understood that from the misery of this woman was drawn the pomp and
pride, the silks and gold and glitter of the society belle, and he
thought with a cruel satisfaction of what might happen to that society
belle if this half-starved woman got hold of her. Measure for measure,
pang for pang, what torture, what insults, what degradation, could atone
for the life that was suffered in this miserable room? And for the life
of "that girl downstairs" who had given up in despair?
"How about a union now?" asked Nellie, turning with the first pieces of
another coat to the machine.
"Work's too dull," was the answer. "Wait for a few months till the busy
season comes and then I wouldn't wonder if you could get one. The women
were all feeling hurt about the reduction, and one girl did start talking
strike, but what's the use now? I couldn't say anything, you know, but
I'll find out where the others live and you can go round and talk to them
after a while. If there was a paper that would show old Church up it
might do good, but there isn't."
Then the rattle of the machine began again, Nellie working with an
adeptness that showed her to be an old hand. Ned could see now that the
coats were of cheap coarse stuff and that the sewing in them was not fine
tailoring. The cut material in Nellie's hands fairly flew into shape as
she rapidly moved it to and fro under the hurrying needle with her slim
fingers. Her foot moved unceasingly on the treadle. Ned watching her, saw
the great beads of perspiration slowly gather on her forehead and then
trickle down her nose and cheeks to fall upon the work before her.
"My word! But it's hot!" exclaimed Nellie at last, as the noise stopped
for a moment while she changed the position of her work. "Why don't you
open the door?"
"I don't care to before the place is tidy," answered Mrs. Somerville, who
had washed her cups and plates in a pan and had just put Ned on one of
the shaky chairs while she shook and arranged the meagre coverings of the
bed.
"Is he still carrying on?" enquired Nellie, nodding her head at the
partition and evidently alluding to someone on the other side.
"Of course, drink, drink, drink, whenever he gets a chance, and that
seems pretty well always. She helps him sometimes, and sometimes she
keeps sober and abuses him. He kicked her down stairs the other night,
and the children all screaming, and her shrieking, and him swearing. It
was a nice time."
Once more the machining interrupted the conversation, which thus was
renewed from time to time in the pauses of the noise. The room being
"tidied," Mrs. Somerville sat down on the bed and taking up some pieces
of cloth began to tack them together with needle and thread, ready for
the machine. It never seemed to occur to her to rest even for a moment.
"Nellie's a quick one," she remarked to Ned. "At the shop they always
tell those who grumble what she earned one week. Twenty-four and six,
wasn't it, Nellie? But they don't say she worked eighteen hours a day for
it."
Nellie flushed uneasily and Ned felt uncomfortable. Both thought of the
repayment of the latter's friendly loan. The girl made her machine rattle
still more hurriedly to prevent any further remarks trending in that
direction. At last Mrs. Somerville, her tacking finished, got up and took
the work from Nellie's hands.
"I'm not going to take your whole morning," she said. "You don't get many
friends from the bush to see you, so just go away and I'll get on. I'm
much obliged to you as it is, Nellie."
Nellie did not object. After wiping her hands, face and neck with her
handkerchief she put on her gloves and hat. The sharp-faced woman was
already at the machine and amid the din, which drowned their good-byes,
they departed as they came. Ned felt more at ease when his feet felt the
first step of the narrow creaking stairway. It is hardly a pleasant
sensation for a man to be in the room of a stranger who, without any
unfriendliness, does not seem particularly aware that he is there. They
left the door open. Far down the stifling stairs Ned could hear the
ceaseless whirring of the machine driven by the woman who slaved
ceaselessly for her children's bread in this Sydney sink. He looked
around for the children when they got to the alley again but could not
see them among the urchins who lolled about half-suffocated now. The sun
was almost overhead for they had been upstairs for an hour. The heat in
this mere canyon path between cliffs of houses was terrible. Ned himself
began to feel queerly.
"Let's get out of this, Nellie," he said.
"How would you like never to be able to get out of it?" she answered, as
they turned towards the bustling street, opposite to the way they had
previously come.
"Who's that Mrs. Somerville?" he asked, not answering.
"I got to know her when I lived there," replied Nellie. "Her husband used
to be well off, I fancy, but had bad luck and got down pretty low. There
was a strike on at some building and he went on as a laborer,
blacklegging. The pickets followed him to the house, abusing him, and
made him stubborn, but I got her alone that night and talked to her and
explained things a bit and she talked to him and next day he joined the
union. Then he got working about as a labourer, and one day some rotten
scaffolding broke, and he came down with it. The union got a few pounds
for her, but the boss was a regular swindler who was always beating men
out of their wages and doing anything to get contracts and running
everything cheap, so there was nothing to be got out of him."
"Did her husband die?"
"Yes, next day. She had three children and another came seven months
after. One died last summer just before the baby was born. She's had a
pretty hard time of it, but she works all the time and she generally has
work."
"It seems quite a favour to get work here," observed Ned.
"If you were a girl you'd soon find out what a favour it is sometimes,"
answered Nellie quietly, as they came out into the street.
CHAPTER III.
SHORN LIKE SHEEP.
"How many hours do you work?" asked Nellie of the waitress.
"About thirteen," answered the girl, glancing round to see if the manager
was watching her talking. "But it's not the hours so much. It's the
standing."
"You're not doing any good standing now," put in Ned. "Why don't you sit
down and have a rest?"
"They don't let us," answered the waitress, cautiously.
"What do they pay?" asked Nellie, sipping her tea and joining in the
waitress' look-out for the manager.
"Fifteen! But they're taking girls on at twelve. Of course there's meals.
But you've got to room yourself, and then there's washing, clean aprons
and caps and cuffs and collars. You've got to dress, too. There's nothing
left. We ought to get a pound."
"What----"
"S-s-s!" warned the waitress, straightening herself up as the manager
appeared.
* * * * *
They were in a fashionable Sydney restaurant, on George-street, a large,
painted, gilded, veneered, electro-plated place, full of mirrors and
gas-fittings and white-clothed tables. It was not busy, the hour being
somewhat late and the day Saturday, and so against the walls, on either
side the long halls, were ranged sentinel rows of white-aproned,
white-capped, black-dressed waitresses.
They were dawdling over their tea--Ned and Nellie were, not the
waitresses--having dined exceedingly well on soup and fish and flesh
and pudding. For Ned, crushed by more sight-seeing and revived by a
stroll to the Domain and a rest by a fountain under shady trees, further
revived by a thunderstorm that suddenly rolled up and burst upon them
almost before they could reach the shelter of an awning, had insisted on
treating Nellie to "a good dinner," telling her that afterwards she could
take him anywhere she liked but that meanwhile they would have something
to cheer them up. And Nellie agreed, nothing loth, for she too longed for
the momentary jollity of a mild dissipation, not to mention that this
would be a favorable opportunity to see if the restaurant girls could not
be organised. So they had "a good dinner."
"This reminds me," said Nellie, as she ate her fish, "of a friend of
mine, a young fellow who is always getting hard up and always raising a
cheque, as he calls it. He was very hard up a while ago, and met a friend
whom he told about it. Then he invited his friend to go and have some
lunch. They came here and he ordered chicken and that, and a bottle of
good wine. It took his last half-sovereign. When he got the ticket the
other man looked at him. 'Well,' he said, 'if you live like this when
you're hard up, how on earth do you live when you've got money?'"
"What did he say?" asked Ned, laughing, wondering at the same time how
Nellie came to know people who drank wine and spent half-sovereigns on
chicken lunches.
"Oh! He didn't say anything much, he told me. He couldn't manage to
explain, he thought, that when he was at work and easy in his mind he
didn't care what he had to eat but that when he didn't know what he'd do
by the end of the week he felt like having a good meal if he never had
another. He thought that made the half-sovereign go furthest. He's funny
in some things."
"I should think he was, a little. How did you know him?"
"I met him where we're going tonight. He's working on some newspaper in
Melbourne now. I haven't seen him or heard of for months."
She chatted on, rather feverishly.
"Did you ever read 'David Copperfield?'"
Ned nodded, his mouth being full.
"Do you recollect how he used to stand outside the cookshops? It's quite
natural. I used to. It's pretty bad to be hungry and it's just about as
bad not to have enough. I know a woman who has a couple of children, a
boy and a girl. They were starving once. She said she'd sooner starve
than beg or ask anybody to help them, and the little girl said she would
too. But the boy said he wasn't going to starve for anybody, and he
wasn't going to beg either; he'd steal. And sure enough he slipped out
and came back with two loaves that he'd taken from a shop. They lived on
that for nearly a week." Nellie laughed forcedly.
"What did they do then?" asked Ned seriously.
"Oh! She had been doing work but couldn't get paid. She got paid."
"Where was her husband?"
"Don't husbands die like other people?" she answered, pointedly. "Not
that all husbands are much good when they can't get work or will always
work when they can get it," she added.
"Are many people as hard up as that in Sydney, Nellie?" enquired Ned,
putting down his knife and fork.
"Some," she answered. "You don't suppose a lot of the people we saw this
morning get over well fed, do you? Oh, you can go on eating, Ned! it's
not being sentimental that will help them. They want fair play and a
chance to work, and your going hungry won't get that for them. There's
lots for them and for us if they only knew enough to stop people like
that getting too much."
By lifting her eyebrows she drew his attention to a stout coarse loudly
jewelled man, wearing a tall silk hat and white waistcoat, who had
stopped near them on his way to the door. He was speaking in a loud
dictatorial wheezy voice. His hands were thrust into his trouser pockets,
wherein he jingled coins by taking them up and letting them fall again.
The chink of sovereigns seemed sweet music to him. He stared
contemptuously at Ned's clothes as that young man looked round; then
stared with insolent admiration at Nellie. Ned became crimson with
suppressed rage, but said nothing until the man had passed them.
"Who is that brute?" he asked then.
"That brute! Why, he's a famous man. He owns hundreds of houses, and has
been mayor and goodness knows what. He'll be knighted and made a duke or
something. He owns the block where Mrs. Somerville lives. You ought to
speak respectfully of your betters, Ned. He's been my landlord, though he
doesn't know it, I suppose. He gets four shillings a week from Mrs.
Somerville. The place isn't worth a shilling, only it's handy for her
taking her work in, and she's got to pay him for it being handy. That's
her money he's got in his pocket, only if you knocked him down and took
it out for her you'd be a thief. At least, they'd say you were and send
you to prison."
"Who's the other, I wonder?" said Ned. "He looks more like a man."
The other was a shrewd-looking, keen-faced, sparely-built man, with
somewhat aquiline nose and straight narrow forehead, not at all
bad-looking or evil-looking and with an air of strong determination; in
short, what one calls a masterful man. He was dressed well but quietly. A
gold-bound hair watch guard that crossed his high-buttoned waistcoat was
his only adornment; his slender hands, unlike the fat man's podgy
fingers, were bare of rings. He was sitting alone, and after the fat man
left him returned again to the reading of an afternoon paper while he
lunched.
"His name's Strong," said. Nellie, turning to Ned with a peculiar smile.
"That fat man has robbed me and this lean man has robbed you, I suppose.
As he looks more like a man it won't be as bad though, will it?"
"What are you getting at, Nellie?" asked Ned, not understanding but
looking at the shrewd man intently, nevertheless.
"Don't you know the name? Of course you don't though. Well, he's managing
director of the Great Southern Mortgage Agency, a big concern that owns
hundreds and hundreds of stations. At least, the squatters own the
stations and the Agency owns the squatters, and he as good as owns the
Agency. You're pretty sure to have worked for him many a time without
knowing it, Ned."
Ned's eyes flashed. Nellie had to kick his foot under the table for fear
he would say or do something that would attract the attention of the
unsuspecting lean man.
"Don't be foolish, Ned," urged Nellie, in a whisper. "What's the good of
spluttering?"
"Why, it was one of their stations on the Wilkes Downs that started
cutting wages two years ago. Whenever a manager is particularly mean he
always puts it down to the Agency. The Victorian fellows say it was this
same concern that first cut wages down their way. And the New Zealanders
too. I'd just like to perform on him for about five minutes."
Ned uttered his wish so seriously that Nellie laughed out loud, at which
Ned laughed too.
"So he's the man who does all the mischief, is he?" remarked Ned, again
glaring at his industrial enemy. "Who'd think it to look at him? He
doesn't look a bad sort, does he?"
"He looks a determined man, I think," said Nellie. "Mr. Stratton says
he's the shrewdest capitalist in Australia and that he'll give the unions
a big fight for it one of these days. He says he has a terrible hatred of
unionism and thinks that there's no half-way between smashing them up and
letting them smash the employers up. His company pays 25 per cent.
regularly every year on its shares and will pay 50 before he gets through
with it."
"How?"
"How! Out of fellows like you, Ned, who think themselves so mighty
independent and can't see that they're being shorn like sheep, in the
same way, though not as much yet, as Mrs. Somerville is by old Church and
the fat brute, as you call him. But then you rather like it I should
think. Anyway, you told me you didn't want to do anything 'wild,' only to
keep up wages. You'll have to do something 'wild' to keep up wages before
he finishes."
"That's all right to talk, Nellie, but what can we do?" asked Ned,
pulling his moustache. .
"Hire him instead of letting him hire you," answered Nellie, oracularly.
"Those fat men are only good to put in museums, but these lean men are
all right so long as you keep them in their place. They are our worst
enemies when they're against us but our best friends when they're for us.
They say Mr. Strong isn't like most of the swell set. He is straight to
his wife and good to his children and generous to his friends and when he
says a thing he sticks to it. Only he sees everything from the other side
and doesn't understand that all men have got the same coloured blood."
"How can we hire him?" said Ned, after a pause. "They own everything."
Nellie shrugged her shoulders.
"You think we might take it," said Ned.
Nellie shrugged her shoulders again.
"I don't see how it can be done," he concluded.
"That's just it. You can't see how it can be done, and so nothing's done.
Some men get drunk, and some men get religious, and others get
enthusiastic for a pound a hundred. You haven't got votes up in
Queensland, and if you had you'd probably give them to a lot of ignorant
politicians. Men don't know, and they don't seem to want to know much,
and they've got to be squeezed by men like him"--she nodded at
Strong--"before they take any interest in themselves or in those who belong
to them. For those who have an ounce of heart, though, I should think
there'd been squeezing enough already."
She looked at Ned angrily. The scenes of the morning rose before him and
tied his tongue.
"How do you know all these jokers, Nellie?" he asked. He had been going
to put the question a dozen times before but it had slipped him in the
interest of conversation.
"I only know them by sight. Mrs. Stratton takes me to the theatre with
her sometimes and tells me who people are and all about them."
"Who's Mrs. Stratton? You were talking of Mr. Stratton, too, just now,
weren't you?"
"Yes. The Strattons are very nice people, They're interested in the
Labour movement, and I said I'd bring you round when I go to-night. I
generally go on Saturday nights. They're not early birds, and we don't
want to get there till half-past ten or so."
"Half-past ten! That's queer time."
"Yes, isn't it? Only----"
At that moment a waitress who had been arranging the next table came and
took her place against the wall close behind Nellie. Such an opportunity
to talk unionism was not to be lost, so Nellie unceremoniously dropped
her conversation with Ned and enquired, as before stated, into the
becapped girl's hours. The waitress was tall and well-featured, but
sallow of skin and growing haggard, though barely 20, if that. Below her
eyes were bluish hollows. She suffered plainly from the disorders caused
by constant standing and carrying, and at this end of her long week was
in evident pain.
* * * * *
"You're not allowed to talk either?" she asked the waitress, when the
manager had disappeared.
"No. They're very strict. You get fined if you're seen chatting to
customers and if you're caught resting. And you get fined if you break
anything, too. One girl was fined six shillings last week."
"Why do you stand it? If you were up in our part of the world we'd soon
bring 'em down a notch or two." This from Ned.
"Out in the bush it may be different," said the girl, identifying his
part of the world by his dress and sunburnt face. "But in towns you've
got to stand it."
"Couldn't you girls form a union?" asked Nellie.
"What's the use, there's plenty to take our places."
"But if you were all in a union there wouldn't be enough."
"Oh, we can't trust a lot of girls. Those who live at home and just work
to dress themselves are the worst of the lot. They'd work for ten
shillings or five."
"But they'd be ashamed to blackleg if once they were got into the union,"
persisted Nellie. "It's worth trying, to get a rise in wages and to stop
fining and have shorter hours and seats while you're waiting."
"Yes, it's worth trying if there was any chance. But there are so many
girls. You're lucky if you get work at all now and just have to put up
with anything. If we all struck they could get others to-morrow."
"But not waitresses. How'd they look here, trying to serve dinner with a
lot of green hands?" argued Nellie. "Besides, if you had a union, you
could get a lot without striking at all. They know now you can't strike,
so they do just exactly as they like."
"They'd do what they----" began the waitress. Then she broke off with
another "s-s-s" as the manager crossed the room again.
"They'd do what they like, anyway," she began once more. "One of our
girls was in the union the Melbourne waitresses started. They had a
strike at one of the big restaurants over the manager insulting one of
the girls. They complained to the boss and wanted the manager to
apologise, but the boss wouldn't listen and said they were getting very
nice. So at dinner time, when the bell rang, they all marched off and put
on their hats. The customers were all waiting for dinner and the girls
were all on strike and the boss nearly went mad. He was going to have
them all arrested, but when the gentlemen heard what it was about they
said the girls were right and if the manager didn't apologise they'd go
to some other restaurant always. So the manager went to the girl and
apologised."
"By gum!" interjected Ned. "Those girls were hummers."
"I suppose the boss victimised afterwards?" asked Nellie, wiser in such
matters.
"That's just it," said the girl, in a disheartened tone. "In two or three
weeks every girl who'd had anything to do with stirring the others up was
bounced for something or other. The manager did what he liked
afterwards."
"Just talk to the other girls about a union, will you?" asked Nellie.
"It's no use giving right in, you know."
"I'll see what some of them say, but there's a lot I wouldn't open my
mouth to," answered the waitress.
"What time do you get away on Thursdays?"
"Next Thursday I'm on till half-past ten."
"Well, I'll meet you then, outside, to see what they say," said Nellie.
"My name's Nellie Lawton and some of us are trying to start a women's
union. You'll be sure to be there?"
"All right," answered the waitress, a little dubiously. Then she added
more cordially, as she wrote out the pay ticket:
"My name's Susan Finch. I'll see what I can do."
So Ned and Nellie got up and, the former having paid at the counter,
walked out into the street together. It was nearly three. The rain had
stopped, though the sky was still cloudy and threatening. The damp
afternoon was chilly after the sultry broiling morning. Neither of them
felt in the mood for walking so at Nellie's suggestion they put in the
afternoon in riding, on trams and 'busses, hither and thither through the
mazy wilderness of the streets that make up Sydney.
Intuitively, both avoided talking of the topics that before had engaged
them and that still engrossed their thoughts. For a while they chatted on
indifferent matters, but gradually relapsed into silence, rarely broken.
The impression of the morning walk, of Mrs. Somerville's poor room, of
Nellie's stuffy street, came with full force to Ned's mind. What he saw
only stamped it deeper and deeper.
When, in a bus, they rode through the suburbs of the wealthy, past
shrubberied mansions and showy villas, along roads where liveried
carriages, drawn by high-stepping horses, dashed by them, he felt himself
in the presence of the fat man who jingled sovereigns, of the lean man
whose slender fingers reached north to the Peak Downs and south to the
Murray, filching everywhere from the worker's hard-earned wage. When in
the tram they were carried with clanging and jangling through endless
rows of houses great and small, along main thoroughfares on either side
of which crowded side-streets extended like fish-bones, over less crowded
districts where the cottages were generally detached or semi-detached and
where pleasant homely houses were thickly sprinkled, oven here he
wondered how near those who lived in happier state were to the life of
the slum, wondered what struggling and pinching and scraping was going on
behind the half-drawn blinds that made homes look so cosy.
What started him on this idea particularly was that, in one train, a
grey-bearded propertied-looking man who sat beside him was grumbling to a
spruce little man opposite about the increasing number of empty houses.
"You can't wonder at it," answered the spruce little man. "When the
working classes aren't prospering everybody feels it but the exporters.
Wages are going down and people are living two families in a house where
they used to live one in a house, or living in smaller houses."
"Oh! Wages are just as high. There's been too much building. You building
society men have overdone the thing."
"My dear sir!" declared the spruce little man. "I'm talking from facts.
My society and every other building society is finding it out. When men
can't get as regular work it's the same thing to them as if wages were
coming down. The number of surrenders we have now is something appalling.
Working men have built expecting to be able to pay from 6s. to 10s. and
12s. a week to the building societies, and every year more and more are
finding out they can't do it. As many as can are renting rooms, letting
part of their house and so struggling along. As many more are giving up
and renting these rooms or smaller houses. And apparently well-to-do
people are often in as bad a fix. It's against my interest to have things
this way, but it's so, and there's no getting over it. If it keeps on,
pretty well every workingman's house about Sydney will be a rented house
soon. The building societies can't stop that unless men have regular work
and fair wages."
"It's the unions that upset trade," asserted the propertied-looking man.
"It's the land law that's wrong," contended the spruce man. "If all taxes
were put on unimproved land values it would be cheaper to live and there
would be more work because it wouldn't pay to keep land out of use. With
cheap living and plenty of work the workingman would have money and
business would be brisk all round."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed the propertied man, brusquely.
"It's so," answered the spruce little man, getting down as the tram
stopped, "There's no getting away from facts and that's fact."
So even out here, Ned thought, looking at the rows of cottages with
little gardens in front which they were passing, the squeeze was coming.
Then, watching the passengers, he thought how worried they all seemed,
how rarely a pleasant face was to be met with in the dress of the people.
And then, suddenly a shining, swaying, coachman-driven brougham whirled
by. Ned, with his keen bushman's eyes, saw in it a stout heavy-jawed
dame, large of arm and huge of bust, decked out in all the fashion, and
insolent of face as one replete with that which others craved. And by her
side, reclining at ease, was a later edition of the same volume, a girl
of 17 or so, already fleshed and heavy-jawed, in her mimic pride looking
for all the world like a well-fed human animal, careless and soulless.
Opposite Nellie a thin-faced woman, of whose front teeth had gone,
patiently dandled a peevish baby, while by her side another child
clutched her dingy dust-cloak. This woman's nose was peaked and her chin
receded. In her bonnet some gaudy imitation flowers nodded a vigorous
accompaniment. She did not seem ever to have had pleasure or to have been
young, and yet in the child by her side her patient joyless sordid life
had produced its kind.
They had some tea and buttered scones in a cheaper cafe, where Nellie
tried to "organise" another waitress. They lingered over the meal, both
moody. They hardly spoke till Ned asked Nellie:
"I don't see what men can get to do but can't single women always get
servants' places?"
"Some might who don't, though all women who want work couldn't be
domestic servants, that's plain," answered Nellie. "But by the number of
girls that are always looking for places and the way the registry offices
are able to bleed them, I should imagine there were any amount of servant
girls already. The thing is there are so many girls that mistresses can
afford to be particular. They want a girl with all the virtues to be a
sort of house-slave, and they're always grumbling because they can't get
it. So they're always changing, and the girls are always changing, and
that makes the girls appear independent."
"But they have good board and lodging, as well as wages, don't they?"
"In swell houses, where they keep two or three or wore girls, they
usually have good board and decent rooms, I think, but they don't in most
places. Any hole or corner is considered good, enough for a servant girl
to sleep in, and any scraps are often considered good enough for a
servant girl to eat. You look as though you don't believe it, Ned. I'm
talking about what I know. The average domestic servant is treated like a
trained dog."
"Did you ever try it?"
"I went to work in a hotel as chamber maid, once. I worked from about six
in the morning till after ten at night. Then four of us girls slept in
two beds in a kind of box under the verandah stairs in the back yard. We
had to leave the window open to get air, and in the middle of the first
night a light woke me up and a man was staring through the window at us
with a match in his hand. I wanted the twelve shillings so I stood it for
a week and, then got another place."
"What sort was that?"
"Oh! A respectable place, you know. Kept up appearances and locked up the
butter. The woman said to me, when I'd brought my box, 'I'm going to call
you Mary, I always call my girls Mary.' I slept in a dark close den off
the kitchen, full of cockroaches that frightened the wits out of me. I
was afraid to eat as much as I wanted because she looked at me so. I
couldn't rest a minute but she was hunting me up to see what I was doing.
I hadn't anybody to talk with or eat with and my one night out I had to
be in by ten. I was so miserable that I went back to slop-work. That's
what Mrs. Somerville is doing."
"It isn't all honey, then. I thought town servant girls had a fair time
of it."
"An occasional one does, though they all earn their money, but most have
a hard time of it. I don't mean all places are like mine were, but
there's no liberty. A working girl's liberty is scanty enough, goodness
knows"--she spoke scornfully--"but at least she mixes with her own
kind and is on an equality with most she meets. When her work is over,
however long it is, she can do just exactly as she likes until it starts
again. A servant girl hasn't society or that liberty. For my part I'd
rather live on bread again than be at the orders of any woman who
despised me and not be able to call a single minute of time my own.
They're so ignorant, most of these women who have servants, they don't
know how to treat a girl any more than most of their husbands know how to
treat a horse."
The naive bush simile pleased Ned a little and he laughed, but soon
relapsed again into silence. Then Nellie spoke of "Paddy's Market," one
of the sights of Sydney, which she would like him to see. Accordingly
they strolled to his hotel, where he put on a clean shirt and a collar
and a waistcoat, while she waited, looking into the shops near by; then
they strolled slowly Haymarketwards, amid the thronging Saturday night
crowds that overflowed the George-street pavement into the roadway.
CHAPTER IV.
SATURDAY NIGHT IN PADDY'S MARKET.
Paddy's Market was in its glory, the weekly glory of a Sydney Saturday
night, of the one day in the week when the poor man's wife has a few
shillings and when the poor caterer for the poor man's wants gleans in
the profit field after the stray ears of corn that escape the
machine-reaping of retail capitalism. It was filled by a crushing,
hustling, pushing mass of humans, some buying, more bartering, most swept
aimlessly along in the living currents that moved ceaselessly to and fro.
In one of these currents Ned found himself caught, with Nellie. He
struggled for a short time, with elbows and shoulders, to make for
himself and her a path through the press; experience soon taught him to
forego attempting the impossible and simply to drift, as everybody else
did, on the stream setting the way they would go.
He found himself, looking around as he drifted, in a long low arcade,
brilliant with great flaring lights. Above was the sparkle of glass
roofing, on either hand a walling of rough stalls, back and forward a
vista of roofing and stalls stretching through distant arches, which were
gateways, into outer darkness, which was the streets. On the stalls, as
he could see, were thousands of things, all cheap and most nasty.
What were there? What were not there? Boots and bootlaces, fish and china
ornaments, fruit, old clothes and new clothes, flowers and plants and
lollies, meat and tripe and cheese and butter and bacon! Cheap
music-sheets and cheap jewellery! Stockings and pie-dishes and bottles of
ink! Everything that the common people buy! Anything by which a penny
could be turned by those of small capital and little credit in barter
with those who had less.
One old man's face transfixed him for a moment, clung to his memory
afterwards, the face of an old man, wan and white, greybearded and
hollow-eyed, that was thrust through some hosiery hanging on a rod at the
back of a stall. Nobody was buying there, nobody even looked to buy as
Ned watched for a minute; the stream swept past and the grizzled face
stared on. It had no body, no hands even, it was as if hung there, a
trunkless head. It was the face of a generation grown old, useless and
unloved, which lived by the crumbs that fall from Demos' table and waited
wearily to be gone. It expressed nothing, that was the pain in it. It was
haggard and grizzled and worn out, that was all. It know itself no good
to anybody, know that labouring was a pain and thinking a weariness, and
hope the delusion of fools, and life a vain mockery. It asked none to
buy. It did not move. It only hung there amid the dark draping of its
poor stock and waited.
Would he himself ever be like that, Ned wondered. And yet! And yet!
All around were like this. All! All! All! Everyone in this swarming
multitude of working Sydney. On the faces of all was misery written.
Buyers and sellers and passers-by alike were hateful of life. And if by
chance he saw now and then a fat dame at a stall or a lusty huckster
pushing his wares or a young couple, curious and loving, laughing and
joking as they hustled along arm in arm, he seemed to see on their faces
the dawning lines that in the future would stamp them also with the brand
of despair.
The women, the poor women, they were most wretched of all; the poor
housewives in their pathetic shabbiness, their faces drawn with
child-bearing, their features shrunken with the struggling toil that
never ceases nor stays; the young girls in their sallow youth that was
not youth, with their hollow mirth and their empty faces, and their sharp
angles or their unnatural busts; the wizened children that served at the
stalls, precocious in infancy, with the wisdom of the Jew and the
impudence of the witless babe; the old crones that crawled along--the
mothers of a nation haggling for pennies as if they had haggled all their
lives long. They bore baskets, most of the girls and housewives and
crones; with some were husbands, who sometimes carried the basket but not
always; some even carried children in their arms, unable even for an hour
to escape the poor housewife's old-man-of-the-seas.
The men were absorbed, hidden away, in the flood of wearied women. There
were men, of course, in the crowd, among the stallkeepers--hundreds.
And when one noticed them they were wearied also, or sharp like ferrets;
oppressed, overborne, or cunning, with the cunning of those who must be
cunning to live; imbruted often with the brutishness of apathy,
consciousless of the dignity of manhood, only dully patient or viciously
keen as the ox is or the hawk. Many sottish-looking, or if not sottish
with the beery texture of those whose only recreation is to be bestially
merry at the drink-shop. This was the impression in which the few who
strode with the free air of the ideal Australian workman were lost, as
the few comfortable--seeming women were lost in the general weariness
of their weary sex.
Jollity there was none to speak of. There was an eager huckling for
bargains, or a stolid calculation of values, or a loud commendation of
wares, or an oppressive indifference. Where was the "fair" to which of
old the people swarmed, glad-hearted? Where was even the relaxed caution
of the shopping-day? Where was the gay chaffering, the boisterous
bandying of wit? Gone, all gone, and nothing left but care and sadness
and a careful counting of hard-grudged silver and pence.
Ned turned his head once or twice to steal a glance at Nellie. He could
not tell what she thought. Her face gave no sign of her feeling. Only it
came home to him that there were none like her there, at least none like
her to him. She was sad with a stern sadness, as she had been all day,
and in that stern sadness of hers was a dignity, a majesty, that he had
not appreciated until now, when she jostled without rudeness in this
jostling crowd. This dark background of submissive yielding, of hopeless
patience, threw into full light the unbending resolution carved in every
line of her passionate face and lithesome figure. Yet he noticed now on
her forehead two faint wrinkles showing, and in the corners of her mouth
an overhanging fold; and this he saw as if reflected in a thousand
ill-made mirrors around, distorted and exaggerated and grotesqued indeed
but nevertheless the self-same marks of constant pain and struggle.
They reached the end of the first alley and passed out to the pavement,
slippery with trodden mud. There was a little knot gathered there, a
human eddy in the centre of the pressing throng. Looking over the heads
of the loiterers, he could see in the centre of the eddy, on the kerb, by
the light that came from the gateway, a girl whose eyes were closed. She
was of an uncertain age--she might be twelve or seventeen. Beside her
was a younger child. Just then she began to sing. He and Nellie waited.
He knew without being told that the singer was blind.
It was a hymn she sang, an old-fashioned hymn that has in its music the
glad rhythm of the "revival," the melodious echoing of the Methodist day.
He recollected hearing it long years before, when he went to the
occasional services held in the old bush schoolhouse by some itinerant
preacher. He recalled at once the gathering of the saints at the river;
mechanically he softly hummed the tune. It was hardly the tune the blind
girl sang though. She had little knowledge of tune, apparently. Her
cracked discordant voice was unspeakably saddening.
This blind girl was the natural sequence to the sphinx-like head that he
had seen amid the black stockings. Her face was large and flat,
youthless, ageless, crowned with an ugly black hat, poorly ribboned; her
hands were clasped clumsily on the skirt of her poor cotton dress,
ill-fitting. There was no expression in her singing, no effort to
express, no instinctive conception of the idea. The people only listened
because she was blind and they were poor, and so they pitied her. The
beautiful river of her hymn meant nothing, to her or to them. It might
be; it might not be; it was not in question. She cried to them that she
was blind and that the blind poor must eat if they would live and that
they desire to live despite the city by-laws. She begged, this blind
girl, standing with rent shoes in the sloppy mud. In Sydney, in 1889, in
the workingman's paradise, she stood on the kerb, this blind girl, and
begged--begged from her own people. And in their poverty, their
weariness, their brutishness, they pitied her. None mocked, and many
paused, and some gave.
They never thought of her being an impostor. They did not pass her on to
the hateful charity that paid parasites dole out for the rich. They did
not think that she made a fortune out of her pitifulness and hunt her
with canting harshness as a nuisance and a cheat. Her harsh voice did not
jar on them. Her discords did not shock their supersensitive ears. They
only knew that they, blinded in her stead, must beg for bread and shelter
while good Christians glut themselves and while fat law-makers whitewash
the unpleasant from the sight of the well-to-do. In her helplessness they
saw, unknowing it, their own helplessness, saw in her Humanity wronged
and suffering and in need. Those who gave gave to themselves, gave as an
impulsive offering to the divine impulse which drives the weak together
and aids them to survive.
Ned wanted to give the blind girl something but he felt ashamed to give
before Nellie. He fingered a half-crown in his pocket, with a bushman's
careless generosity. By skilful manoeuvring and convenient yielding to
the pressure of the crowd he managed to get near the blind girl as she
finished her hymn. Nellie turned round, looking away--he thought
afterwards: was it intentionally?--and he slipped his offering into the
singer' fingers like a culprit. Then he walked off hastily with his
companion, as red and confused as though he had committed some dastardly
act. Just as they reached the second arcade they heard another discordant
hymn rise amid the shuffling din.
There were no street-walkers in Paddy's Market, Ned could see. He had
caught his foot clumsily on the dress of one above the town-hall, a
dashing demi-mondaine with rouged cheeks and unnaturally bright eyes and
a huge velvet-covered hat of the Gainsborough shape and had been covered
with confusion when she turned sharply round on him with a "Now, clumsy,
I'm not a door-mat." Then he had noticed that the sad sisterhood were out
in force where the bright gas-jets of the better-class shops illuminated
the pavement, swaggering it mostly where the kerbs were lined with young
fellows, fairly-well dressed as a rule, who talked of cricket and race
horses and boating and made audible remarks concerning the women, grave
and gay, who passed by in the throng. Nearing the poorer end of
George-street, they seemed to disappear, both sisterhood and kerb
loungers, until near the Haymarket itself they found the larrikin element
gathered strongly under the flaring lights of hotel-bars and music hall
entrances. But in Paddy's Market itself there were not even larrikins.
Ned did not even notice anybody drunk.
He had seen drinking and drunkenness enough that day. Wherever there was
poverty he had seen viciousness flourishing. Wherever there was despair
there was a drowning of sorrow in drink. They had passed scores of public
houses, that afternoon, through the doors of which workmen were
thronging. Coming along George street, they had heard from more than one
bar-room the howling of a drunken chorus. Men had staggered by them, and
women too, frowsy and besotted. But there was none of this in Paddy's
Market. It was a serious place, these long dingy arcades, to which people
came to buy cheaply and carefully, people to whom every penny was of
value and who had none to throw away, just then at least, either on a
brain-turning carouse or on a painted courtesan. The people here were sad
and sober and sorrowful. It seemed to Ned that here was collected, as in
the centre of a great vortex, all the pained and tired and ill-fed and
wretched faces that he had been seeing all day. The accumulation of
misery pressed on him till it sickened him at the heart. It felt as
though something clutched at his throat, as though by some mechanical
means his skull was being tightened on his brain. His thoughts were
interrupted by an exclamation from Nellie.
"There's a friend of mine," she explained, making her way through the
crowd to a brown-bearded man who was seated on the edge of an empty
stall, apparently guarding a large empty basket in which were some white
cloths. The man's features were fine and his forehead massive, his face
indicating a frail constitution and strong intellectuality. He wore an
apron rolled up round his waist. He seemed very poor.
"How d'ye do, Miss Lawton?" said he getting off the stall and shaking
hands warmly. "It's quite an age since I saw you. You're looking as well
as ever." Ned saw that his thin face beamed as he spoke and that his dark
brown eyes, though somewhat hectic, wore singularly beautiful.
"I'm well, thanks," said Nellie, beaming in return. "And how are you? You
seem browner than you did. What have you been doing to yourself?"
"Me! I've been up the country a piece trying my hand at farming. Jones is
taking up a selection, you know, and I've been helping him a little now
times aren't very brisk. I'm keeping fairly well, very fairly, I'm glad
to say."
"This is Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Sim," introduced Nellie; the men shook hands.
"Come inside out of the rush," invited Sim, making room for them in the
entrance-way of the stall. "We haven't got any armchairs, but it's not so
bad up on the table here if you're tired."
"I'm not tired," said Nellie, leaning against the doorway. Ned sat up on
the stall by her side; his feet were sore, unused to the hard paved city
streets.
"I suppose Mr. Hawkins is one of us," said Sim, perching himself up
again.
"I don't know what you call 'one of us,'" answered Nellie, with a smile.
"He's a beginner. Some day he may get as far as you and Jones and the
rest of the dynamiters."
Sim laughed genially. "Do you know, I really believe that Jones would use
dynamite if he got an opportunity," he commented. "I'm not joking. I'm
positively convinced of it."
"Has he got it as bad as that?" asked Nellie. Ned began to feel
interested. He also noticed that Sim used book-words.
"Has he got it as bad as that! 'Bad' isn't any name for it. He's the
stubbornest man I over met, and he's full of the most furious hatred
against the capitalists. He has it as a personal feeling. Then the life
he's got is sufficient to drive a man mad."
"Selecting is pretty hard," agreed Nellie, sadly.
"Nellie and I know a little about that, Mr. Sim," said Ned.
"Well, Jones' selection is a hard one," went on Sim, goodhumouredly. "I
prefer to sell trotters, when I sell out like this, to attempting it. The
soil is all stones, and there is not a drop of water when the least
drought comes on. Poor Jones toils like a team of horses and hardly gets
sufficient to keep him alive. I never saw a man work as he does. For a
man who thinks and has ideas to be buried like that in the bush is
terrible. He has no one to converse with. He goes mooning about sometimes
and muttering to himself enough to frighten one into a fit."
"Does he still do any printing?" asked Nellie, archly.
"Oh, the printing," answered Sim, laughing again. "He initiated me into
the art of wood-engraving. You see, Mr. Hawkins"--turning to Ned--
"Jones hasn't got any type, and of course he can't afford to buy it, but
he's got hold of a little second-hand toy printing press. To print from
he takes a piece, of wood, cut across the grain and rubbed smooth with
sand, and cuts out of it the most revolutionary and blood-curdling
leaflets, letter by letter. If you only have patience it's quite easy
after a few weeks' practice."
"Does he print them?" asked Ned
"Print them! I should say he did. Every old scrap of paper he can collect
or got sent him he prints his leaflets on and gets them distributed all
over the country. Many a night I've sat up assisting with the pottering
little press. Talk about Nihilism! Jones vows that there is only one way
to cure things and that is to destroy the rule of Force."
"He's along while starting," remarked Nellie with a slight sneer. "Those
people who talk so much never do anything."
"Oh, Jones isn't like that," answered Sim, with cheerful confidence.
"He'll do anything that he thinks is worth while. But I suppose I'm
horrifying you, Mr. Hawkins? Miss Lawton here knows what we are and is
accustomed to our talk."
"It'll take considerable to horrify me," replied Ned, standing down as
Nellie straightened herself out for a move-on. "You can blow the whole
world to pieces for all I care. There's not much worth watching in it as
far as I can see."
"You're pretty well an anarchist," said the brown-bearded trotter-seller,
his kindly intellectual face lighted up. "It'll come some day, that's one
satisfaction. Do you think that many here will regret it?" He waved his
hand to include the crowd that moved to and fro before them, its voices
covered with the din of its dragging feet.
"That'll do, Sim!" said Nellie. "Don't stuff Ned's head with those absurd
anarchisticall night-mares of yours. We're going; we've got somewhere to
go. Good-bye! Tell Jones you saw me when you write, and remember me to
him, will you? I like him--he's so good-hearted, though he does rave."
"He's as good-hearted a man as there is in New South Wales," corroborated
Sim, shaking hands. "I'm expecting to meet a friend--here or I'd stroll
along. Good-bye! Glad to have met you, Mr. Hawkins."
He re-mounted the stall again as they moved off. In another minute he was
lost to their sight as they were swallowed up once more in the living
tide that ebbed and flowed through Paddy's Market.
After that Ned did not notice much, so absorbed was he. He vaguely knew
that they drifted along another arcade and then crossed a street to an
open cobble-paved space where there were shooting-tunnels and
merry-go-rounds and try-your-weights and see-how-much-you-lifts. He
looked dazedly at wizen-faced lads who gathered round ice-cream stalls,
and at hungry folks who ate stewed peas. Everything seemed grimy and
frayed and sordid; the flaring torches smelt of oil; those who shot, or
ate, or rode, by spending a penny, were the envied of standers-by. Amid
all this drumming and hawking and flaring of lights were swarms of boys
and growing girls, precocious and vicious and foul-tongued.
Ten o'clock struck. "For God's sake, let us get out of this, Nellie!"
cried Ned, as the ringing bell-notes roused him.
"Have you had enough of Sydney?" she asked, leading the way out.
"I've had enough of every place," he answered hotly. She did not say any
more.
As they stood in George-street, waiting for their 'bus, a high-heeled,
tightly-corsetted, gaily-hatted larrikiness flounced out of the side door
of a hotel near by. A couple of larrikin acquaintances were standing
there, shrivelled young men in high-heeled pointed-toed shoes, belled
trousers, gaudy neckties and round soft hats tipped over the left ear.
"Hello, you blokes!" cried the larrikiness, slapping one on the shoulder.
"Isn't this a blank of a time you're having?"
It was her ideal of pleasure, hers and theirs, to parade the street or
stand in it, to gape or be gaped at.
CHAPTER V.
WERE THEY CONSPIRATORS?
Neither Ned nor Nellie spoke as they journeyed down George street in the
rumbling 'bus. "I've got tickets," was all she said as they entered the
ferry shed at the Circular Quay. They climbed to the upper deck of the
ferry boat in silence. He got up when she did and went ashore by her side
without a word. He did not notice the glittering lights that encircled
the murky night. He did not even know if it were wet or fine, or whether
the moon shone or not. He was in a daze. The horrors of living stunned
him. The miseries of poor Humanity choked him. The foul air of these
noisome streets sickened him. The wretched faces he had seen haunted him.
The oaths of the gutter children and the wailing of the blind beggar-girl
seemed to mingle in a shriek that shook his very soul.
If he could have persuaded himself that the bush had none of this, it
would have been different. But he could not. The stench of the stifling
shearing-sheds and of the crowded sleeping huts where men are packed in
rows like trucked sheep came to him with the sickening smell of the
slums. On the faces of men in the bush he had seen again and again that
hopeless look as of goaded oxen straining through a mud-hole, that utter
degradation, that humble plea for charity. He had known them in Western
Queensland often in spite of all that was said of the free, brave bush.
It was not new to him, this dark side of life; that was the worst of it.
It had been all along and he had known that it had been, but never before
had he understood the significance of it, never before had he realised
how utterly civilisation has failed. And this was what crushed him--the
hopelessness of it all, the black despair that seemed to fill the
universe, the brutal weariness of living, the ceaseless round of sorrow
and sin and shame and unspeakable misery.
Often in the bush it had come to him, lying sleepless at night under the
star-lit sky, all alone excepting for the tinkling of his horse-bell:
"What is to be the end for me? What is there to look forward to?" And his
heart had sunk within him at the prospect. For what was in front? What
could be? Shearing and waiting for shearing--that was his life. Working
over the sweating sheep under the hot iron shed in the sweltering summer
time; growing sick and losing weight and bickering with the squatter till
the few working months wore over; then an occasional job, but mostly
enforced idling till the season came round again; looking for work from
shed to shed; struggling against conditions; agitating; organising; and
in the future years, aged too soon, wifeless and childless, racked with
rheumatism, shaken with fevers, to lie down to die on the open plain
perchance or crawl, feebled and humbled, to the State-charity of Dunwich.
He used to shut his eyes to force such thoughts from him, fearing lest he
go mad, as were those travelling swagmen he met sometimes, who muttered
always to themselves and made frantic gestures as they journeyed,
solitary, through the monotonous wilderness. He had flung himself into
unionism because there was nothing else that promised help or hope and
because he hated the squatters, who took, as he looked at it,
contemptible advantage of the bushmen. And he had felt that with unionism
men grew better and heartier, gambling less and debating more, drinking
less and planning what the union would do when it grew strong enough. He
had worked for the union before it came, had been one of those who
preached it from shed to shed and argued for it by smouldering camp fires
before turning in. And he had seen the union feeling spread until the
whole Western country throbbed with it and until the union itself started
into life at the last attempt of the squatter to force down wages and was
extending itself now as fast as even he could wish to see it. "We only
want what is fair," he had told Nellie; "we're not going in for anything
wild. So long as we get a pound a hundred and rations at a fair figure
we're satisfied." And Nellie had shown him things which had struck him
dumb and broken through the veneer of satisfaction that of late had
covered over his old doubts and fears.
"What is to be the end for me?" he used to think, then force himself not
to think in terror. Now, he himself seemed so insignificant, the union he
loved so seemed so insignificant, he was only conscious for the time
being of the agony of the world at large, which dulled him with the
reflex of its pain. Oh, these puny foul-tongued children! Oh, these
haggard weary women! Oh, these hopeless imbruted men! Oh, these young
girls steeped in viciousness, these awful streets, this hateful life,
this hell of Sydney. And beyond it--hell, still hell. Ah, he knew it
now, unconsciously, as in a swoon one hears voices. The sorrow of it all!
The hatefulness of it all! The weariness of it all! Why do we live?
Wherefore? For what end, what aim? The selector, the digger, the bushman,
as the townman, what has life for them? It is in Australia as all over
the world. Wrong triumphs. Life is a mockery. God is not. At least, so it
came gradually to Ned as he walked silently by Nellie's side.
They had turned down a tree-screened side road, descending again towards
the harbour. Nellie stopped short at an iron gate, set in a hedge of some
kind. A tree spanned the gateway with its branches, making the gloomy
night still darker. The click of the latch roused her companion.
"Do you think it's any good living?" he asked her.
She did not answer for a moment or two, pausing in the gateway. A break
in the western sky showed a grey cloud faintly tinged with silver. She
looked fixedly up at it and Ned, his eyes becoming accustomed to the
gloom, thought he saw her face working convulsively. But before he could
speak again, she turned round sharply and answered, without a tremor in
her voice:
"I suppose that's a question everybody must answer for themselves."
"Well, do you?"
"For myself, yes."
"For others, too?"
"For most others, no." The intense bitterness of her tone stamped her
words into his brain.
"Then why for you any more than anybody else?"
"I'll tell you after. We must go in. Be careful! You'd better give me
your hand!"
She led the way along a short paved path, down three or four stone steps,
then turned sharply along a small narrow verandah. At the end of the
verandah was a door. Nellie felt in the darkness for the bell-button and
gave two sharp rings.
"Where are you taking me, Nellie?" he asked. "This is too swell a place
for me. It looks as though everybody was gone to bed."
In truth he was beginning to think of secret societies and mysterious
midnight meetings. Only Nellie had not mentioned anything of the kind and
he felt ashamed of acknowledging his suspicions by enquiring, in case it
should turn out to be otherwise. Besides, what did it matter? There was
no secret society which he was not ready to join if Nellie was in it, for
Nellie knew more about such things than he did. It was exactly the place
for meetings, he thought, looking round. Nobody would have dreamt that it
was only half an hour ago that they two had left Paddy's Market. Here was
the scent of damp earth and green trees and heavily perfumed flowers; the
rustling of leaves; the fresh breath of the salt ocean. In the darkness,
he could see only a semi-circling mass of foliage under the sombre sky,
no other houses nor sign of such. He could not even hear the rumbling of
the Sydney streets nor the hoarse whispering of the crowded city; not
even a single footfall on the road they had come down. For the faint
lap-lap-lapping of water filled the pauses, when the puffy breeze failed
to play on its leafy pipes. Here a Mazzini might hide himself and here
the malcontents of Sydney might gather in safety to plot and plan for the
overthrow of a hateful and hated "law and order." So he thought.
"Oh, they're not gone to bed," replied Nellie, confidently. "They live at
the back. It overlooks the harbour that side. And you'll soon see they're
not as swell as they look. They're splendid people. Don't be afraid to
say just what you think."
"I'm not afraid of that, if you're not."
"Ah, there's someone."
An inside door opened and closed again, then they heard a heavy footstep
coming, which paused for a moment, whereat a flood of colour streamed
through a stained glass fanlight over the door.
"That's Mr. Stratton," announced Nellie.
Next moment the door at which they stood was opened by a bearded man,
wearing loose grey coat and slippers.
"Hello, Nellie!" exclaimed this possible conspirator, opening the door
wide. "Connie said it was your ring. Come straight in, both of you. Good
evening, sir. Nellie's friends are our friends and we've heard so much of
Ned Hawkins that we seem to have known you a long while." He held out his
hand and shook Ned's warmly, giving a strong, clinging, friendly grip,
not waiting for any introduction. "Of course, this is Mr. Hawkins,
Nellie?" he enquired, seriously, turning to that young woman, whose hands
he took in both of his while looking quizzingly from Ned to her and back
to Ned again.
"Yes, of course," she answered, laughing. Ned laughed. The possible
conspirator laughed as he answered, dropping her hands and turning to
shut the door.
"Well, it mightn't have been. By the way, Nellie, you must have sent an
astral warning that you were coming along. We were just talking about
you."
* * * * *
They had been discussing Nellie in the Stratton circle, as our best
friends will when we are so fortunate as to interest them.
In the pretty sitting-room that overlooked the rippling water, Mrs.
Stratton perched on the music stool, was giving, amid many interjections,
an animated account of the opera: a dark-haired, grey-eyed, full-lipped
woman of 30 or so, with decidedly large nose and broad rounded forehead,
somewhat under the medium height apparently but pleasingly plump as her
evening dress disclosed. She talked rapidly, in a sweet expressive voice
that had a strange charm. Her audience consisted of an ugly little man,
with greyish hair, who stood at a bookcase in the corner and made his
remarks over his shoulder; a gloomy young man, who sat in a reclining
chair, with his arm hanging listlessly by his side; and a tall
dark-moustached handsome man, broadly built, who sat on the edge of a
table smoking a wooden pipe, and who, from his observations, had
evidently accompanied her home from the theatre after the second act.
There was also her husband, who leant over her, his back turned to the
others, unhooking her fur-edged opera cloak, a tall fair brown bearded
man, evidently the elder by some years, whose blue eyes were half hidden
beneath a strongly projected forehead. He fumbled with the hooks of the
cloak, passing his hands beneath it, smiling slyly at her the while. She,
flushing like a girl at the touch, talked away while pressing her knee
responsively against his. It was a little love scene being enacted of
which the others were all unconscious unless for a general impression
that this long-married couple were as foolishly in love as ever and
indulged still in all the mild raptures of lovers.
"Ever so much obliged," she said, pausing in her talk and looking at him
at last, as he drew the cloak from her shoulders.
"You should be," he responded, straightening himself out. "It's quite a
labour unhooking one of you fine ladies."
"Don't call me names, Harry, or I'll get somebody else to take it off
next time. I'm afraid it's love's labour lost. It's quite chilly, and I
think I'll wrap it round me."
"Well, if you will go about half undressed," he commented, putting the
cloak round her again.
"Half undressed! You are silly. The worst of this room is there's no fire
in it. I think one needs a fire even in summer time, when it's damp, to
take the chill off. Besides, as Nellie says, a blazing fire is the most
beautiful picture you can put in a room."
"Isn't Nellie coming to-night?" asked the man who smoked the wooden pipe.
"Why, of course, Ford. Haven't I told you she said on Thursday that she
would come and bring the wild untamed bushman with her? Nellie always
keeps her word."
"She's a wonderful girl," remarked Ford.
"Wonderful? Why wonderful is no name for it," declared Stratton, lighting
a cigar at one of the piano candles. "She is extraordinary."
"I tell Nellie, sometimes, that I shall get jealous of her, Harry gets
quite excited over her virtues, and thinks she has no faults, while poor
I am continually offending the consistencies."
"Who is Nellie?" enquired the ugly little man, turning round suddenly
from the book case which he had been industriously ransacking.
"I like Geisner," observed Mrs. Stratton, pointing at the little man. "He
sees everything, he hears everything, he makes himself at home, and when
he wants to know anything he asks a straightforward question. I think
you've met her, though, Geisner."
"Perhaps. What is her other name?"
"Lawton--Nellie Lawton. She came here once or twice when you were here
before, I think, and for the last year or so she's been our--our--
what do you call it, Harry? You know--the thing that South Sea
Islanders think is the soul of a chief."
"You're ahead of me, Connie. But it doesn't matter; go on."
"There's nothing to go on about. You ought to recollect her, Geisner. I'm
sure you met her here."
"I think I do. Wasn't she a tall, between-colours girl, quite young, with
a sad face and queer stern mouth--a trifle cruel, the mouth, if I
recollect. She used to sit across there by the piano, in a plain black
dress, and no colour at all except one of your roses."
"Good gracious! What a memory! Have you got us all ticketed away like
that?"
"It's habit," pleaded Geisner. "She didn't say anything, and only that
she had a strong face, I shouldn't have noticed her. Has she developed?"
"Something extraordinary," struck in Stratton, puffing great clouds of
smoke. "She speaks French, she reads music, she writes uncommonly good
English, and in some incomprehensible way she has formed her own ideas of
Art. Not bad for a dress-making girl who lives in a Sydney back street
and sometimes works sixteen hours a day, is it?"
"Well, no. Only you must recollect, Stratton, that if she's been in your
place pretty often, most of the people she meets here must have given her
a wrinkle or two."
"You're always in opposition, Geisner," declared Mrs. Stratton. "I never
heard you agree with anybody else's statement yet. Nellie is wonderful.
You can't shake our faith in that. There is but one Womanity and Nellie
is its prophet."
"It's all right about her getting wrinkles here, Geisner," contributed
Ford, "for of course she has. It was what made her, Mrs. Stratton getting
hold of her. But at the same time she is extraordinary. When she's been
stirred up I've beard her tackle the best of the men who come here and
down them. On their own ground too. I don't see how on earth she has
managed to do it in the time. She's only twenty now."
"I'll tell you, if you'll light the little gas stove for me, Ford, and
put the kettle on," said Mrs. Stratton, drawing her cloak more tightly
round her shoulders. "I know some of you men don't believe it, but it is
the truth nevertheless that Feeling is higher than Reason. Isn't it
chilly? You see, after all, you can only reason as to why you feel. Well,
Nellie feels. She is an artist. She has got a soul."
"What do you call an artist?" queried Geisner, partly for the sake of the
argument, partly to see the little woman flare up.
"An artist is one who feels--that's all. Some people can fashion an
image in wood or stone, or clay, or paint, or ink, and then they imagine
that they are the only artists, when in reality three-quarters of them
aren't artists at all but the most miserable mimics and imitators--
highly trained monkeys, you know. Nellie is an artist. She can understand
dumb animals and hear music in the wind and the waves, and all sorts of
things. And to her the world is one living thing, and she can enjoy its
joys and worry over its sorrows, and she understands more than most why
people act as they do because she feels enough to put herself in their
place. She is such an artist that she not only feels herself but impels
those she meets to feel. Besides, she has a freshness that is rare
nowadays. I'm very fond of Nellie."
"Evidently," said Geisner; "I've got quite interested. Is she dressmaking
still?"
"Yes; I wanted her to come and live with us but she wouldn't. Then Harry
got her a better situation in one of the government departments. You know
how those things are fixed. But she wouldn't have it. You see she is
trying to get the girls into unions."
"Then she is in the movement?" asked Geisner, looking up quickly.
Mrs. Stratton lifted her eye-brows. "In the movement! Why, haven't you
understood? My dear Geisner, here we've been talking for fifteen minutes
and--there's Nellie's ring. Harry, go and open the door while I pour
the coffee."
The opera cloak dropped from her bare shoulders as she rose from the
stool. She had fine shoulders, and altogether was of fashionable
appearance, excepting that there was about her the impalpable, but none
the less pronounced, air of the woman who associates with men as a
comrade. As she crossed the room to the verandah she stopped beside the
gloomy young man, who had said nothing. He looked up at her
affectionately.
"You are wrong to worry," she said, softly. "Besides, it makes you bad
company. You haven't spoken to a soul since we came in. For a punishment
come and cut the lemon."
They went out on to the verandah together, her hand resting on his arm.
There, on a broad shelf, a kettle of water was already boiling over a gas
stove.
"What are you thinking of," she chattered. "We shall have some more of
your ferocious poetry, I suppose. I notice that about you, Arty. Whenever
you get into your blue fits you always pour out blood and thunder verses.
The bluer you are the more volcanic you get. When you have it really bad
you simply breathe dynamite, barricades, brimstone, everything that is
emphatic. What is it this time?"
He laughed. "Why won't you let a man stay blue when he feels like it?"
She did not seem to think an answer necessary, either to his question or
her own. "Have you a match?" she went on. "Ah! There is one thing in
which a man is superior to woman. He can generally get a light without
running all over the house. That is so useful of him. It's his one good
point. I can't imagine how any woman can tolerate a man who doesn't
smoke. I suppose one gets used to it, though."
He laughed again, turning up the gas-jet he had lighted, which flickered
in the puffs of wind that came off the water below. "I could tell you a
good story about that."
"That is what I like, a good story. Gas is a nuisance. I wish we had
electric lights. Sydney only wants two things to be perfect, never to
rain and moonlight all the time. Why I declare! If there aren't Hero and
Leander! Well, of all the spooniest, unsociable, selfish people, you two
are the worst. You haven't even had the kindness to let us know you were
in all the time, and you actually see Arty and me toiling away at the
coffee without offering to help. I've given you up long ago, Josie, but I
did expect better things of you, George."
While she had been speaking, pouring the boiling water into the
coffee-pot meanwhile, Arty cutting lemons into slices, the two lovers
discovered by the flickering gaslight got out of a hammock slung across
the end of the verandah and came forward.
"You seemed to be getting along so well we didn't like to disturb you,
Mrs. Stratton," explained George, shaking hands. He was bronzed and
bright-eyed, not handsome but strong and kindly-looking; he had a kindly
voice, too; he wore a white flannel boating costume under a dark cloth
coat. Josie, also wore a sailor dress of dark blue with loose white
collar and vest; a scarlet wrap covered her short curly hair; her skin
was milkwhite and her features small and irregular. Josie and Connie
could never be mistaken for anything but sisters, in spite of the eleven
years between them. Only Josie was pretty and plastic and passionless,
and Connie was not pretty nor plastic nor passionless. They were the
contrast one sees so often in children kin-born of the summer and autumn
of life.
"Don't tell me!" said Mrs. Stratton. "I know all about that."
"Connie knows," said Josie, putting her arms over her sister's shoulders
--the younger was the taller--and drawing her face back. "Do you know,
Arty, I daren't go into a room in a house I know without knocking. The
lady has been married twelve years and when her husband is away he writes
to her every day, and though they have quite big children they send them
to bed and sit for hours in the same chair, billing and cooing. I've
known them--"
"I wonder who they can be," interrupted Mrs. Stratton, twisting herself
free, her face as red as Josie's shawl. "There's Nellie's voice. They'll
be wondering what we're doing here. Do come along!" And seizing a tray of
cups and saucers, on which she had placed the coffeepot and the saucer of
sliced lemon, she beat a dignified retreat amid uproarious laughter.
* * * * *
Ned found himself in a narrow hall that ran along the side of the house
at right angles to the verandah and the road. The floor was covered with
oil-cloth; the walls were hung with curios, South Sea spears and masks,
Japanese armour, boomerangs, nullahs, a multitude of quaint workings in
wood and grass and beads. Against the wall facing the door was an
umbrella stand and hat rack of polished wood, with a mirror in the
centre. There were two pannelled doors to the left; a doorless stairway,
leading downwards, and a large window to the right; at the end of the
passage a glazed door, with coloured panes. A gas jet burned in a frosted
globe and seeing him look at this Stratton explained the contrivance for
turning the light down to a mere dot which gave no gleam but could be
turned up again in a second.
"My wife is enthusiastic about household invention," he concluded,
smiling. "She thinks it assists in righting women's wrongs. Eh, Nellie?
The freed and victorious female will put her foot on abject man some day?
Eh?"
Nellie laughed again. She held the handle of the nearest door in one
hand. Mr. Stratton had turned to take Ned's hat, apologising for
neglecting to think of that before. Ned saw the girl's other hand move
quickly up to where the gas bracket met the wall and then the light went
out altogether. "That's for poking fun," he heard her say. The door
slammed, a key turned in it and he heard her laughing on the other side.
"Larrikin!" shouted Stratton, boisterously. "Come out here and see what
we'll do to you. She's always up to her tricks," he added, striking a
match and turning the gas on again. "She is a fine girl. We are as fond
of her as though she were one of the family. She is one of the family,
for that matter."
Ned hardly believed his ears or his eyes, either. He had not seen Nellie
like this before. She had been grave and rather stern. Only at the gate
he had thought he detected in her voice a bitterness which answered well
to his own bitter heartache; he had thought he saw on her face the
convulsive suppression of intense emotion. Certainly this very day she
had shown him the horrors of Sydney and taught him, as if by magic, the
misery of living. Now, she laughed lightly and played a trick with the
quickness of a thoughtless school girl. Besides, how did it happen that
she was so at home in this house of well-to-do people, and so familiar
with this man of a cultured class? Ned did not express his thoughts in
such phrases of course, but that was the effect of them. He had laughed,
but he was still sad and sick at heart and somehow these pleasantries
jarred on him. It looked as if there were some secret understanding
certainly, some bond that he could not distinguish, between the girl of
the people and this courteous gentleman. Nellie had told him simply that
the Strattons were "interested in the Labour movement" and were very
nice, but Stratton spoke of her as "one of the family" and she turned out
his gas and locked one of his own doors in his face. If it was a secret
society, well and good, no matter how desperate its plan. But why did
they laugh and joke and play tricks? He was not in the humour. For the
time his soul abhorred what seemed to him frippery. He sought intuitively
to find relief in action and he began impatiently to look for it here.
"Hurry, Nellie!" cried Stratton. "Coffee's nearly ready."
"You won't touch me?" answered her merry voice.
"No, we'll forgive you this once, but look out for the next time."
She opened the door forthwith and stepped out quickly. Ned caught a
glimpse of a large bedroom through the doorway. She had taken off her hat
and gloves and smoothed the hair that lay on her neck in a heavy plait.
At the collar of the plain black dress that fell to her feet over the
curving lines of her supple figure she had placed a red rose, half blown.
She was tall and straight and graceful, more than beautiful in her strong
fresh womanhood, as much at home in such a house as this as in the
wretched room where he had watched her sewing slop-clothes that morning.
His aching heart went out towards her in a burst of unspoken feeling
which he did not know at the time to be Love.
"Mrs. Stratton always puts a flower for me. She loves roses." So she said
to Ned, seeing him looking astonishedly at her. Then she slipped one hand
inside the arm that Stratton bent towards her, and took hold of Ned's arm
with the other. Stratton turned down the gas. Linked thus together the
three went cautiously down the dim passage hall-way, towards the glass
door through one side of which coloured light came.
"Anybody particular here?" asked Nellie.
"That's a nice question," retorted Stratton. "Geisner is here, if you
call him 'anybody particular.'"
"Geisner! Is he back again?" exclaimed the girl. Ned felt her hand clutch
him nervously. A sudden repulsion to this Geisner shot through him. He
pulled his arm from her grasp.
They had reached the end of the passage, however, and she did not notice.
Stratton turned the handle and opened the door, held back the half-drawn
curtain that hung on the further side and they passed in. "Here we are,"
he cried. "Geisner says he recollects you, Nellie."
Ned could have described the room to the details if he had been struck
blind that minute. It was a double room, long and low and not very broad,
running the whole width of the house, for there were windows on two sides
and French lights on another. The glazed door opened in the corner of the
windowless side. Opposite were the French lights, the further one swung
ajar and showing a lighted verandah beyond from which came a flutter of
voices. Beyond still were dim points of light that he took at first for
stars. Folding doors, now swung right back, divided the long
linoleum-floored room into two apartments, a studio and a sitting-room.
The studio in which they stood was littered with things strange to him;
an easel, bearing a half-finished drawing; a black-polished cabinet; a
table-desk against the window, on it slips of paper thrown carelessly
about, the ink-well open, a file full of letters, a handful of
cigarettes, a tray of tobacco ash, a bespattered palette, pens, coloured
crayons, a medley of things; a revolving office chair with a worn crimson
footrug before it; a many-shelved glass case against the blank wall,
crammed to overflowing with shells and coral and strange grasses, with
specimens of ore, with Chinese carvings, with curious lacquer-work; a
large brass-bound portfolio stand; on the painted walls plaster-casts of
hands and arms and feet, boxing gloves, fencing foils, a glaring tiger's
head, a group of photographs; in the corner, a suit of antique armour
stood sentinel over a heap of dumb-bells and Indian clubs.
In the sitting room beyond the folded doors, a soft coloured rug carpet
lay loosely on the floor. There were easy chairs there and a red lounge
that promised softness; a square cloth-covered table; a whatnot in the
corner; fancy shelves; a pretty walnut-wood piano, gilt lined, the cover
thrown back, laden with music; on the music-stool a woman's cloak was
lying, on the piano a woman's cap. A great book-case reached from ceiling
to floor, filled with books, its shelves fringed with some scalloped red
stuff. Everywhere were nick-nacks in china, in glass, in terra-cotta, in
carved woods, in ivory; photo frames; medallions. On the walls, bright
with striped hangings, were some dainty pictures. Half concealed by the
hangings was another door. Lying about on the table, here and there on
low shelves, were more books. The ground-glass globes of the gaslights
were covered with crimson shades. There was a subdued blaze of vivid
colouring, of rich toned hues, of beautiful things loved and cherished,
over all. Sitting on the edge of the table was the moustached man who
smoked the wooden pipe. And turning round from the book-case, an open
book in his hand, was the ugly little man. Ned felt that this was
Geisner.
The ugly little man put down his book, and came forward holding out his
hand. He smiled as he came. Ned was angered to see that when he smiled
his face became wonderfully pleasant.
"Yes; I think we know one another, Miss Lawton," he said, meeting them on
the uncarpeted floor.
"I am so glad you are here to-night," she replied, greeting him warmly,
almost effusively. "I recollect you so well. And Ned will know you, too
--Mr. Geisner, Mr. Hawkins." Ned felt his reluctantly extended hand
enclosed in a strong friendly clasp.
"Hawkins is the Queenslander we were expecting," said Stratton
cheerfully. "You will excuse my familiarity, won't you?" he added, laying
his hand on Ned's shoulder. "We don't 'Mister' our friends much here. I
think it sounds cold and distant; don't you?"
"We don't 'Mister' much where I come from," answered Ned. He felt at home
already. The atmosphere of kindness in this place stole over him and
prevented him thinking that it was too "swell" for him.
"I don't know Queensland much----," Geisner was beginning, when the
farther verandah door was swung wide and the dark-haired little woman
swept in, tray in hand, the train of her dress trailing behind her.
"I heard you, Nellie dear," she cried. "That unfeeling Josie was saying
the cruellest things to me. I feel as red as red." Putting the tray down
on the table she hurried to them, threw her plump bare arms round
Nellie's neck and kissed her warmly on both cheeks. Then she drew back
quickly and raised her finger threateningly. "Worrying again, Nellie, I
can tell. My word! What with you and what with Arty I'm made thoroughly
wretched. You mayn't think so to look at me, Mr. Hawkins," she rattled
on, holding out her hand to Ned; "but it is so. You see I know you. I
heard Nellie introducing you. That husband of mine must leave all
conventionalism to his guests, it seems. You're incorrigible, Harry."
There was a welcome in her every word and look. She put him on a friendly
footing at once.
"You have enough conventionalism to-night for us both, my fine lady,"
twitted Stratton, pinching her arm.
"Stop that! Stop, this minute! Nellie, hit him for me. Mr. Hawkins, this
is Bohemia. You do as you like. You say what you like. You are welcome
to-night for Nellie's sake. You will be welcome always because I like
your looks. I do, Harry, so there. And I'm going to call you Ned because
Nellie always does. Oh! I forgot--Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Ford. Mr. Ford
thinks he can cartoon. I don't know what you think you can do. And now,
everybody, come to coffee."
The others came in from the verandah, still laughing, whereat Mrs.
Stratton flushed red again and denounced Josie and George for hiding
away, then introduced them and Arty to Ned. There was a babel of
conversation for awhile, Josie and George talking of their boating,
Connie and Ford of the opera, Stratton and Arty of a picture they had
seen that evening. Geisner sat by Ned and Nellie, the three chatting of
the beauty of Sydney harbour, the little man waxing indignant at the
vandalism which the naval authorities were perpetrating on Garden Island.
Mrs. Stratton, all the time, attended energetically to her coffee-pot:
Finally she served them all, in small green-patterned china cups, with
strong black coffee guiltless of milk, in each cup a slice of lemon
floating, in each saucer a biscuit.
"I hope you like your coffee, Ned," she exclaimed, a moment after. "I
forgot to ask you. I'm always forgetting to ask newcomers. You see all
the 'regulars' like it this way."
"I've never tasted it this way before," answered Ned. "I suppose liking
it's a habit, like smoking. I think I'll try it."
She nodded, being engaged in slowly sipping her own. Geisner looked at
Ned keenly. There was silence for a little while, broken only by the
clatter of cups and an occasional observation. From outside came the
ceaseless lap-lap-lapping of the waves, as if rain water was gurgling
down from the roof.
CHAPTER VI.
"WE HAVE SEEN THE DRY BONES BECOME MEN."
Ned's thoughts were in tumult, as he sat balancing his spoon on his cup
after forcing himself to swallow the, to him, unpleasant drink that the
others seemed to relish so. There were no conspirators here, that was
certain. Nellie he could understand being one, even with the red rose at
her neck, but not this friendly chattering woman whose bare arms and
shoulders shimmered in the tinted light and from whose silk dress a
subtle perfume stole all over the room; and most certainly not this
pretty, mild-looking girl in sailor-costume who appeared from the
previous conversation to have passed the evening swinging in a hammock
with her sweetheart. And the men! Why, they got excited over music and
enraptured over the "tone" of somebody's painting, while Geisner had
actually gone back to the book-case, coffee cup in hand, and stood there
nibbling a biscuit and earnestly studying the titles of books. It was
pleasant, of course, too pleasant. It seemed a sin to enjoy life like
this on the very edge of the horrible pit in which the poor wore
festering like worms in an iron pot. Was it for this that Nellie had
brought him here? To idle away an evening among well-meaning people who
were "interested in the Labour movement" and in some strange way, some
whim probably, had taken to this working girl who in her plain black
dress queened them all. He looked round the room and hated it. To his
sickened soul its beauty blasphemed the lot of the toilers, insulted the
wretchedness, the foulness, the hideousness, that he had seen this very
day, that he had known and struggled against, all unconsciously,
throughout his wayward life. And Geisner, Geisner at whom Nellie was
looking fondly, Geisner who he supposed had written a book or a bit of
poetry or could play the flute, and who raved about the spoiling of a bit
of an island when the happiness of millions upon millions was being
spoiled--well, he would just like to tell Geisner what he thought of
him in emphatic bush lingo. Nellie, herself, seemed peacefully happy. Yet
Mrs. Stratton had accused her of "worrying." When Ned thought of this he
felt as he did when fording a strange creek, running a banker. He did not
know what was underneath.
"Try a cigar, Hawkins?" asked Stratton, pushing a box towards him.
"Thank you, but I don't smoke."
"Don't you really! Do you know I thought all bushmen were great smokers."
"Some are and some aren't," said Ned. "We're not all built to one pattern
any more than folks in town."
"That's right, Ned," put in Connie, suddenly recollecting that she was
chilly. "Will you hand me my cloak, please? You see," she went on as he
brought it, "Harry imagines every bushman as just six feet high,
proportionally broad, with bristling black beard streaked with grey,
longish hair, bushy eyebrows, bloodshot eyes, moleskins, jean shirt,
leathern belt, a black pipe, a swag--you call it 'swag,' don't you?--
over his shoulders, and a whisky bottle in his hand whenever he is
'blowing in his cheque,' which is what Nellie says you call 'going on the
spree.' Complimentary, isn't it?"
"Connie's libelling both me and my typical bushman," said Stratton,
lighting his cigar, having passed the box around. Ned was laughing
against his will. Connie had mimicked her husband's imaginary bushman in
a kindly humorous way that was very droll.
The musical debate had started up again behind them. Ford and George
argued for the traditional rendering of music. Nellie and Arty battled
for the musical zeit-geist, the national sense that sees through mere
notation to the spirit that breathes behind. They waxed warm and threw
authorities and quotations about, hardly waiting for each other to finish
what they wished to say. Connie turned round to the disputants and threw
herself impetuously into the quarrel, strengthening with her wit and
trained criticism the cause of the zeit-geist. Stratton, to Ned's
surprise, putting his arms over her shoulders, opposed her arguments and
controverted her assertions with unsparing keenness. Josie leaned back on
the lounge and smiled across at Ned. The smile said plainly: "It really
doesn't matter, does it?" Ned, fuming inwardly, thought it certainly did
not. What a waste of words when the world outside needed deeds! This
verbiage was as empty as the tobacco smoke which began to hang about the
room in bluish clouds.
Suddenly Mrs. Stratton stood up. "Geisner!" she cried. "I'm ashamed of
you. You hear us getting overwhelmed by these English heresies, and you
don't come to the rescue. We have talked ourselves dry and you haven't
said a word. Who says wine?"
Geisner slowly put down his book and went to the piano. "This is the only
argument worth the name," he said. He ran his fingers over the keys,
struck two or three chords apparently at hap-hazard, then sat down to
play. A volume of sound rose, of clashing notes in fierce, swinging
movement, a thrilling clamour of soul-stirring melody, at once short and
sharp and long-drawn, at once soft as a mother's lullaby and savage as a
hungry tiger's roar. It was the song of the world, the Marseillaise, the
song that rises in every land when the oppressed rise against the
oppressor, the song that breathes of wrongs to be revenged and of liberty
to be won, of flying foes in front and a free people marching, and of
blood shed like water for the idea that makes all nations kin. The hand
of a master struck the keys and brought the notes out, clear and
rhythmic, full strong notes that made the blood boil and the senses swim.
As the glorious melody rose and fell, sinking to a murmur, swelling out
in heroic strains that rang like trumpet pealings, a great lump rose in
Ned's throat and a mist of unquenchable tears filled his eyes. Roget de
Lisle, dead and dust for generations, rose from the silent grave and
spoke to him, spoke as heart speaks to heart, spoke and called and lived
and breathed and was there, spoke of tortured lives and enslaved millions
and of the fetid streets of great towns and of the slower anguish of the
plundered country side, spoke of an Old Order based on the robbery of
those who labour and on their weakness and on their ignorant sloth, spoke
of virtue trampled down and little children weeping and Humanity bleeding
at every pore and womanhood shamed and motherhood made a curse, spoke of
all he hated and all he loved, pilloried the Wrong in front of him and
bade him--to arms, to arms. "To arms!" with the patriot army whose
trampling was the background of the music. "To arms!" with those whose
desperate hands feared nothing and at whose coming thrones melted and
kingdoms vanished and tyranny fled. To arms! To certain victory! To crash
forward like a flood and sweep before the armed people all those who had
worked it wrong!
Down Ned's cheeks the great tears rolled. He did not heed them. Why did
not some one beat this mighty music through the Sydney slums, through
those hateful back streets, through those long endless rows of mortgaged
cottages and crowded apartment-houses? Why was it not carried out to the
great West, hymned from shed to shed, told of in the huts and by the
waterholes, given to the diggers in the great claims, to the drovers
travelling stock, borne wherever a man was to be found who had a wrong to
right and a long account to square? Ah! How they would all leap to it!
How they would swell its victorious chanting and gather in their
thousands and their hundred thousands to march on, march on, tramping
time to its majestic notes! If he could only take it to them! If he could
only make them feel as he felt! If he could only give to them in their
poverty and misery all this wondrous music sounding here in this
luxurious room! He could not; he could not. This Geisner could and would
not, and he who would could not. The tears rained down his cheeks because
of his utter impotence.
The music stopped. With a start he came to himself, ashamed of his
weakness, and hastily blew his nose, fussing pretentiously with his
handkerchief. But only one had noticed him--Geisner, who seemed to see
and hear everything. Connie was sobbing quietly with her arms round
Harry's neck, holding his head closely to her as he bent over her chair;
all the while her foot beat time. Arty had suddenly grown moody again and
sat with bent head, his cigar gone out in his listless hand. Ford had got
up and was perched again on a corner of the table, smoking critically,
apparently wholly engaged in watching the smoke wreaths he blew. George
and Josie had taken each other's hands and sat breathlessly side by side
on the lounge. Nellie lay back in her chair, her face flushed, a twisted
handkerchief stretched over her eyes by both hands.
"I think that's the official version," observed Geisner, running his
fingers softly over the keys again.
"It's above disputation, whatever it is," remarked Ford.
"Why should it be, if all true music isn't? And why should not this be
the best rendering?"
He struck the grand melody again and it sounded softened, spiritualised,
purified. Its fierce clamour, its triumphant crashing, were gone. It told
of defeat and overthrow, of martyrs walking painfully to death, of prison
cells and dungeons that never see the sun, of life-work unrewarded, of
those who give their lives to Liberty and die before its shackled limbs
are struck free. But it told, too, of an ideal held more sacred than
life, rising ever from defeat, filling men's hearts and brains and
driving them still to raise again the flag of Freedom against hopeless
odds. It was a death march rolling out, the death march of sad-souled
patriots going sorrowfully to seal their faith with all their earthly
hopes and human loves and to meet, calm and pale, all that Fate has in
store. They said to Liberty: "In death we salute thee." Without seeing
her or knowing her, while the world around still slept in ignorance of
her, they gave all up for her and in darkness died. Only they knew that
there was no other way, that unless each man of himself dared to raise
the chant and march forward alone, if need be, Liberty could never be.
"Well," said Geisner, coming unconcernedly into the circle where they sat
in dead silence. "Don't you think the last rendering is the best, and
isn't it the best simply because it expresses the composer's idea in the
particular phase that we feel most at this present time?"
"Gracious! Don't start the argument again!" entreated Connie, vivacious
again, though her eyes were red. "You'll never convert Ford or George or
Harry here. They'll always have some explanation. Puritanism crushed the
artistic sense out of the English, and they are only getting it back
slowly by a judicious crossing with other peoples who weren't Puritanised
into Philistinism. England has no national music. She has no national
painting. She has no national sculpture. She has to borrow and adapt
everything from the Continent. I nearly said she has no art at all."
"Here, I say," protested Ford. "Aren't you coming it a little too strong?
You've got the floor, Geisner. I've heard you stand up for English Art.
Stand up now, won't you?"
"Does it need standing up for?" asked Geisner. "Why, Connie doesn't
forget that Puritanism with all its faults was in its day a religious
movement, that is an emotional fervour, a veritable poem. That the
Puritan cut love-locks off, wore drab, smashed painted windows and
suppressed instrumental music in churches, is no proof of their being
utterly inartistic. Their art-sense would simply find vent and expression
in other directions if it existed strongly enough. And what do we find?
This, that the Puritan period produced two of the masterpieces of English
Art--Milton's 'Paradise Lost' and Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress.' As an
absolute master of English, of sentences rolling magnificently in great
waves of melodious sound, trenchant in every syllable, not to be equalled
even by Shakespeare himself, Milton stands out like a giant. As for
Bunyan, the Englishman who has never read 'Pilgrim's Progress' does not
know his mother tongue."
"Oh! Of course, we all admit English letters," interjected Connie.
"Do we?" answered Geisner, warming with his theme. "I'm not so sure of
that; else, why should English people themselves put forward claims to
excellencies which their nation has not got, and why should others dub
them inartistic because of certain things lacking in the national arts?
As far as music goes what has France got if you take away the
Marseillaise? It is Germany, the kin of the English, which has the modern
music. France has painting, England has literature and poetry--in that
she leads the whole world."
"Still, to-day! How about Russia? How about France even--Flaubert,
Zola, Daudet, Ohnet, a dozen more?"
"Still! Ay, still and ever! Will these men live as the English writers
live, think you? Look back a thousand years and see English growing, see
how it comes to be the king of languages, destined, if civilisation
lasts, to be the one language of the civilised world. There, in the
Viking age, the English sweep the seas, great burly brutes, as Taine
shows them to us, gorging on half-raw meat, swilling huge draughts of
ale, lounging naked by the sedgy brooks under the mist-softened sun that
cannot brown their fair pink bodies, until hunger drives them forth to
foray; drinking and fighting and feasting and shouting and loving as Odin
loved Frega. And the most honoured of all was the singer who sang in
heroic verse of their battling and their love-making and their hunting.
English was conceived then, and it was worthy conceiving."
"Other nations have literature," maintained Connie.
"What other living nations?" demanded Geisner. "Look at English! An
endless list, such as surely before the world never saw. You cannot even
name them all. Spencer and Chaucer living still. Shakespeare, whoever he
was, immortal for all time, dimming like a noontide sun a galaxy of stars
that to other nations would be suns indeed! Take Marlow, Beaumont and
Fletcher, a dozen playwrights! The Bible, an imperishable monument of the
people's English! Milton, Bunyan and Baxter, Wycherly and his fellows!
Pope, Ben Johnson, Swift, Goldsmith, Junius, Burke, Sheridan! Scott and
Byron, De Quincey, Shelley, Lamb, Chatterton! Moors and Burns wrote in
English too! Look at Wordsworth, Dickens, George Eliott, Swinburne,
Tennyson, the Brontes! There are gems upon gems in the second class
writers, books that in other countries would make the writer immortal.
Over the sea, in America, Poe, Whittier, Bret Harte, Longfellow, Emerson,
Whitman. Here in Australia, the seed springing up! Even in South Africa,
that Olive Schreiner writing like one inspired. By heavens! There are
moments when I feel it must be a proud thing to be an Englishman."
"Bravo, Geisner! You actually make me for the minute," cried Ford.
"You should be! Has any other people anything to compare? There is not
one other whose great writers could not almost be counted on the fingers
of one hand. Spain has Cervantes and he is always being thrown at us.
Germany has Goethe, Heine, Schiller. France so seldom sees literary
genius that a man like Victor Hugo sends her into hysterics of
self-admiration. But I'm afraid I'm lecturing."
"It's all right, Geisner," remarked Connie. "It's not only what you say
but how you say it. But what are you driving at?"
"Just this! Nations seldom do all things with equal vigour and fervour
and opportunity, so one excels another and is itself excelled. England
excels in the simplest and strongest form of expression, literature. She
is defective in other forms and borrows from us. But so we others borrow
from her. Puritanism did not crush English art. English art, in the
national way of expressing the national feeling, kept steadily on."
"Thanks! I think I'll sit down," he added, as Stratton handed him a
tumbler half-filled with wine and a water-bottle. He filled the tumbler
from the bottle, put them on the table, took cigarettes in a case from
his pocket and lighted one at a gas jet behind him.
"Do you take water with your wine?" asked Stratton of Ned.
"I don't take wine at all, thank you," said Ned.
"What!" exclaimed Connie, sitting up. "You don't smoke and you don't
drink wine. Why, you are a regular Arab. But you must have something.
Arty! Rouse up and light the little stove again! You'll have some tea,
Ned. Oh! It's no trouble. Arty will make it for me and it will do him
good. What do you think of this oration of Geisner's?"
"I suppose it's all right," said Ned. "But I can't see what good it does
myself."
"How's that?"
"Well, it's no use saying one thing and meaning another. This talk of
'art' seems to me selfish while the world to most people is a hell that
it's pain to live in. I am sorry if I say what you don't like."
"Never mind that," said Connie, as cheerfully as ever. "You've been
worrying, too. Have it out, so that we can all jump on you at once! I
warn you, you won't have an ally."
"I suppose not," answered Ned, hotly. "You are all very kind and mean
well, but do you know how people live, how they exist, what life outside
is?"
Geisner had sat down in a low chair near by, his cigarette between his
lips, his glass of wine and water on a shelf at his elbow. The others
looked on in amazement at the sudden turn of the conversation. Connie
smiled and nodded. Ned stared fiercely round at Geisner, who nodded also.
"Then listen to me," said Ned, bitterly. "Is it by playing music in fine
parlours that good is to be done? Is it by drinking wine, by smoking, by
laughing, by talking of pictures and books and music, by going to
theatres, by living in clover while the world starves? Why do you not
play that music in the back streets or to our fellows?" he asked, turning
to Geisner again. "Are you afraid? Ah, if I could only play it!"
"Ned!" cried Nellie, sharply. But he went on, talking at Geisner:
"What do you do for the people outside? For the miserable, the wretched,
those, weary of life? I suppose you are all 'interested in the Labour
movement.' Well, what does all this do for it? What do you do for it?
Would you give up anything, one puff of smoke, one drink of wine----"
"Stop, Ned! For shame's sake! How dare you speak to him like that?"
Nellie interrupted, jumping up and coming between the two men. Ned leaned
eagerly forward, his hands on his knees, his eyes flaming, his face
quivering, his teeth showing. Geisner leaned back quietly, alternately
sipping his wine and water and taking a whiff from his cigarette.
"Never mind," said Geisner. "Sit down, Nellie. It doesn't matter." Nellie
sat down but she looked to Mrs. Stratton anxiously. The two women
exchanged glances. Mrs. Stratton came quickly across to Geisner.
"It does matter," she said to him, laying her hands on his head and
shoulder and facing Ned thus. "Not to you, of course, but to Ned there.
He does not understand, and I don't think you understand everything
either. It takes a woman to understand it all, Ned," and she laughed at
the angry man. "Why do you say such things to Geisner? He does not
deserve them."
Ned did not answer.
"I'm not defending the rest of us, only Geisner. If you only knew all he
has done you would think of him as we do."
"Connie!" exclaimed Geisner, flushing. "Don't."
"Oh! I shall. If men will keep their lights under bushel baskets they
must expect to get the covers knocked off sometimes. Ned! This man is a
martyr. He has suffered so for the people, and he has borne it so
bravely."
There was a hush in the room. Ned could see Connie's full underlip pouted
tremulously and her eyes swimming, her hands moved caressingly to and
fro. His face relaxed its passion. The tears came again into his eyes,
also. Geisner smoked his cigarette, the most unmoved of any.
"If you had only known him years ago," went on Connie, her voice
trembling. "He used to take me on his knee when I was a little girl, and
keep me there for hours while great men talked great things and he was
greatest of them all. He was young then and rich and handsome and fiery,
and with a brain--oh, such a brain!--that put within his reach what
other men care for most. And he gave it all up, everything--even Love,"
she added, softly. "When he played the Marseillaise just now, I thought
of it. One day he came to our house and played it so, and outside the
people in the streets were marching by singing it, and--and--" she
set her teeth on a great sob. "My father never came back nor my brother,
and Harry there came one night and took Josie and me away. We had no
mother. And when we saw this man again he was what he is now. It was
worse than death, ten thousand times worse. Oh! Geisner, Geisner!" The
head her hand rested on had sunk down. What were the little man's
thoughts? What were they?
"But his heart is still the same, Ned," she cried, triumphantly, her
sweet voice ringing clear again. "Ah, yes! His heart is still the same,
as brave and true and pure and strong. Oh, purer, better! If it came
again, Ned, he would do it. Sometimes, I think, he doubts himself but I
know. He would do it all again and suffer it all--that worse than death
he suffered. For, you see, he only lives to serve the Cause, in a
different way to the old way but still to serve it. And I serve the Cause
also as best I can, even if I wear--" she shrugged her shoulders. "And
Harry serves it still as loyally as when, a beardless lad, he risked his
life to care for a slaughtered comrade's orphan children. And Ford, too,
and Nellie here, and Arty and Josie and George. But Geisner serves it
best of all if it be best to give most. He has given most all his life
and he gives most still. And we love him for it. And that love, perhaps,
is sweeter to him than all he might have been."
She knelt by his side as she ceased speaking, and put her arms round his
neck as he crouched there. "Geisner!" Nellie who was nearest heard her
whisper in her childhood's tongue. "Geisner! We have seen the dry bones
become men. We have poured our blood and our brain into them and if only
for a moment they have lived, they have lived. Ah, comrade, do you
recollect how you breathed soul into them when they shrank back that day?
They moved, Geisner. They moved. We felt them move. They will move again,
some day, dear heart. They will move again." Then, choking with sobs, she
laid her head on his knees. He put his arms tenderly round her and they
saw that this immovable little man was weeping like a child. One by one
the others went softly out to the verandah. Only Ned remained. He had
buried his face in his hands and sat, overwhelmed with shame, wishing
that the floor would open and swallow him. From outside came the
ceaseless lap-lap-lapping of water, imperceptibly eating away the granite
rock, caring not for time, blindly working, destroying the old and
building up the new.
The touch of a hand roused Ned. He looked up. Mrs. Stratton had gone
through the door concealed by the hangings. Geisner stood before him,
calmly lighting another cigarette with a match. There was no trace of
emotion on his face. He turned to drop the match into an ash tray, then
held out both hands, on his face the kindly smile that transfigured him.
Ned grasped them eagerly, wringing them in a grip that would have made
most men wince. They stood thus silently for a minute or two, looking at
one another, the young, hot-tempered bushman, the grey-haired,
cool-tempered leader of men; between them sprang up, as they stood, the
bond of that friendship which death itself only strengthens. The
magnetism of the elder, his marvellous personality, the strength and
majesty of the mighty soul that dwelt in his insignificant body, stole
into Ned's heart and conquered it. And the spirit of the younger, his
fierce indignation, his angry sorrow, his disregard for self, his truth,
his strong manhood, appealed to the weary man as an echoing of his own
passionate youth. Then they loosened hands and without a word Geisner
commenced to walk slowly backwards and forwards, his hands behind him,
his head bent down.
Ned watched him, studying him feature by feature. Yes, he had been
handsome. He was ugly only because of great wrinkles that scored his
cheeks and disfigured the fleshless face and discoloured skin. His
eyebrows and eyelashes were very thin, too. His hair looked dried up and
was strongly greyed; it had once been almost black. His lips were thin,
his mouth shapeless, only because he had closed them in his fight against
pain and anguish and despair and they had set thus by the habit of long
years. His nose was still fine and straight, the nostrils swelling wide.
His forehead was rugged and broad under its wrinkles. His chin was
square. His frame still gave one the impression of tireless powers of
endurance. His blue eyes still gleamed unsubdued in their dark,
overhanging caverns. Yes! He had lived, this man. He had lived and
suffered and kept his manhood still. To be like him! To follow him into
the Valley of the Shadow! To live only for the Cause and by his side to
save the world alive! Ned thought thus, as Connie came back, her face
bathed and beaming again, her theatre dress replaced by a soft red
dressing gown, belted loosely at the waist and trimmed with an abundance
of coffee coloured lace. Her first words were a conundrum to Ned:
"Geisner! Haven't you dropped that unpleasant trick of yours after all
these years? Two long steps and a short step! Turn! Two long steps and a
short stop! Turn! Now, just to please me, do three long steps."
He smiled. "Connie, you are becoming quite a termagant."
She looked at Ned questioningly: "Well?"
"Oh, Ned and I are beginning to understand one another," said Geisner.
"Of course," she replied. "All good men and women are friends if they get
to the bottom of each other. Let us go on the verandah with the rest. Do
you know I feel quite warm now. I do believe it was only that ridiculous
dress which made me feel so cold. Give me your arm, Ned. Bring me along a
chair, Geisner."
CHAPTER VII.
A MEDLEY OF CONVERSATION.
Ned dreaded that rejoining the others on the verandah, but he need not
have. They had forced the conversation at first, but gradually it became
natural. It had turned on the proper sphere of woman, and went on without
being interrupted by the new-comers. Nobody took any notice of them. The
girls were seated. Stratton lay smoking in the hammock. The other men
perched smoking on the railing. The gaslight had been turned down and in
the gloom the cigar ends gleamed with each respiration. In spite of the
damp it was very cosy. From the open door behind a ray of light fell upon
the darkness-covered water below. Beyond were circling the lights of
Sydney. Dotting the black night here and there were the signal lamps of
anchored ships.
"We want perfect equality for woman with man," asserted Ford, in a
conclusive tone of voice.
"We want woman in her proper sphere," maintained Stratton, from the
hammock.
"What do you call 'her proper sphere?'" asked Nellie.
"This: That she should fulfil the functions assigned to her by Nature.
That she should rule the home and rear children. That she should be a
wife and a mother. That she should be gentle as men are rough, and, to
pirate the Americanism, as she rocked the cradle should rock the world."
"How about equality?" demanded Ford.
"Equality! What do you mean by equality? Is it equality to scramble with
men in the search for knowledge, narrow hipped and flat-chested? Is it
equality to grow coarse and rough and unsexed in the struggle for
existence? Ah! Let our women once become brutalised, masculinised, and
there will be no hope for anything but a Chinese existence."
"Who wants to brutalise them?" asked Ford.
"What would your women be like?" asked Nellie.
"Look out for Madame there, Stratton!" said George.
"What would my women be like? Full-lipped and broad-hearted, fit to love
and be loved! Full-breasted and broad-hipped fit to have children!
Full-brained and broad-browed, fit to teach them! My women should be the
embodiment of the nation, and none of them should work except for those
they loved and of their own free will."
"Sort of queen bees!" remarked Nellie. "Why have them work at all?"
"Why? Is it 'work' for a mother to nurse her little one, to wash it, to
dress it, to feed it, to watch it at night, to nurse it when it sickens,
to teach it as it grows? And if she does that does she not do all that we
have a right to ask of her? Need we ask her to earn her own living and
bear children as well? Shall we make her a toy and a slave, or harden her
to battle with men? I wouldn't. My women should be such that their
children would hold them sacred and esteem all women for their sakes. I
don't want the shrieking sisterhood, hard-voiced and ugly and unlovable,
perpetuated. And they will not be perpetuated. They can't make us marry
them. Their breed must die out."
"In other words," observed Nellie; "you would leave the present
relationship of woman to Society unchanged, except that you would serve
her out free rations."
"No! She should be absolutely mistress of her own body, and sole legal
guardian of her own children."
"Which means that you would institute free divorce, and make the family
matriarchal instead of patriarchal; replace one lopsided system by
another."
"Give it him, Nellie," put in Connie. "I haven't heard those notions of
his for years. I thought he had recanted long ago."
"Well, yes! But you needn't be so previous in calling it lopsided," said
Stratton.
"It is lop-sided, to my mind!" replied Nellie. "What women really want is
to be left to find their own sphere, for whenever a man starts to find it
for them he always manages to find something else. No man understands
woman thoroughly. How can he when she doesn't even understand herself?
Yet you propose to crush us all down to a certain pattern, without
consulting us. That's not democratic. Why not consult us first I should
like to know?"
"Probably because they wouldn't agree to it if you led the opposition,
Nellie. We are all only democratic when we think Demos is going our way."
This from Ford.
Arty slipped quietly off the railing and went into the sitting-room.
Connie leaned back and watched him through the open door. "He's started
to write," she announced. "He's been terribly down lately so it'll be
pretty strong, poor fellow." She laughed good-naturedly; the others
laughed with her. "Go on, Nellie dear. It's very interesting, and I
didn't mean to interrupt."
"Oh! He won't answer me," declared Nellie, in a disgusted tone.
"I should think not," retorted Stratton. "I know your womanly habit of
tying the best case into a tangled knot with a few Socratic questions. I
leave the truth to prove itself."
"Just so! But you won't leave the truth about woman to prove itself. You
want us to be good mothers, first and last. Why not let us be women, true
women, first, and whatever it is fitting for us to be afterwards?"
"I want you to be true women."
"What is a true woman? A true woman to me is just what a true man is--
one who is free to obey the instincts of her nature. Only give us
freedom, opportunity, and we shall be at last all that we should be."
"Is it not freedom to be secure against want, to be free to----"
"To be mothers."
"Yes; to be mothers--the great function of women. To cradle the future.
To mould the nation that is to be."
"That is so like a man. To be machines, you mean--well cared for,
certainly, but machines just the same. Don't you know that we have been
machines too long? Can't you see that it is because we have been degraded
into machines that Society is what it is?"
"How?" questioned Stratton.
"He knows it well, Nellie," cried Connie, clapping her hands.
"Because you can't raise free men from slave women. We want to be free,
only to be free, to be let alone a little, to be treated as human beings
with souls, just as men do. We have hands to work with, and brains to
think with, and hearts to feel with. Why not join hands with us in theory
as you do in fact? Do you tell us now that you won't have our help in the
movement? Will you refuse us the fruit of victory when the fight is won?
If I thought you would, I for one would cease to care whether the Cause
won or not."
"I, too, Nellie. We'd all go on strike," cried Connie.
"What is it to you whether women are good mothers or not? What objections
can you have to our rivalling men in the friendly rivalry that would be
under fair conditions? Are our virtues, our woman instincts, so weak and
frail that you can't trust us to go straight if the whole of life is
freely open to us? Why, when I think of what woman's life is now, what it
has been for so long, I wonder how it is that we have any virtues left."
She spoke with intense feeling.
"What are we now," she went on, "in most cases? Slaves, bought and sold
for a home, for a position, for a ribbon, for a piece of bread. With all
their degradation men are not degraded as we are. To be womanly is to be
shamed and insulted every day. To love is to suffer. To be a mother is to
drink the dregs of human misery. To be heartless, to be cold, to be
vicious and a hypocrite, to smother all one's higher self, to be sold, to
sell one's self, to pander to evil passions, to be the slave of the
slave, that is the way to survive most easily for a woman. And see what
we are in spite of everything! Geisner said he would sometimes be proud
if he were an Englishman. Sometimes I'm foolish enough to be proud I'm a
woman.
"Why should we be mothers, unless it pleases us to be mothers? Why should
we not feel that life is ours as men may feel it, that we help hold up
the world and owe nothing to others except that common debt of fraternity
which they owe also to us? Don't you think that Love would come then as
it could in no other way? Don't you think that women, who even now are
good mothers generally, would be good mothers to children whose coming
was unstained with tears? And would they be worse mothers if their brains
were keen and their bodies strong and their hearts brave with the healthy
work and intelligent life that everybody should have, men and women
alike?"
"You seem to have an objection to mothers somehow, Nellie," observed
Geisner.
"Oh, I have! It seems to me such a sin, such a shameful sin, to give life
for the world that we have. I can understand it being a woman's highest
joy to be a mother. I have seen poor miserable women looking down at
their puny nursing babies with such unutterable bliss on their faces that
I've nearly cried for pure joy and sympathy. But in my heart all the time
I felt that this was weakness and folly; that what was bliss to the
mother, stupefying her for a while to the hollowness and emptiness of her
existence, was the beginning of a probable life of misery to the child
that could end only with death. And I have vowed to myself that never
should child of mine have cause to reproach me for selfishness that takes
a guise which might well deceive those who have nothing but the animal
instincts to give them joy in living."
"You will never have children?" asked Geisner.
"I will never marry," she answered. "There is little you can teach a girl
who has worked in Sydney, and I know there are ideas growing all about
which to me seem shameful and unwomanly, excepting that they spare the
little ones. For me, I shall never marry. I will give my life to the
movement, but I will give no other lives the pain of living."
"You will meet him some day, Nellie," said Connie.
"Then I will be strong if it breaks my heart." Ned often thought of this
in after days. Just then he hardly realised how the girl's words affected
him. He was so breathlessly interested. Never had he heard people talk
like this before. He began to dimly understand how it touched the Labour
movement.
"You will miss the best part of life, my dear," said Connie. "I say it
even after what you have seen of that husband of mine."
"You are wrong, Nellie," said Geisner, slowly. "Above us all is a higher
Law, forcing us on. To give up what is most precious for the sake of the
world is good. To give up that which our instincts lead us to for fear of
the world cannot but be bad. For my part, I hold that no door should be
closed to woman, either by force of law or by force of conventionalism.
But if she claims entrance to the Future, it seems to me that she should
not close Life's gate against herself."
"I would close Life's gate altogether if I could," cried Nellie,
passionately. "I would blot Life out. I would--oh, what would I not do?
The things I see around me day after day almost drive me mad."
There was silence for a moment, broken then by Connie's soft laugh.
"Nellie, my dear child," she observed, "you seem quite in earnest. I hope
you won't start with us."
"Don't mind her, Nellie," said Josie, softly, speaking for the first
time. "Connie laughs because if she didn't she would cry."
"I know that," said Nellie. "I don't mind her. Is there one of us who
does not feel what a curse living is?"
Geisner's firm voice answered: "And is there one of us who does not know
what a blessing living might be? Nellie, my girl, you are sad and
sorrowful, as we all are at times, and do not feel yet God in all working
itself out in unseen ways."
"God!" she answered, scornfully. "There is no God. How can there be?"
"I do not know. It is as one feels. I do not mean that petty god of
creeds and religions, the feeble image that coarse hands have made from
vague glimpses caught by those who were indeed inspired. I mean the total
force, the imperishable breath, of the universe. And of that breath, my
child, you and I and all things are part."
Stratton took his cigar from his mouth and quoted:
"'I am the breath of the lute, I am the mind of man, Gold's glitter, the
light of the diamond and the sea-pearl's lustre wan. I am both good and
evil, the deed and the deed's intent--Temptation, victim, sinner,
crime, pardon and punishment.'"
"Yes," said Geisner; "that and more. Brahma and more than Brahma. What
Prince Buddha thought out too. What Jesus the Carpenter dimly recognised.
Not only Force, but Purpose, or what for lack of better terms we call
Purpose, in it all."
"And that Purpose; what is it?" Ned was surprised to hear his own voice
uttering his thought.
"Who shall say? There are moments, a few moments, when one seems to feel
what it is, moments when one stands face to face with the universal Life
and realises wordlessly what it means." Geisner spoke with grave
solemnity. The others, hardly breathing, understood how this man had
thought these things out.
"When one is in anguish and sorrow unendurable. When one has seen one's
soul stripped naked and laid bare, with all its black abysses and
unnatural sins; the brutishness that is in each man's heart known and
understood--the cowardice, the treachery, the villainy, the lust. When
one knows oneself in others, and sinks into a mist of despair, hopeless
and heart-wrung, then come the temptations, as the prophets call them,
the miserable ambitions dressed as angels of light, the religions which
have become more drugged pain-lullers, the desire to suppress thought
altogether, to end life, to stupefy one's soul with bodily pain, with
mental activity. And if," he added slowly, "if one's pain is for others
more than for oneself, if in one's heart Humanity has lodged itself, then
it may be that one shall feel and know. And from that time you never
doubt God. You may doubt yourself but never that all things work together
for good."
"I do not see it," cried Nellie.
"Hush!" said Connie. "Go on, Geisner."
"To me," the little man went on, as if talking rather to himself than to
the others. "To me the Purpose of Life is self-consciousness, the total
Purpose I mean. God seeking to know God. Eternal Force one immeasurable
Thought. Humanity the developing consciousness of the little fragment of
the universe within our ken. Art, the expression of that consciousness,
the outward manifestation of the effort to solve the problem of Life.
Genius, the power of expressing in some way or other what many thought
but could not articulate. I do not mean to be dogmatic. Words fail us to
define our meaning when we speak of these things. Any quibbler can twist
the meaning of words, while only those who think the thought can
understand. That is why one does not speak much of them. Perhaps we
should speak of them more."
"It is a barren faith to me," said Nellie.
"Then I do not express it well," said Geisner. "But is it more
barren-sounding than utter Negation? Besides, where do we differ really?
All of us who think at all agree more or less. We use different terms,
pursue different lines of thought, that is all. It is only the dullard,
who mistakes the symbol for the idea, the letter for the spirit, the
metaphor for the thought within, who is a bigot. The true thinker is an
artist, the true artist is a thinker, for Art is the expression of
thought in thing. The highest thought, as Connie rightly told us before
you came, is Emotion."
"I recollect the Venus in the Louvre," interjected Harry. "When I saw it
first it seemed to me most beautiful, perfect, the loveliest thing that
ever sculptor put chisel to. But as I saw it more I forgot that it was
beautiful or perfect. It grew on me till it lived. I went day after day
to see it, and when I was glad it laughed at me, and when I was
downhearted it was sad with me, and when I was angry it scowled, and when
I dreamed of Love it had a kiss on its lips. Every mood of mine it
changed with; every thought of mine it knew. Was not that Art, Nellie?"
"The artist in you," she answered.
"No. More than that. The artist in the sculptor, breathing into the stone
a perfect sympathy with the heart of men. His genius grasped this, that
beauty, perfect beauty, is the typifying not of one passion, one phase of
human nature, but of the aggregation of all the moods which sway the
human mind. There is a great thought in that. It is 'the healthy mind in
the healthy body,' as the sculptor feels it. And 'the healthy mind in the
healthy body' is one of the great thoughts of the past. It is a thought
which is the priceless gift of Greek philosophy to the world. I hold it
higher than that of the Sphinx, which Ford admires so."
"What does the Sphinx mean?" asked Ned.
"Much the same, differently expressed," answered Ford. "That Life with us
is an intellectual head based on a brutish body, fecund and powerful;
that Human Nature crouches on the ground and reads the stars; that man
has a body and a mind, and that both must be cared for."
"They had a strange way of caring for both, your Egyptians," remarked
Nellie. "The people were all slaves and the rulers were all priests."
At this criticism, so naive and pithy and so like Nellie, there was a
general laugh.
"At least the priests were wise and the slaves were cared for," retorted
Ford, nothing abashed. "I recollect when I was a little fellow in
England. My people were farm labourers, west of England labourers. We
lived in a little stone cottage that had little diamond-paned windows.
The kitchen floor was below the ground, and on wet days my mother used to
make a little dam of rags at the door to keep the trickling water back.
We lived on bread and potatoes and broad beans, and not too much of that.
We got a little pig for half-a-crown, and killed it when it was grown to
pay the rent. Don't think such things are only done in Ireland! We herded
together like pigs ourselves. The women of the place often worked in the
fields. The girls, too, sometimes. You know what that means where the
people are like beasts, the spirit worn out of them. The cottages were
built two together, and our neighbour's daughter, a girl of 18 or so, had
two children. It was not thought anything. The little things played at
home with our neighbour's own small children, and their grandmother
called them hard names when they bothered her.
"My father was a bent-shouldered hopeless man, when I recollect him. He
got six shillings a week then, with a jug of cider every day. When he
stopped from the wet, and there was no work in the barns, his wages were
stopped. So he worked in the wet very often, for it generally rains in
England, you know. The wet came through our roof. Gives the natives such
pretty pink skins, eh, Geisner?" and he laughed shortly. "My father got
rheumatism, and used to keep us awake groaning at nights. He had been a
good-looking young fellow, my old granny used to say. I never saw him
good-looking. In the winter we always had poor relief. We should have
starved if we hadn't. My father got up at four and came home after dark.
My mother used to go weeding and gleaning. I went to scare crows when I
was five years old. All the same, we were a family of paupers. Proud to
be an Englishman, Geisner! Be an English pauper, and then try!"
"You'll never get to the priests, Ford, if you start an argument,"
interposed Mrs. Stratton.
"I'll get to them all right. Our cottage was down a narrow, muddy lane.
On one side of the lane was a row of miserable stone hovels, just like
ours. On the other was a great stone wall that seemed to me, then, to be
about a hundred feet high. I suppose it was about twenty feet. You could
just see the tops of trees the other side. Some had branches lopped short
to prevent them coming over the wall. At the corner of the highway our
lane ran to was a great iron gate, all about it towering trees, directly
inside a mound of shrub-covered rockery that prevented anybody getting a
peep further. The carriage drive took a turn round this rockery and
disappeared. Once, when the gate was open and nobody about, I got a peep
by sneaking round this rockery like a little thief. There was a beautiful
lawn and clumps of flowers, and a summer house and a conservatory, and a
big grey-fronted mansion. I thought heaven must be something like that.
It made me radical."
"How do you mean?" asked Mrs. Stratton.
"Well, it knocked respect for constituted authority out of me. I didn't
know enough to understand the wrong of one lazy idler having this
splendid place while the people he lived on kennelled in hovels. But it
struck me as so villainously selfish to build that wall, to prevent us
outside from even looking at the beautiful lawn and flowers. I was only a
little chap but I recollect wondering if it would hurt the place to let
me look, and when I couldn't see that it would I began to hate the wall
like poison. There we were, poor, ragged, hungry wretches, without
anything beautiful in our lives, so miserable and hopeless that I didn't
even know it wasn't the right thing to be a pauper, and that animal ran
up a great wall in our faces so that we couldn't see the grass--curse
him!" Ford had gradually worked himself into a white rage.
"He didn't know any better," said Geisner. "Was he the priest?"
"Yes, the rector, getting £900 a-year and this great house, and paying a
skinny curate £60 for doing the work. A fat impostor, who drove about in
a carriage, and came to tell the girl next door as she lay a-bed that she
would go to hell for her sin and burn there for ever. I hated his wall
and him too. Out in the fields I used to draw him on bits of slate. In
the winter when there weren't any crows or any weeding I went to school.
You see, unless you sent your children to the church school a little, and
went to church regularly, you didn't get any beef or blanket at
Christmas. I tell you English charity is a sweet thing. Well, I used to
draw the parson at school, a fat, pompous, double chinned, pot-bellied
animal, with thin side-whiskers, and a tall silk hat, and a big handful
of a nose. I drew nothing else. I studied the question as it were and I
got so that I could draw the brute in a hundred different ways. You can
imagine they weren't complimentary, and one day the parson came to the
school, and we stood up in class with slates to do sums, and on the back
of my slate was one of the very strongest of my first attempts at
cartooning. It was a hot one." And at the remembrance Ford laughed so
contagiously that they all joined. "The parson happened to see it. By
gum! It was worth everything to see him."
"What did he do?"
"What didn't he do? He delivered a lecture, how I was a worthy relative
of an uncle of mine who'd been shipped out this way years before for
snaring a rabbit, and so on. I got nearly skinned alive, and the
Christmas beef and blanket wore stopped from our folks. And there another
joke comes in. An older brother of mine, 14 years old, I was about 12,
took to going to the Ranters' meetings instead of to church. My mother
and father used to tie him up on Saturday nights and march him to church
on Sunday like a young criminal going to gaol. They were afraid of losing
the beef and blanket, you see. He sometimes ran out of church when they
nodded or weren't looking, and the curate was always worrying them about
him. It was the deadliest of all sins, you know, to go to the Ranters.
Well, when the beef and blanket were stopped, without any chance of
forgiveness, we all went to the Ranters."
"I've often wondered where you got your power from, Ford," remarked
Connie. "I see now."
"Yes, that great wall made me hate the great wall that bars the people
from all beautiful things; that fat hypocrite made me hate all frauds. I
can never forget the way we all swallowed those things as sacred. When I
get going with a pencil I feel towards whatever it is just as I felt to
the parson, and I try to make everybody feel the same. Yet would you
believe it, I don't care much for cartooning. I want to paint."
"Why don't you?" asked Nellie.
"Well, there's money you know. Then it was sheer luck that made me a
cartoonist and I can't expect the same run of luck always."
"Don't believe him, Nellie," said Connie. "He feels that he has a chance
now to give all frauds such a hammering that he hesitates to give it up.
You've paid the parson, Ford, full measure, pressed down and running
over!"
"Not enough!" answered Ford. "Not enough! Not till the wall is down flat
all the world over! Do you think Egypt would have lasted 20,000 years if
her priests had been like my parson, and her slaves like my people?"
"I'd forgotten all about Egypt," said Nellie. "But I suppose her rulers
had sense enough to give men enough to eat and enough to drink, high
wages and constant employment, as M'Ilwraith used to say. Yes; it was
wiser than the rulers of to-day are. You can rob for a long while if you
only rob moderately. But the end comes some time to all wrong. It's
coming faster with us, but it came in Egypt, too."
"Here is Arty, finished!" interrupted Connie, who every little while had
looked through the door at the young man. She jumped up. "Come along in
and see what it is this time."
They all went in, jostling and joking one another. Arty was standing up
in the middle of the room looking at some much blotted slips of paper. He
appeared to be very well satisfied, and broke into a broad smile as he
looked up at them all. Geisner and Ned found themselves side by side near
the piano, over the keys of which Geisner softly ran his fingers with
loving touch. "You are in luck to-night," he remarked to Ned. "You know
Arty's signature, of course. He writes as----," mentioning a well-known
name.
"Of course I know. Is that him?" answered Ned, astonished. "Verses which
bore that signature were as familiar to thousands of western bushmen as
their own names. Who is Ford?" he added.
"Ford! Oh, Ford signs himself----." Geisner mentioned another signature.
"Is he the one who draws in the Scrutineer?" demanded Ned more astonished
than ever.
"Yes; you know his work?"
"Know his work! Had not every man in Australia laughed with his pitiless
cartoons at the dignified magnates of Society and the utter rottenness of
the powers that be?"
"And what is Mr. Stratton?"
"A designer for a livelihood. An artist for love of Art. His wife is
connected with the press. You wouldn't know her signature, but some of
her work is very fine. George there is a journalist."
"But I thought the newspapers were against unions."
"Naturally they are. They are simply business enterprises, conducted in
the ordinary commercial way for a profit, and therefore opposed to
everything which threatens to interfere with profit-making. But the men
and women who work on the press are very different. They are really
wage-workers to begin with. Besides, they are often intelligent enough to
sympathise thoroughly with the Labour movement in spite of the
surroundings which tend to separate them from it. Certainly, the most
popular exponents of Socialism are nearly all press writers."
"We are only just beginning to hear about these things in the bush," said
Ned. "What is Socialism?"
"That's a big question," answered Geisner. "Socialism is----"
He was interrupted. "Silence, everybody!" cried Mrs. Stratton. "Listen to
Arty's latest!"
CHAPTER VIII.
THE POET AND THE PRESSMAN.
"Silence, everybody!" commanded Mrs. Stratton. "Listen to Arty's latest!"
She had gone up to him as they all came in. "Is it good?" she asked,
looking over his arm. For answer he held the slips down to her and
changed them as she read rapidly, only pausing occasionally to ask him
what a more than usually obscured word was. There was hardly a line as
originally written. Some words had been altered three and four times.
Whole lines had been struck out and fresh lines inserted. In some verses
nothing was left of the original but the measure and the rhymes.
"No wonder you were worrying if you had all this on your mind," she
remarked, as he finished, smiling at him. "Let me read it to them."
He nodded. So when the buzz of conversation had stopped she read his
verses to the others, holding his arm in the middle of the room, her
sweet voice conveying their spirit as well as their words. And Arty stood
by her, jubilant, listening proudly and happily to the rhythm of his
new-born lines, for all the world like a young mother showing her
new-born babe.
THE VISION OF LABOUR.
There's a sound of lamentation 'mid the murmuring nocturne noises,
And an undertone of sadness, as from myriad human voices,
And the harmony of heaven and the music of the spheres,
And the ceaseless throb of Nature, and the flux and flow of years,
Are rudely punctuated with the drip of human tears
--As Time rolls on!
Yet high above the beat of surf, and Ocean's deep resounding,
And high above the tempest roar of wind on wave rebounding,
There's a burst of choral chanting, as of victors in a fight,
And a battle hymn of triumph wakes the echoes of the night,
And the shouts of heroes mingle with the shriekings of affright
--As Time rolls on!
There's a gleam amid the darkness, and there's sight amid the blindness,
And the glow of hope is kindled by the breath of human kindness,
And a phosphorescent glimmer gilds the spaces of the gloom,
Like the sea-lights in the midnight, or the ghost-lights of the tomb,
Or the livid lamps of madness in the charnel-house of doom
--As Time rolls on!
And amidst the weary wand'rers on the mountain crags belated
There's a hush of expectation, and the sobbings are abated,
For a word of hope is spoken by a prophet versed in pain,
Who tells of rugged pathways down to fields of golden grain,
Where the sun is ever shining, and the skies their blessings rain
--As Time rolls on!
Where the leafy chimes of gladness in the tree-tops aye are ringing,
Answering to the joyous chorus which the birds are ever singing;
Where the seas of yellow plenty toss with music in the wind;
Where the purple vines are laden, and the groves with fruit are lined;
Where all grief is but a mem'ry, and all pain is left behind
--As Time rolls on!
But it lies beyond a desert 'cross which hosts of Death are marching,
And a hot sirocco wanders under skies all red and parching,
Lined with skeletons of armies through the centuries fierce and acre
Bones of heroes and of sages marking Time's lapse year by year,
Unmoistened by the night-dews 'mid the solitudes of fear
--As Time rolls on!
* Kindly written by Mr. F. J. Broomfield for insertion here.
"Well done, Arty"! cried Ford. "I'd like to do a few 'thumbnails' for
that."
"Let me see it, please! Why don't you say 'rushes' for 'wanders' in the
last verse, Arty?" asked George, reaching out his hand for the slips.
"Go away!" exclaimed Mrs. Stratton, holding them out of reach. "Can't you
wait two minutes before you begin your sub-editing tricks? Josie, keep
him in order!"
"He's a disgrace," replied Josie. "Don't pay any heed to him, Arty!
They'll cut up your verses soon enough, and they're just lovely."
The others laughed, all talking at once, commending, criticising,
comparing. Arty laughed and joked and quizzed, the liveliest of them all.
Ned stared at him in astonishment. He seemed like somebody else. He
discussed his own verses with a strange absence of egotism. Evidently he
was used to standing fire.
"The metaphor in that third verse seems to me rather forced," said
Stratton finally. "And I think George is right. 'Rushes' does sound
better than 'wanders.' I like that 'rudely punctuated' line, but I think
I'd go right through it again if it was mine."
"I think I will, too," answered Arty. "There are half-a-dozen alterations
I want to make now. I'll touch it up to-morrow. It'll keep till then."
"That sort of stuff would keep for years if it wasn't for the
Scrutineer," said Stratton. "Very few papers care to publish it
nowadays."
"The Scrutineer is getting just like all the rest of them," commented
George. "It's being run for money, only they make their pile as yet by
playing to the gallery while the other papers play to the stalls and
dress circle."
"It has done splendid work for the movement, just the same," said Ford.
"Admit it's a business concern and that everybody growls at it, it's the
only paper that dares knock things."
"It's a pity there isn't a good straight daily here," said Geisner.
"That's the want all over the world. It seems impossible to get them,
though."
"Why is it?" demanded Nellie. "It's the working people who buy the
evening papers at least. Why shouldn't they buy straight papers sooner
than these sheets of lies that are published?"
"I've seen it tried," answered Geisner, "but I never saw it done. The
London Star is going as crooked as the others I'm told."
"I don't see why the unions shouldn't start dailies," insisted Nellie. "I
suppose it costs a great deal but they could find the money if they tried
hard."
"They haven't been able to run weeklies yet," said George,
authoritatively. "And they never will until they get a system, much less
run dailies."
"Why?" asked Ned. "You see," he continued, "our fellows are always
talking of getting a paper. They get so wild sometimes when they read
what the papers say about the unions and know what lies most of it is
that I've seen them tear the papers up and dance a war-dance on the
pieces."
"It's along story to explain properly," said George. "Roughly it amounts
to this that papers live on advertisements as well as on circulation and
that advertisers are sharp business men who generally put the boycott on
papers that talk straight. Then the cable matter, the telegraph matter,
the news matter, is all procured by syndicates and companies and mutual
arrangement between papers which cover the big cities between them and
run on much the same lines, the solid capitalistic lines, you know. Then
newspaper stock, when it pays, is valuable enough to make the holder a
capitalist; when it doesn't pay he's still more under the thumb of the
advertisers. The whole complex organisation of the press is against the
movement and only those who're in it know how complex it is."
"Then there'll never be a Labour press, you think?"
"There will be a Labour press, I think," said George, turning Josie's
hair round his fingers. "When the unions get a sound system it'll come."
"What do you mean by your sound system, George?" asked Geisner.
"Just this! That the unions themselves will publish their own papers, own
their own plant, elect their own editors, paying for it all by levies or
subscriptions. Then they can snap their fingers at advertisers and as
every union man will get the union paper there'll be a circulation
established at once. They can begin with monthlies and come down to
weeklies. When they have learnt thoroughly the system, and when every
colony has its weekly or weeklies, then they'll have a chance for
dailies, not before."
"How would you get your daily?" enquired Geisner.
"Expand the weeklies into dailies simultaneously in every Australian
capital," said George, waxing enthusiastic. "That would be a syndicate at
once to co-operate on cablegrams and exchange intercolonial telegrams.
Start with good machinery, get a subsidy of 6d. a month for a year and
3d. a month afterwards, if necessary, from the unions for every member,
and then bring out a small-sized, neat, first-rate daily for a ha'penny,
three-pence a week, and knock the penny evenings off their feet."
"A grand idea!" said Geisner, his eyes sparkling. "It sounds practical.
It would revolutionise politics."
"Who'd own the papers, though, after the unions had subsidised them?"
asked Ned, a little suspiciously.
"Why, the unions, of course," said George. "Who else? The unions would
find the machinery and subsidise the papers on to their feet, for you
couldn't very well get every man to take a daily. And the unions would
elect trustees to hold them and manage them and an editor to edit each
one and would be able to dismiss editors or trustees either if it wasn't
being run straight. There'd be no profits because every penny made would
go to make the papers better, there being no advertising income or very
little. And every day, all over the continent, there would be printing
hundreds of thousands of copies, each one advancing and defending the
Labour movement."
"It's a grand idea," said Geisner again, "but who'd man the papers,
George. Could Labour papers afford to pay managers and editors what the
big dailies do?"
"I don't know much about managers, but an editor who wouldn't give up a
lot to push the Cause can't think much of it. Why, we're nothing but
literary prostitutes," said George, energetically. "We just write now
what we're told, selling our brains as women on the streets do their
bodies, and some of us don't like it, some of the best too, as you know
well, Geisner. My idea would be to pay a living salary, the same all
round, to every man on the literary staff. That would be fair enough as
an all round wage if it was low pay for editing and leader writing and
fancy work. Many a good man would jump at it, to be free to write as he
felt, and as for the rest of the staff by paying such a wage we'd get the
tip-top pick of the ordinary men who do the pick-up work that generally
isn't considered important but in my opinion is one of the main points of
a newspaper."
"Would you take what you call a 'living salary' on such a paper?" asked
Connie.
"I'd take half if Josie--" He looked at her with tender confidence. The
love-light was in her answering eyes. She nodded, proud of him.
"And they'd all publish my poetry?" asked Arty.
"Would they? They'd jump at it."
"Then when they come along, I'll write for a year for nothing."
"How about me?" asked Ford, "Where do I come in?"
"And me?" asked Connie.
"You can all come in," laughed George. "Geisner shall do the political
and get his editor ten years for sedition. Stratton will supply the mild
fatherly sociological leaders. Mrs. Stratton shall prove that there can't
be any true Art so long as we don't put the police on to everything that
is ugly and repulsive. Nellie, here, shall blossom out as the Joan of Arc
of women's rights, with a pen for a sword. And Arty we'll keep chained
upon the premises and feed him with peppercorns when we want something
particularly hot. Ford can retire to painting and pour his whole supply
of bile out in one cartoon a week that we'll publish as a Saturday's
supplement. Hawkins shall be our own correspondent who'll give the gentle
squatter completely away in weekly instalments. And Josie and I'll slash
the stuffing out of your 'copy' if you go writing three columns when
there's only room for one. We'll boil down on our papers. Every line will
be essence of extract. Don't you see how it's done already?"
"We see it," said Nellie, stifling a yawn. "The next thing is to get the
unions to see it."
"That's so," retorted George, "so I'll give you my idea to do what you
can with."
"We must go," said Nellie, getting up from her chair. "It must be after
one and I'm tired."
"It's ten minutes to two," said Ford, having pulled out his watch.
"Why don't you stay all night, Nellie," asked Connie. "We can put Ned up,
if he doesn't mind a shake-down. Then we can make a night of it. Geisner
is off again on Monday or Tuesday."
"Tuesday," said Geisner, who had gone to the book-shelf again.
"Then I'll come Monday evening," said Nellie, for his tone was an
invitation. "I feel like a walk, and I don't feel like talking much."
"All right," said Connie, not pressing, with true tact. "Will you come on
Monday too, Ned?" she asked, moving to the door under the hangings with
Nellie. Josie slipped quickly out on to the verandah with George.
"I must be off on Monday," replied Ned, regretfully. "There's a shed
starts the next week, and I said I'd be up there to see that it shore
union. I'm very sorry, but I really can't wait."
"I'm so sorry, too. But it can't be helped. Some other time, Ned." And
nodding to him Connie went out with Nellie.
"So we shan't see you again," said Stratton, lighting a cigar at the gas.
Ford had resumed his puffing at his black pipe and his seat on the table.
"Not soon at any rate," answered Ned. "I shall be in Western Queensland
this time next week."
"The men are organising fast up that way, aren't they?" asked Stratton.
"They had to," said Ned. "What with the Chinese and the squatters doing
as they liked and hating the sight of a white man, we'd all have been
cleared out if we hadn't organised."
"Coloured labour has been the curse of Queensland all through," remarked
Ford.
"I think it has made Queensland as progressive as it is, too," remarked
Geisner. "It was a common danger for all the working classes, and from
what I hear has given them unity of feeling earlier than that has been
acquired in the south."
"Some of the old-fashioned union ideas that they have in Sydney want
knocking badly," remarked Arty, smoking cheerfully.
"They'll be knocked safely enough if they want knocking," said Geisner.
"There are failings in all organisation methods everywhere as well as in
Sydney. New Unionism is only the Old Unionism reformed up to date. It'll
need reforming itself as soon as it has done its work."
"Is the New Unionism really making its way in England, Geisner?" asked
Stratton.
"I think so. A very intelligent man is working with two or three others
to organise the London dock laborers on the new lines. He told me he was
confident of success but didn't seem to realise all i
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