CHAPTER XV.
At Adelaide the gentleman in the imitation-tweed suit staggered up the gangway with a baby in one arm and a large brown paper bag in the other, and sank down on the nearest seat with a sigh of content.
His wife followed suit, and their three children—all apparently the same age—ranged themselves in a semicircle on the deck, and cast longing eyes on the brown paper bag, which their father proceeded to open with a mysterious reverence.
“Gripes!” he announced. “Gripes fer tuppence er pound—and look at 'em!”
He dangled a bunch tantalizingly above the baby, who promptly grabbed a chubby handful and crushed it to a juicy mess. “Oh, 'Enery!' reproached the mother, and was upheld in her protest by the clamoring children.
“'Ere, 'ere, “ere!” the father remonstrated, essaying the delicate task of dividing a bunch of grapes into three equal parts and distributing them among six eager hands.
The mother spread the paper bag carefully on the deck.
“Now put yer skins and pips on 'ere, and don't swaller 'em, mind 'Ullo! Wot's this?”
From a neglected corner of the bag she drew forth a mysterious-looking object not unlike a green fig, and eyed it critically. “I dunno,” her husband admitted; “the bloke in the shop called it passion fruit, but I told 'im I'd chance it; give it to 'Enery.”
'Enery was evidently not of a suspicious nature, for he seized the overripe fruit with a gusto that ejected its slimy green contents in a neat jet into his left eye.
These little episodes, and many like them, had supplied Sprague with entertainment ever since the London and India Docks had melted into nondescript murk behind the Dorset's stern. To him it was a source of unending delight to drag his deck chair—a luxury procurable for half a crown the voyage—behind ventilator or davit and surreptitiously hear and watch his fellow emigrants—for the most part, stunted products of office and factory—expanding under the kindly influence of sunlight and ozone.
But not so the youth of the art-colored tie. They bored him to extinction. As far as Sprague could gather, everything bored him, and always to “extinction”; the pity of it was, he was never quite extinguished. The accommodation was a “scandal,” and the food “execrable,” until the gentleman of the imitation tweeds hinted that one could hardly expect “'ummin' birds on a six weeks' trip for five quid,” and advised him to try the saloon.
After leaving Melbourne he was seen in the company of a saloon passenger, walking the promenade deck, and talking volubly. He was “in with the nobs,” as the gentleman in imitation tweeds put it, and thereafter was noticed to wear a more hopeful expression.
During the evening he confided to Sprague, as “the only decent chap on the ship, by Jove!” that he had got a job. The new acquaintance was a surveyor from Bundaberg, who wanted men, but—and here the delicacy of the thing was apparent—he had a rooted objection to the ordinary sort of immigrant; that was why he had singled out the youth of the art-colored tie and offered him ten shillings a day.
“Fact is,” he added, “he wants gentlemen—you know what I mean—a couple of decent fellows he can trust; that's why he's prepared to pay nearly double the ordinary wages. The last gang got away with the instruments—I don't see why you shouldn't stand a chance.” Sprague acknowledged the compliment with a modest laugh.
“Thanks,” he said; “but I'm not a gentleman—I'm a plumber.” And for a time the matter dropped.
Sprague's thoughts were amply occupied as the Dorset forged past the “Heads” and up the harbor fairway.
Sydney can be cold in May, and he told himself that it was this that made the difference as he stood at the ship's rail watching the familiar landmarks glide by to port, and trying to think it was all the same—just the same—as when he had left it four months ago.
Here were the blue, transparent waters and the clean sunlight, the green slopes splashed with red-tiled houses, the musical clang of telegraph bells and the answering churn of propellers as the white ferryboats glided to and from Circular Quay like majestic swans—all the things he had so longed to see during those three impotent and ghastly weeks in Gray's Inn Road; yet—what an infernal difference the cold made! He shivered involuntarily, and went down to his cabin, where the other nine occupants were engaged in a frenzied hunt for their belongings, and a desultory altercation as to whether a brown and moving speck on South Head had been a man or a kangaroo.
He left the trunk and suit case that composed his luggage at the wharf, and on a sudden impulse boarded the Manly ferry. Yes, the same three Italians, with the same watchful eye for a well-turned ankle, discoursed the selfsame selections on harp, piccolo, and violin; nothing was different—except the nipping westerly.
At Manly the corso was almost deserted, and, glad of the exercise after shipboard confinement, Sprague walked briskly to Queenscliff.
At the foot of the flight of steps he stopped and filled his pipe. He was aware that his pulse had quickened, that memories crowded in on him with an uncanny vividness. But when he found himself watching for a fluttering blue kimono on the cliff path beyond the cove, he anathematized himself for a fool, and trudged up the steps.
The Haven was empty, and a sturdy tree of the Walker's Forest species that had taken root at the very door bore a notice: “To be let or sold; apply F. J. Walker.”
The kerosene-tin shower bath hung rusting and rattling on its cord below the rain-water tank, and under a tree bush Sprague spied a depleted knuckle bone, mute testimony to Robert's thoroughness.
The white house on the cliffs summit looked equally desolate as Sprague approached it with a slow gait and strangely drooping shoulders; and when another announcement met his eye, pasted to the stone gateposts of the avenue, he turned away, sick at heart. What had happened to his world in four short months? He asked the question of the blue Pacific, the glistening white curve of Manly beach, and the dark-green grove of Norfolk Island pines; and they told him that he was penniless, that he was a failure, that the wintry wind had chilled at once his marrow and his outlook; but the true answer sprang unbidden from his heart—that he would never meet Meg Bettington again.
There are deeps below deeps of boarding-house accommodation in Sydney, but a fair sample of the lower middle-class establishment is to be found in Wynard Square. Here, ranged in dreary sequence about a patch of greensward and soiled vegetation, yawning portals await the advent of Sydney's floating population.
Through one of these Sprague duly floated, and was led up three flights of threadbare stair carpet by a maid who smiled alluringly over her shoulder on each succeeding landing. She opened the bedroom door without knocking, and surprised a young gentleman in his shirt sleeves, studying his tongue in the looking-glass with stern disapproval.
“Oh, Mr. Green!” she exclaimed.
“Mr. Green” drew a silk handkerchief from his left cuff, and blew his nose without emotion.
“Thank you,” said Sprague. “This will do.”
But Mr. Green seemed to think otherwise, and a whispered altercation took place in the passage:
“I can't 'elp it, can I? Oh, that'll be all right; you see 'E'll be out all dye” After which assurance, the maid drifted down the passage, and Mr. Green proceeded to release a pair of evening-dress trousers from the pressure of his mattress.
Sprague sat on his light-gray counterpane, and smiled apologetically.
“I'm sorry to intrude,” he said; “but I've been to three other places, and they're all worse than this at the price.”
“Then I'm sorry for them!” exploded Mr. Green. “They talk about indignities the profession had to suffer in the old days, but was it a patch on this?” He indicated the humble apartment with a dramatic gesture. “And do you know the reason of it? A question of merit, you say.” Sprague had said nothing of the sort, but refrained from contradiction. “A question of merit! By cripes, no! It's just this—that Australia's got no time for anything she produces herself, least of all genuine talent; it's got to be imported, like everything else, before she'll recognize it; that's why we're forced to live in a hole like this while imported punk puts up at the Australia.”
He paused in the process of disposing a fringe of greasy blond hair to his liking.
“Look at our actors, and artists, and singers. They all have to clear out—couldn't make bread and butter out here—and what do they do at home? Sail straight to the top of the tree, take London by storm What are you laughing at?”
Sprague was not laughing, and said so.
“I was only taking an intelligent interest,” he defended. “All you say is perfectly true, and, by your own showing, the state of things is just as it should be.”
“As it should be!” Mr. Green turned, with one-half of the blond fringe swept to the back of his head, and the other awaiting like treatment over his left eye.
“Yes—perfectly simple. The man with the talent merely goes home and proves his worth, as so many Australians have done; then comes back with the hall mark of European opinion, and takes his natural place at the top of the tree in his own country. What straighter road to success can you possibly want?”
Mr. Green eyed the stranger with a look of discernment.
“Just arrived?” he queried irrelevantly.
“Yes,”
“What's your line?”
“I'm a plumber.”
“Do you feel like a hundred up before tea?”
During the game—for ten shillings a side, and on a table that had once been an “Alcock,” and was now confessedly a “boarding house”—the horrible truth, which Sprague had begun to fear, revealed itself—he had happened on “a private boarding establishment for theatricals.” The place reeked of them—carefully sorted after the manner of a grocer's “new-laid” eggs, “fresh” eggs, and “eggs”—the “genteels” occupying the first floor, the “shabby genteels” the second, and the “shabbies” anything from that upward. The atmosphere was so saturated with personal pronouns and strange phrases that Sprague was content to lose his ten shillings with a good grace and escape to the dining room.
“Tea” was in progress, and the first face his glance rested on—pink and ingenuous as ever—was that of the youth with the art-colored tie, who welcomed him as a long-lost brother.
What—no work yet? That was too bad; personally he had had several offers, but was, of course, bound to the surveyor. It wouldn't be cricket to go back on him now. He was to meet him that night in the Marble Bar and sign an agreement; would Sprague care to come along? There was still an opening if he cared to take it. Oh, plumber be hanged for a yarn!
For lack of something better to do, Sprague went along, and as they passed the amphitheater entrance to Her Majesty's Theater he caught a fleeting glimpse of Mr. Green assiduously collecting tickets at the door.
The Marble Bar is distinctly comfortable, and often entertaining; otherwise the long wait that ensued would have grown monotonous. As it was, Sprague was enthralled by the strategic maneuvers of a tall barmaid with peroxide hair, who was trying to persuade three separate customers that her smile was for them and them alone.
The youth with the art-colored tie was the first to display restlessness. His glance followed the frieze of decorative art, wandered to the clock, the swinging doors, and back to the clock. Then, with a surreptitious eye on Sprague, he extracted four bank notes from his pocketbook and examined them with sudden interest. A flush mounted to his forehead, and he rose with an air of determination.
“Have a drink?” he suggested; and, advancing on the peroxide lady with elaborate unconcern, pushed a note across the bar.
She had half turned when her glance fell upon the crude counterfeit, and her expression showed every indication of assuming a dignified hauteur until her eye traveled to the youth's perspiring face, and softened into something very like compassion.
“You'd better put that away before you get into trouble, sonny,” she said; and he obeyed with an absurd snigger.
They carried their glasses to a table.
“I've been robbed!” he breathed, with the incredulity of the hypergullable. “I've been robbed!”
His hand clung limply to his breast pocket; his eyes were fastened unseeingly on the spittoon. “I thought the beggar looked crooked, but he only wanted change, and he left the theodolite”
With a bound, he was back at the bar.
“That parcel—yes, I know—it was left in my charge, and I gave it to you this afternoon—to take care of—don't you remember?”
Luckily the peroxide lady did remember, and winked sorrowfully at Sprague while the youth tore frenziedly at the brown paper coverings.
“They're worth sixty pounds, you know,” he babbled hopefully.
A neat cardboard box was at last exposed to view, and, reposing inside it—two beautifully symmetrical red bricks.
The next morning Sprague deliberately neglected to shave, divested himself of his collar, and strolled down Elizabeth Street until he came to a blackboard outside an employment agency, displaying the following notices in chalk:
| Gent'l | 15 shillings |
| Cook—Country | 35 shillings |
| Boundary rider | 20 shillings |
The last item held his attention for perhaps two minutes; then he squared his shoulders and passed inside.