Part 6 (1/2)
Thus I lay awake, and heard the hours chime and the trains go roaring by, till all the household but Miss Flipp had returned. She entered from the outside, did not come in till after midnight, and was not alone. Her uncle accompanied her. My room had French lights opening into the garden in the same way as Miss Flipp's, and as my ailment was a heart affection it was sometimes necessary for me to go outside to get sufficient air, and in this instance I had the door-windows wide open and the bed pulled almost to the opening. Miss Flipp apparently had her window open too, for despite the conversation in her room being in subdued tones, I heard it where I lay.
It contained startling disclosures anent these two persons' relations and characters, and when Mr p.o.r.nsch went his way with the uneven footsteps of the overfed and of acc.u.mulating years, he left me in a painful state of perturbation.
What course should I pursue?
Casting on a pair of slippers and a heavy cloak, I took a little path leading from my window through the garden to the pier where the boats were moored, and here I sat down to consider. Experience had taught me to be chary of entering matters that did not concern me, but it had not made me sufficiently callous to preserve my equanimity in face of a discovery so serious as this.
Miss Flipp had sinned the sin which, if discovered, put a great gulf 'twixt her and Grandma Clay, Dawn, Carry, and myself, but which would not prevent her fellow-sinner from a.s.sociating with us on more than terms of equality. Should Grandma Clay become aware of what I knew, she certainly would bundle the girl out neck and crop, as she would be justified in doing. But the girl was in a ghastly predicament, and more sinned against than sinning, when one heard her grief and remembered the age of her betrayer, which should have made him the protector instead of the seducer of young women.
Times out of number the dramatic critics have termed me an artist of the first rank, and it is this temperament which furnishes the faculty of regarding all shades and consequences of life's issues unabashed, and with the power to distil knowledge from good and bad and use it experimentally, rather than, as a judge, condemnatory.
I determined to keep the girl's secret, and show myself sympathetically friendly otherwise, hoping she would extend me her confidence, so that in a humble way I might be privileged to stand between her and perdition.
It was a beautiful night, one of those when the moon relinquishes her court to the little stars. Vehicular traffic had ceased, and the only sound breaking the stillness of the great frostless, silver-spangled darkness was the panting of the steam-engines and the murmur of the river where half a mile down it took a slight fall over boulders. The electric lights of the town twinkled in the near distance, and farther east was a faint glow beyond the horizon, rightly or wrongly attributed to the lights of the metropolis. After a time it grew chilly, and I was glad to return to my bed. Dawn was separated from me by a thin wooden part.i.tion, and her strong healthy breathing was plainly discernible as she lay like an opening rose in maiden slumber, but there was now no sound from the room of the other poor girl--a rose devoured by the worm in its core.
Next morning, however, she appeared at breakfast, for Clay's was not a house wherein one felt encouraged to coddle themselves without exceptional reason, and to all but a suspicious or hypercritical observer she seemed as usual.
Carry was going to church.
”I haven't been able to go this three weeks because my dress wasn't finished, and next Sunday will be my week in the kitchen, so if I don't go now I won't be able to show it for a fortnight,” she announced.
”Well, I ain't going,” said grandma. ”Gimme back your porridge, I forgot to dose it”--this to Andrew, on whose oatmeal she had omitted to put sugar and milk. ”I've always found church is a good deal of bother when you have any important work. I contribute to the stipend; that ought to be enough for 'em. If one spent all their time running to church they would have no money to give to it, an' I never yet see praying make a living for any one but the parsons.”
Thus, Dawn being engaged in the kitchen, and her Uncle Jake keeping her company there while he perused the 'Noonoon Advertiser,' which descended to him on Sunday morning, Andrew having gone away with Jack Bray, and Miss Flipp being invisible, grandma and I were left together to enjoy a small fire in the dining-room, so I took this opportunity of inquiring how Jim Clay had managed to capture her. This sort of thing interested me; I liked life in the actuality where there was no counterfeit or make-believe to offend the sense of just proportions.
Not that I do not love books and pictures, but they have to be so very very good before they can in any way appease one, while the meanest life is absorbingly interesting, invested as it must ever be with the dignity of reality.
SIX.
GRANDMA CLAY'S LOVE-STORY.
”Oh, you don't want to hear it now,” she said in response to my request, but she gave a pleased laugh, betraying her willingness to tell it. ”Sometimes I get running on about old times an' don't know where to stop, an' Dawn says people only pretend to be interested in me out of politeness. I think I hinted to you that mine was a love match--the only sort of marriage there ought to be; any other sort, in my mind, is only fit for pigs.”
”But sometimes love matches would be utterly absurd,” I remarked.
”Well, then, people that are utterly absurd ought to be locked up in a asylum. Anybody that's _fit_ to love wouldn't love a fool, because there must be reason in everything. _Some_ people I know would love a monkey, but they ain't fit to be counted with the people that keeps the world going. Well, I got as far as we kep' a accommodation house on the Sydney road,--fine road it was too, level and strong, and in many places flagged by the convicts, an' it stands good to this day.
It ain't like these G.o.d-forsaken roads about here,”--grandma showed symptoms of convulsions,--”but _some_ people is only good for to be stuffed in a--a--asylum, and that's where the Noonoon Munic.i.p.al Council ought to be, an' I say it though Jake there, me own brother, is one of them.”
”Did Jim Clay--” I said, by way of keeping to the subject.
”I told you how I used to sneak out to buckle the horses on; an' w'en Jack Clay, a great chum of me father's, used to be driving the 'Up'
coach, me father, w'en he'd be slack of pa.s.sengers,--which wasn't often, there being more life and people moving in the colony then,--an' w'en I'd be good, would put me up on the box an' take me on to the next stage, an' I'd come back with Jack Clay--that was me husband's father.
”As it used to be in the night, it usedn't to take from me time, an' I'd be up again next day as if I'd slep' forty hours. I wasn't like the girls these days, if they go to a blessed ball an' are up a few hours they nearly have to stay in bed a week after it. In that way I come to be a great hand with the reins, an' me father took a deal of pride in me because all the young men up that way began to talk about me. Me father had the best team of horses on the road. He used to always drive them hisself. He was always a kind man to every one and everythink about him.
He drove three blood coachers abreast and two lighter ones, b.u.t.terfly and Fairy, in the lead. Weren't them days! That great coach swingin'
round the curves and sidlings in the dark, I fancy I can feel the reins between me fingers now! And there was always a lot of jolly fellows, and usedn't they to cheer me w'en the horses 'u'd play up a bit. It was considered wonderful for me to manage such a team. I was only a slight slip of a girl, not near so fat as Dawn; she takes more after her grandfather. Me and me sisters had no lack of sweethearts, and we didn't run after them neither. Some people make me that mad the way they run after people and lick their boots. W'en I'd be drivin' with me father, Jim Clay used to be with his, but he was some years older than me. He wanted to enter the drivin' business soon as opportunity came, an' him an' me were sort of rivals like. Many of the young swells used to bring me necklaces and brooches, but somehow when Jim Clay only brought me a pocket-handkerchief or a lump of ribbon I liked it better an' kep' it away in a little scented box an' I was supposed to be in love with a good many in them days. _Some people_ always knows other's business better than they do theirselves. Me two sisters got married soon as they were eighteen--one to a thrivin' young squatter, an' the other to a rich old banker. Seein' how she got on is what makes me agen old men marryin'
young girls. It ain't natural. A man might marry a girl a few years younger than hisself, but there must be reason in everythink. I was older than me sisters, an' people began to twit me an' say I'd be left on the shelf, but before this, w'en I was sixteen an' Jim Clay twenty, me father broke his leg and was put by. All his trouble was his horses; he fretted an' fretted that they'd be spoilt by a careless driver, an'
he had 'em trained so they knew nothing but kindness. I was only too willin', and I up an' undertook to drive the coach right through. Old Jack Clay said he'd come with me a turn or two an' leave Jim to take his team, but just then he had some terrible new horses that no one could handle but hisself,--he was a wonderful hand with horses was Jim's father,--so Jim was sent with me. My, wasn't there a cheer when I first brought the mail in all on me own!” The old face flashed forth a radiance as she told her tale.
”Some of the old gents in the town of Gool-Gool come out an' shook hands with me, an' the ladies kissed me w'en I got down off of the box. There was a lawyer feller considered a great lady-killer in them days. He had a long beard shaved in the Dundreary,--Dawn always says he must have been a howler with a beard of that description; but times change, an' these clean-faced women-lookin' fellers the girls think is very smart now will look just as strange by-an'-by. However, he was runnin' strong with me, an' me mother considered him favourable,--him bein' a swell an' makin' his way. Soon as ever I started runnin' the coach he was took with a lot of business down the road, an' used to be nearly always a pa.s.senger.”
”It appears that sweetheart tactics have not changed if the style in beards has,” I remarked with a smile.
”No, an' they'll never change, seein' a man is a man an' a girl a girl, no matter what fas.h.i.+ons come an' go. I never can see why they make such a fuss and get so frightened because wimmen does a thing or two now they usedn't to. Nothing short of a earthquake can make them not men an' wimmen, an' that's the main thing. Well, to go back to me yarn, lots of other pa.s.sengers got took the same way, an' there was great bidding for the box seat: that was a perquisite belongin' to the driver, an' me father used to get a sovereign for it often. I used to dispose of it by a sort of tender, an' 5 was nothink for it; an' once in the gold-rush times, w'en money was laying around like water, a big miner, just to show off, gave me two tenners for it. They used to be wantin' to drive, but I took me father's advice an' never let go the reins. Well, among all these fine chaps Jim Clay wasn't noticed. He was always a terrible quiet feller. _I_ did all the jorin'. He'd always say, 'Come now, Martha, there's reason in everythink,' just w'en I'd be mad because I couldn't see no reason in nothink. He was sittin' in the back of the coach, an' it was one wet night, an' only a few pa.s.sengers for a wonder, who was glad to take refuge inside. Only the lawyer feller was out on the box with me, an' makin' love heavier than it was rainin'. I staved him off all I could, an' with him an'
the horses me hands was full. You never see the like of the roads in them days. It was only in later years the Sydney road, I was remarkin', was made good. In them times there was no made roads, and you can imagine the bogs! Why, sometimes you'd think the whole coach was going out of sight in 'em, and chargin' round the stumps up to the axle was considered nothink. We had more pluck in them days! Well, that night the roads was that slippery the brake gave me all I could do, an' a new horse in the back had no more notion of hangin' in the breechin' than a cow; so I took no notice to the lawyer, only told him to hold his mag once or twice an' not be such a blitherer, but it was no use, he took a mean advantage off of me. You can imagine it was easy w'en I had five horses in a coach goin' round slippery sidlin's pitch dark an' rainin'. He put his arms 'round me waist an' that raised me blood, an' I tell you things hummed a little. You'll see Dawn in a tantrum one of these days, but she ain't a patch on me w'en me dander was up in me young days.” Looking at the fine old flas.h.i.+ng eyes and the steel in her still, it was easy to see the truth of this.