FIVECORNE.RS 
 
 DOWELL O'REILLY.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 FIVECORNERS 
 
 DO WELL
 
 Of these sketches the majority appeared 
 in The Bulletin one in The Sunday Sun one 
 in Lillty'* Magazine " Thfstledown " and 
 " Don't Tel* Mother " are new.
 
 TE.ARS AND TRIUMPH. 
 
 Two Edition! published in 1913. 
 A revised and enlarged edition is now in preparation, 
 
 "... You, whose masterpiece glorifies FREE LOVE, 
 and takes aa the Redeemer Woman 3 clandestine 
 adulteress about to palm off her bastard on the husband 
 whose bread she eats." 
 
 Unsolicited appreciation of A. B. Piddington, K.C., 
 Chief Interstate Commissioner. Ex-High Court 
 Judge. Fellow of University Senate, etc,, in 
 letter dated 10/6/17. 
 
 " In Tears and Triumph Mr. Dowell O'Reilly has 
 achieved a remarkable piece of work, in which he makes 
 the story of one woman the peg upon which to hang a 
 series of reflections upon the function and destiny of 
 womanhood .... the story of the Bankstown girl who 
 stands for her sex in every age and clime, is told with a 
 truth and sympathy that make us wish that Mr. O'Reilly 
 were more liberal in his contributions to our literature." 
 
 Sydney Morning Herald. 
 
 " The particular quality that appeals to me in Mr, 
 Dyson's drawings is also present in Mr. O'Reilly's story. 
 It is an eccentric, unexpected, audacious quality : it is 
 the quality of looking at things from an individual stand- 
 point, and describing them in individual terms. It is, I 
 suppose, an Australian quality, and, if so, it promises well 
 for the future of Australian art and literature. It promises 
 us at any rate an arc and literature quite free from bilious 
 
 tendencies. 
 
 Neil Lyons in Tht Clarion.
 
 " The moat sriking Australian publication of the year. 
 In Tears and Triumph there is wit equal to Shaw's, and 
 audacity excelling Shaw's .... It has taken a writer in 
 Australia, where the suffragette was long ago vaccinated 
 with freedom, to write the finest exposition of the soul of 
 this remarkable movement, and to write it with an as- 
 tonishing wit, a genial humour, rarely to be found 
 flourishing on a scientific basis of biology." 
 
 The Bulletin (Red Page) 
 
 "This is a contribution highly original in form, and 
 brimming over with convincing ideas, to a discussion 
 which is raging to-day in every civilised country more 
 hotly than it has ever raged before the discussion of the 
 'eternal feminine.' This little book suggests almost 
 irresistibly that Mr. O'Reilly has more than his fair share 
 of that capacity for extraordinarily rapid celebral action 
 
 which is pecularly an attribute of women's brains 
 
 we congratulate Mr. O'Reilly on his little book, and ex- 
 press the hope that he will expand these ideas, which are 
 put with such sincerity and conviction, into a larger 
 
 work." 
 
 Daily Telegraph, 
 
 " an artistic success .... to a man who can 
 
 do such work, it is some compensation to know that it 
 has not been wholly in vain. There are some Australians 
 who understand and appreciate, and themselves feel 
 proud that they have among them men \\ho are capable 
 of putting into English something that is neither an echo 
 nor a convention." 
 
 TheSitn.
 
 TO MARIB.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 TW!LIHT ................ 9 
 
 BLACK PETER'S LAST Kiss .... 18 
 
 OUT W 
 
 IMMORTELLES .... .... 27 
 
 BULLDOGS ............ 33 
 
 MRS. CALLAGHAN ........ 50 
 
 CROWS ............ 63 
 
 THISTLEDOWN ............ 69 
 
 TA ! TA ! WOMAN ............ 100 
 
 His PHOTO ON THE WALL ........ 109 
 
 ANCESTORS- 
 
 PERCY ............ 121 
 
 HORROR ............ 128 
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS ............ 135 
 
 DON'T TELL MOTHER .... 146
 
 TWILIGHT. 
 
 The little blue bay, with its beach and 
 caves, dense scrub and flower-spangled 
 lantana, was very beautiful in the twilight. 
 The Evening Star already shone pale 
 above the black hill. The massed colours 
 blue and gold and green glowed 
 brighter than by day, and the shallow 
 wavelets curled and crested as they do on 
 the shores of Galilee, seen through the 
 glamour of cathedral windows. All the 
 lullaby sounds that silence loves were there 
 the plash of the quiet sea, the crooning 
 of night insects, the flutter of a wing in the 
 thicket. 
 
 Of the New Year's Day picnickers who 
 had shouted and romped and seethed in 
 the hot glare no trace remained except 
 the cruelly trampled sand ; the flowing tide
 
 10 TWILIGHT. 
 
 would soon wash that clean. It was good 
 to loiter on the brink and see 
 
 "The moving waters at their priest-like task 
 Of pure ablution round Earth's human shores," 
 
 and to know that the dawn would break 
 on a beach marked only by seagulls' feet 
 and the myriad ripples of the night 
 breeze. 
 
 Turning at last to go, I was astonished 
 to see that a party of picnickers still lin- 
 gered under some trees on a grassy level 
 at the far head of the bay. My path home 
 led that way, and as I drew near, the blur 
 of grey took shape a crowd of many men 
 and women. They stood close round a 
 little man on a table ; he was showing them 
 how to play "catscradle" that mysteri- 
 ous game with the fingers and a loop of 
 string that everyone has heard of and no 
 one can play. 
 
 Twilight is always so full of wonders 
 that I was hardly surprised. Unnoticed, I 
 drew closer to watch the quick fingers and 
 observe the strange gathering. Only when 
 I could see the rapt, upturned faces did I 
 fully realize my painful mistake the little 
 man was making a speech and his hearers 
 were deaf and dumb. The twilight is in- 
 deed full of wonders. 
 
 Clearly they had spent the long holiday
 
 TWILIGHT. 11 
 
 on the beach, for their faces were freshly 
 sunburnt, as pale faces burn, and packed 
 hampers stood on the table. There were 
 many children around: silent boys chased 
 and dodged among the adults; some girls 
 sitting on the grass seemed quite happy 
 in their speechless chattering. Of the 
 women a few were white-haired, some 
 carried babies, the rest were young. Seve- 
 ral were pretty but for their strange twi- 
 light eyes eyes that seemed striving to 
 hear rather than see ; searching in vain for 
 the sunlight of happy speech and sudden 
 laughter. Yet perhaps that strained ex- 
 pression, so sad to us, seems normal and 
 beautiful in their remote world where pas- 
 sionate love pleads in dumb alphabet, and 
 rage grows calm while spelling out an oath, 
 and no mother sings her baby asleep. 
 
 The men's faces were more tragic than 
 the women's whose sex-instinct, while it 
 lives, fights every calamity and never ad- 
 mits defeat. These women, with their 
 pretty summer frocks and tinkling bangles 
 and great bunches of wild-flowers in their 
 arms, were like other women except for 
 their listening eyes. But the men with 
 their shackled minds, looked and moved 
 heavily, listlessly, hopelessly, like prison- 
 ers under a life-sentence.
 
 12 TWILIGHT. 
 
 The little man's speech, was soon fin- 
 ished. He got off the table, and all the 
 listening eyes turned toward a black- 
 bearded giant with a belltopper on the 
 back of his head for whom room was made 
 in the centre of the group. A girl stepped 
 forward, holding something wrapped in 
 tissue-paper, and gave it to him bashfully, 
 silent to her finger-tips. He unrolled the 
 paper: it was a little plated butter-dish. 
 His face was very gentle as he turned it 
 about admiringly, and bowed and smiled, 
 and looked at it again before putting it in 
 his breast-pocket. I could see he had 
 speech and hearing. His restful eyes 
 showed that. The moving picture was tell- 
 ing its own story he had organized this 
 picnic of deaf-mutes, whose gratitude had 
 just been expressed in their little present. 
 He climbed on the table, set his tall hat 
 at his feet and began to speak. He held 
 his talking hands close to his lips as if 
 whispering to them what they should say. 
 The spiritual expression on his face deep- 
 ened as his fingers continued moving al- 
 ways slowly, so that even I could dis- 
 tinguish here and there a letter I knew. 
 
 In our glib world of speech much rub- 
 bish may be talked in five minutes. But 
 in that twilight world where thought is
 
 TWILIGHT. 13 
 
 spelt out letter by letter, words are much 
 too precious to waste. I was, alas ! deaf to 
 his fingers, but I could hear the face that 
 spoke so tenderly as His surely spoke 
 long ago to the wide-eyed little children. 
 And if I read aright his speech was some- 
 thing like this : 
 
 * ' Thank you for your pretty present. It 
 will always remind me of this happy day. 
 Sunshine blue sky breeze water 
 flowers: all so beautiful. Life is full of 
 joy. We must all meet here again next 
 year. God bless you." 
 
 Love, courage, faith these I clearly 
 read in his face. Whatever the message 
 may have been, it deeply stirred every 
 listening soul. As he got down there fol- 
 lowed clapping that was merely the motion 
 of clapping and almost soundless. But 
 that was nothing. Another sound, utterly 
 unexpected and dreadful, rose from the 
 crowd and set my skin tingling. I cannot 
 describe it can only suggest it as a half- 
 smothered cry of pain. It was indeed a 
 dreadful, strangled sound suffocated 
 emotion straining up from throats strug- 
 gling to speak. And yet it expressed joy; 
 that was clear as they crowded round the 
 big man to shake his hand, and then rapidly 
 dispersed. Smiling women flickered
 
 14 TWILIGHT. 
 
 fingers at one another as they kissed 
 "good-bye"; men took up the hampers, 
 and the main party straggled away with 
 the big man into the shadowy bush-track 
 that led to the ferry wharf. I watched 
 the last disappear, then turned homeward 
 up a path on the other side of the bay. 
 
 At the top of the path stands a solitary 
 lamp a municipal outpost at the junction 
 of two roads which, with the surrounding 
 vacant land, are still covered with low 
 scrub. Usually it illuminates nothing but 
 the energy of the alderman who owns the 
 corner block. On that wonderful evening 
 three white-frocked girls stood within its 
 circle of light, and one of them was she who 
 had presented the butter-dish. They were 
 staring and pointing, evidently in doubt as 
 to the way they should go. I went up to 
 *hem. The butter-dish girl met me with 
 dying fingers naturally thinking I was one 
 of their party. Realizing a stranger her 
 hands fell to her side, and she stood watch- 
 ing. I thought of my notebook and pencil, 
 but feared she might be unable to read. 
 Her eyes never left mine. I pointed to- 
 wards the distant ferry wharf with a facial 
 note of interrogation. She shook her head. 
 Then inspiration came to me. There were 
 only two ways to Sydney, by ferry and by
 
 TWILIGHT. 15 
 
 tram it must be the tram they wanted. 
 Anyone with two hands can make a T in the 
 dumb alphabet. I made it perhaps the 
 largest capital she had ever seen Her 
 smile was delightful, maternal; I was her 
 infant, taking my first step. She laid a 
 little curved forefinger in the palm of her 
 hand, and her eyes said with the prettiest 
 accent, "You must know R when you see 
 it, you funny old thing." I rose to the 
 occasion. I stopped her hands before they 
 could shape the next letter. Remembering 
 the five vowels, I pressed my forefinger 
 proudly on my thumb and looked round for 
 applause. Six eyes applauded ! But M, M, 
 M, what the Devil was M? Little Butter- 
 dish saw my hesitation, and true woman 
 that she was, instantly covered it with 
 three little fingers laid together. 
 
 How graciously they received and wel- 
 comed that foreigner, with his grotesque 
 antics, who had wandered into their far 
 realm ! I caught sayself flapping my hands 
 to hearten them up, and violently nodding 
 my head as evidence of good faith, so 
 anxious was I to express in speaking 
 gestures my desire to serve them. I pointed 
 up the scrub-covered hillside, to where the 
 lighthouse rays swung slowly round the 
 sky. They nodded and readily followed me
 
 18 TWILIGHT. 
 
 in Indian file as I picked a way upward 
 through the low scrub. 
 
 The soul also has its rare senses, that no 
 physical defect can destroy. It is likely 
 that those girls felt more keenly than I the 
 wonder of the Stars that came closer 
 through the deepening blue, and the spicy 
 sweetness of the scrub, and the straying 
 night breeze that streaked with cool the 
 balmy warmth of the lingering day. And 
 it is quite certain that all the time our souls 
 were calling and answering to one another, 
 because the quietude of long friendship was 
 upon us when at last we came out on the 
 road, and blinked smiles at one another in 
 the bright waiting-room. Butterdish pro- 
 duced a tablet and pencil from somewhere, 
 wrote, and showed it to me. " Thank you." 
 The other girls peeped and nodded smiles 
 I wrote: "A Happy New Year!" She im- 
 pulsively snatched the tablet from me. 
 "Same to you." 
 
 Far off I heard the tram. We went out 
 on the road. There little Butterdish 
 touched my arm and pointed over the 
 darkening valley at the last afterglow be- 
 yond the glimmering city, and the still 
 waters of the winding harbour, and the 
 splendid Evening Star. And even while 
 she pointed she looked up at me and made
 
 TWILIGHT. 17 
 
 the strangest little sound in her throat. 
 Not at all a dreadful sound it was a 
 beautiful sound a cry of joy from a soul 
 that was never dumb.
 
 BLACK PETER'S LAST 
 KISS. 
 
 The winter of 1840 severe even for 
 Tasmania lay like a pall upon the Great 
 Lake. Lost in the clouds 4,000 feet above 
 the sea, the vast crater was given over to 
 the powers of darkness. Week after week 
 a watery sun glimmered fitfully along the 
 northern peaks, through Arctic storms that 
 whitened the sheep-runs, and turned the 
 jagged "Tiers" to glittering icebergs. Be- 
 tween the gales, a deathly film of ice looped 
 and thickened from headland to headland 
 till only the far-off central waters still 
 gleamed steel-grey waiting. 
 
 The silence then was dreadful, only less 
 dreadful than what followed when the 
 Southerly swooped again ,on the frozen 
 lake. Great fissures tore and split shore- 
 ward through the ice, crackling like closest 
 thunder, until the widening waves drove 
 the shattered floes on the northern coast, 
 and the old shepherd and his wife, in their 
 hut by the brink, heard once again the piled 
 up hummocks clashing and grinding along 
 the shore.
 
 BLACK PETER'S LAST KISS. 19 
 
 The shepherd was nothing, but his wife 
 the twilight darkened as they crouched 
 together over the roaring fire. 
 
 "Bill," she spoke softly "I found a 
 hundred sovereigns this afternoon.'' 
 
 The old man stared at her; they so sel- 
 dom spoke. "Seein's believin', Bess." 
 
 "I tell you I did a hundred sovereigns 
 think of it, Bill two years' wages." 
 
 An evil look darkened his face. "No! 
 No! You don't find no hundred pounds up 
 here among the lake shepherds, and any- 
 how, you ain't what you was to look at 
 when I picked you up in H'obart. ' ' 
 
 Strangely excited, she let even the insult 
 to her looks pass unheeded. 
 
 "Bill the notice at the P'lice Station 
 don't you remember? 'Hundred pounds, 
 dead or alive.' " He shrank back as she 
 thrust her face closer. "I seen Black Peter 
 out on the marsh. He's comin' to-night " 
 
 He reached toward the gun in the corner 
 of the hut, but she caught his arm. "Y' old 
 fool you're no match for him he'd get in 
 the first shot, like he did with the p'lice. 
 Bill" she shook her forefinger in his face 
 "if you'll only be a man just for to- 
 night, the money's yours ours, we go 
 whacks." 
 
 But he could only stammer "Black
 
 20 BLACK PETER'S LAST KISS, 
 
 Peter? Comin' here? We must clear 
 
 now My God ! he knows I put the p 'lice 
 
 on his camp in the Cressy" he stood up. 
 
 She let go his arm, and sat back on her 
 box, smiling. ''Go! if you're scared I 
 ain't scared I'll wait for Pete; him and 
 me was great friends once." 
 
 "You " he stopped, as she looked up; 
 
 he stared in her face. "What about that 
 hundred pounds?" he quavered fiercely. 
 
 "I told him you're goin' to the Steppes 
 for flour, and won't be back till late He's 
 comin' just to see me. That hundred 
 pounds is ours to-night, if only sit down 
 man, and let's talk." 
 
 For a time they sat, their heads close to- 
 gether; then he put on his oilskins, while 
 she found a flour bag, rolled it round a 
 hatchet, and thrust it into his hand. He 
 shouldered the door open against the 
 drifted snow and went out. 
 
 She closed the door, and from the win- 
 dow tore down the sack that shut in the 
 blazing fire-light; then she took from her 
 pocket a large gold brooch and quickly 
 clasped it at her throat. As though re- 
 hearsing a part, she next passed through 
 the doorless opening into the inner room, 
 and there lay back a moment on the bed, in 
 a position to see the outer door; then she
 
 BLACK PETER'S LAST KISS. 21 
 
 unhooked a small mirror from beside the 
 bed, returned to the blazing fire, and let 
 down her hair. 
 
 The Medusa, with her serpent locks and 
 baleful eyes was never a myth the great 
 coils, slowly unfolding over breasts and 
 shoulders writhed to her knees. She smiled 
 into the mirror as she held it from side to 
 side, wondering at the shimmer of separate 
 hairs that everywhere leapt out, electric in 
 the dry heat. 
 
 The door rattled : a huge man stumbled 
 in, scattering thick snow. He stood a 
 moment, dazzled by the glare: she waited 
 silent, till he rushed forward. 
 
 1 'Bess! God! God!" He lifted her 
 high in his arms, his great hands tangled in 
 her hair: his famishel passion kissed her 
 breathless. 
 
 "Pete give over!" she gasped. "L/et 
 me down till I shut the door." She 
 struggled free. * * Sit down by the fire and 
 take off your boots you must be froze." 
 She closed the door, and sat beside him. 
 
 "You wasn't afraid to come?" she put 
 her hand on his knee. * ' Did you leave your 
 gun outside?" 
 
 "You said it was safe what did I want 
 with the gun?" 
 
 "To be sure ! ' ' With her hand she wiped 
 the sweat from his forehead.
 
 22 BLACK PETER'S LAST KISS. 
 
 "It's like old times, Bess with your 
 hair down." 
 
 She knelt by his side and kissed him. 
 
 "And you've still got the brooch." 
 
 "As if I'd ever part with it!" 
 
 He sat silent, content to look at her, and 
 stroke her hair. 
 
 "Pete, dear, the p'lice are workin' up 
 the Shannon I wanted to warn you." 
 
 "I know and they're workin ' up the 
 Tiers from the Cressy too thick as lice. 
 The game's up, Bess, but by God! I 
 ain't goin' to be took alive." 
 
 "Couldn't you break through to the West 
 Coast?" 
 
 "With the snow two feet deep! No! 
 
 The game's up, but " he kissed her 
 
 fiercely "I've got you now, anyhow." 
 
 "Yes yes let's be happy while we 
 can!" she stood up. 
 
 A sharp report rang through the night. 
 Black Peter sprang to the door 
 
 "You old silly," she laughed, "if you 
 had camped all the winter by the Lake like 
 I have, you'd know the sound of a big tree 
 burstin'. The heavy timber along the Lake 
 has been goin' that ^ray for weeks when 
 the sap gets froze in their hearts they 
 burst."
 
 BLACK PETER'S LAST KISS. 23 
 
 "Sap gets froze in thtir hearts?" he 
 repeated vaguely. 
 
 "Yes that's all it was. Now! I'll just 
 
 make up the fire, and then " she 
 
 quickly threw three logs into the blaze 
 three times a shower of sparks shot up into 
 the night. 
 
 "When I'm game to have a fire, campin' r 
 it's like havin' you with me, Bess" he 
 stroked her hair ' ' them curlin ' flames and 
 shinin' sparks " 
 
 "Yes yes " she spoke rapidly, "but 
 
 we haven't any time to lose he'll be back 
 soon come." She drew him to the inner 
 room. 
 
 She lay back upon the piled-up kangaroo 
 skins, and he sank his face in her neck, 
 while over his shoulder she watched the 
 door. 
 
 "You do love me, Bess?" and even as he 
 spoke the door moved. 
 
 "Course I do." Her arms tightened 
 round him. 
 
 The door widened, and the old man, 
 blinking in the fierce light, stood a moment 
 on the threshold, hatchet in hand. Black 
 Peter lifted his head, listening. 
 
 . "Love you, Pete? Of course I do like 
 this like this like this" she repeated
 
 24 BLACK PETER'S LAST KISS. 
 
 rapidly as she twined herself about him. 
 and he sank in her fast embrace. 
 
 The old man crept closer; again Black 
 Peter started, and, looking suddenly into 
 the woman's eyes, knew he was betrayed. 
 A moment's mad struggle a fiercer tight- 
 ening of soft limbs a horror of red ser- 
 pents hissing and writhing 
 
 A great cry burst from him; he ceased 
 struggling. The blow fell their faces 
 crashed in blood.
 
 OUT WEST.
 
 IMMORTELLES, 
 
 Away by the Western Mail, through the 
 brown plains between the coast and the 
 mountains : there is a long journey before 
 us. 
 
 From Sydney to Penrith the country is 
 withered not dead. True, the shallow 
 runnels under the railway culverts are all 
 dry, and the cattle look poor, but they are 
 there all right, and at least living on the 
 dead grass. And when the train thunders 
 along the iron bridge over the clear, deep 
 Nepean, and rises slowly through the cooler 
 air of the mountain slopes, one grows quite 
 hopeful things cannot be as black as they 
 are painted. The names of the mountain 
 stations sound drowsily sweet in one's ears 
 Glenbrook, Valley Heights, Springwood, 
 Hazelbrook, Leura and we sleep while the 
 train climbs two-thirds of a mile into the 
 air, and thunders down, down, down the 
 long western slope. 
 
 ' ' Orange ! ' ' The monotonous shout of a 
 sleepy porter awakes us at five o'clock next 
 morning to a half-seen platform and a few
 
 28 IMMORTELLES. 
 
 dim figures. We rattle on from station 
 to station: their tantalizing names empha- 
 sise the still despair of the country side. 
 The dust-red dawn has overtaken us, and a 
 thin smoke seems to drive before its fire. 
 We stop at Mullion Creek and Kerr's 
 Creek and Stone Creek and Dripstone, all 
 in the space of fifty miles. Three ' ' creeks ' ' 
 with an orange at one end and a dripstone 
 at the other ! Was it merely a wicked jest 
 on the part of the early pioneers, that they 
 so named the flat stretches of baked clay, 
 with never a brown pool of water to rest 
 the eye, or do these names merely express 
 the delirious imaginings of men driven mad 
 by thirst the final solace that suffering 
 finds in phantasy? 
 
 Noon. All the morning the train has 
 been running its losing race with that red 
 ball of fire that now rolls overhead along 
 the copper sky. And looking out of the 
 window, it would seem we have never 
 moved. The same plains of powdered dust 
 the same gleaming skeletons the same, 
 far-reaching, silent desprar. 
 
 The names in the railway time-table 
 again suggest thoughts of those pioneers, 
 who first travelled this way not by train. 
 After passing Wellington they seem to 
 have forgotten the old English names they
 
 IMMORTELLES. 29 
 
 loved so well. Wellington, in point of fact, 
 as well as nomenclature guards the 
 marches between the land of agriculture 
 and clear water, and hills and hope, and 
 those fierce realms of the West that 
 threaten us forever. Swallowed up in the 
 illimitable plains, the pioneers seem to have 
 lost themselves. The tender northern 
 memories that lived in names like " Glen- 
 brook," "Hazelbrook," "Locksley," 
 shrivelled before the fiery blast that swept 
 that "seat of desolation." The heroes' 
 hearts were at last subdued to the mystery 
 and fear they worked in. From the un- 
 earthly silence and quivering heat came 
 daemonic whispers light as air "Narro- 
 mine " " Belaringar ' ' " Miungeribar. ' ' 
 And the white men rightly renamed their 
 ghostly camps with the ancient names in- 
 spired with the terror of a thousand 
 droughts tremulous with the beauty of 
 the mirage and its despair. 
 
 From Wellington to Nyngan 129 miles 
 there are sixteen stopping-places, of 
 which the daemons have named fourteen. 
 Of the remaining two, one is "Maryvale," 
 and many camps further on is "Never- 
 tire." Let us believe they were so called 
 by the one hero, and that Mary was as true 
 as her lover, and as beautiful as her name,
 
 80 IMMORTELLES. 
 
 and that the hope that lengthened his stride 
 through "Nevertire" was at last fulfilled 
 as it deserved to be. 
 
 Bourke at last! And just beyond, the 
 setting sun dull red, like a good toasting 
 fire. Every day for years this western dis- 
 trict has been spitted before that fire, spin- 
 ning round from blinding dawn to stifling 
 night. Beyond the cracked bed of the 
 vanished river lie the vast plains of the 
 Paroo. Sometimes Afghans with camels 
 go out there. It is said that even there 
 white pioneers men and women and chil- 
 dren work and die. 
 
 About 50 miles out is a weatherboard 
 hut, with an iron roof, and an empty tank 
 at one corner. Of course, it stands on the 
 road, because there is only one road out 
 there the road made by the drought 
 which runs from the Gulf of Carpentaria 
 to the Australian Bight, and is about a 
 thousand miles wide. In the hut are a man 
 and a woman. 
 
 Nearby, a small wooden cross stands in 
 the red dust. It marks the grave of their 
 only child; they spoke to me of him in 
 hushed tones and with bowed heads, like 
 worshippers murmuring a litany. 
 
 He died from sunstroke, at the close of 
 his Christmas holiday a great little
 
 IMMORTELLES. 31 
 
 worker ! Not school-work, but man's work, 
 that began at dawn and finished in star- 
 light, with the long walk to and from school 
 between he loved to be with his father, 
 and to do what he was doing they had 
 spent the holidays working together on the 
 plain, plucking the wool from the rotten 
 carcases of sheep it was there the stroke 
 fell his little brown hands were constantly 
 plucking at the sheet during his short 
 delirium he knew the touch of his 
 mother's hand on his forehead to the last 
 his father dug the grave at dawn my eyes 
 grew salt when he told me that while the 
 spade mechanically rose and fell he caught 
 himself looking round for his little com- 
 panion, so hard it was to realize his loss. 
 
 "Mother, she was crazed with grief," 
 continued the stricken man ; ' ' and the fancy 
 took her, and nothing would satisfy her 
 but she must have flowers. 'He had lived 
 without them, could we not get a few for 
 him, even now?' she said, bitterly. 'Just 
 a few,' she begged; 'it seemed so dreadful 
 to send him to his grave without one 
 flower. ' But what could I do ? ' ' he waved 
 his hand over the blasted plains. "But 
 women have strange ways of comforting 
 one another, and the neighbours cried with 
 her, and went away and whispered to-
 
 32 
 
 gether, and on the Sunday evening" 
 there was a long silence * ' their little ones 
 came from all round, bringing great red 
 roses and gay poppies, and blue forget-me- 
 nots out of their hats they were not real, 
 but the love that sent them was when they 
 were arranged they looked beautiful 
 there was a faint scent of orange-blossom 
 in the room, that made me look at mother- 
 quiet, heart-easing tears were running 
 
 down her face " 
 
 She had poured out on the breast of her 
 boy the withered petals of the bridal 
 wreath she had treasured for thirteen 
 years.
 
 BULL-DOGS." 
 
 The Revd. Hector Swete, the new vicar 
 of Booubi, arrived by the 8 a.m. train after 
 a fatiguing all-night journey. He was met 
 by an important little man who introduced 
 himself as "Mr. 'Ogg, Churchwarden," 
 and invited him home for a wash and 
 breakfast. Swete was very young, very 
 fresh from England and Oxford, very 
 nnxious to make good, so he listened in- 
 tently as they walked up the only street of 
 the western township. 
 
 It seemed Mr. Hogg was also Sunday 
 School Superintendent "Not many earn- 
 est church workers in Boonbi, Mr. Swete 
 labourers are few, you know" and the 
 annual picnic had been arranged for that 
 very day. But he was so busy he could not 
 leave his store. The two other teachers 
 (both employees of the Superintendent) 
 were also unable to get away. But Mrs. 
 Hogg would go and look after the girls, 
 and if Mr. Swete could manage to be on the 
 station in about an hour's time it really 
 was a shame to trouble him after his long
 
 34 "BULL-DOOS. 
 
 journey! he would find the children as- 
 sembled, and arrangements made that a 
 goods train should drop them at "The 
 Bend," a traditional picnic ground some 
 miles distant. A down "goods" would pull 
 up at the same place at 6 p.m. to bring 
 them home. The clergyman assented with 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 Mrs. Hogg's lips were thin and com- 
 pressed, and she wore her bonnet at the 
 breakfast table. She said little, but there 
 was secret disapproval in her glances at 
 the new vicar's smooth young face, and 
 High Church frills. She left the meal early. 
 When Hector returned to the railway sta- 
 tion, he found her there, surrounded by a 
 group of youngsters, and a few older girls 
 Mrs. Hogg's own class. 
 
 He enjoyed the picnic thoroughly. There 
 was no hitch in the arrangements, and 
 everyone seemed happy except Mrs. 
 Hogg. She had misdoubted Swete from 
 the first, but when he joked with the girls, 
 and shouted and climbed trees with the 
 boys, and went about all day with his coat 
 off when, after the sandwiches and tea, 
 he forgot the second grace when he 
 actually sanctioned a game of kiss-in-the- 
 ring, she openly showed her disapproval by 
 retiring to the provision baskets, where she
 
 "BULL-DOGS." 85 
 
 sat alone till the distant rumble of the down 
 train hurried them back to the railway line. 
 
 Swete, having diffidently helped her and 
 the girls into their compartment, now 
 stood knee deep in the withered grass that 
 fringed the metals, counting the boys, who 
 enjoyed the novelty of clambering up the 
 high footboard into their division of the 
 old-fashioned second-class carriage. 
 
 "All aboard, there?" growled the guard, 
 who disliked interruptions to his time- 
 table. 
 
 " Sixteen right. " Hector climbed in, 
 and the train rolled homewards. 
 
 He sank on a seat with a sigh of relief 
 a moment later he stooped forward, and 
 clapped his hand on his left calf. 
 
 "Heavens! There's something biting 
 me," he rubbed a pinch of broadcloth up 
 and down. 
 
 "P'raps it's a bulldog," suggested a 
 boy. 
 
 ' ' Rubbish I it's some sort of insect ! " He 
 excitedly pulled up the right leg of his 
 trousers. 
 
 "It must be a bulldog," said the boy 
 confidently. "Look!" he shouted, " 'e 
 must a' stood on their nest 'e's crawlin' 
 with them ! ' ' 
 
 "Dear me this is agony!" gasped
 
 36 "BULL-DOGS." 
 
 Swete, now clawing frantically up and 
 down both legs. The boys edged away from 
 the sufferer for fear of infection. 
 
 " Stand back from that window!" he 
 suddenly yelled. "I can't bear this any 
 longer. ' ' 
 
 The boys scattered, and a moment later 
 Swete was leaning far out, shaking his 
 trousers violently by the waistband. Mrs. 
 Hogg's distrust was intensified when 
 several giggling girls turned to tell her 
 that the new clergyman was waving his 
 trousers to them. She instantly insisted 
 that they should leave the windows, and so 
 remained unaware of the catastrophe that 
 followed. 
 
 "I've dropped 'em!" he gasped. 
 
 An avalanche of boys' heads jammed out 
 of the windows to see the last of them. 
 
 Swete fell back on the seat, mechanically 
 arranging his draperies and pulling up his 
 socks. Then he turned his frenzied eyes on 
 the wriggling mass of backs at the win- 
 dows, and excitedly prodded the longest. A 
 touselled head pulled itself free. 
 
 "Mullens, my dear boy you realize my 
 appalling predicament the fix I'm in 
 you must come to my rescue, you really 
 must"; he mopped the perspiration from 
 his face.
 
 "BULL-DOGS." 37 
 
 ''Right ho! I'll walk back for 'em, 
 when we get to Boonbi. ' ' 
 
 "Good Heavens, boy! that's not what I 
 mean we shall be there in ten minutes and 
 I shall have to get out out of the train, 
 you understand like this ! ' ' He swept his 
 bare legs with a despairing gesture. ' l Mul- 
 lens" he laid his hand on the boy's shoul- 
 der with an assumption of pastoral 
 authority, "you really must lend me your 
 knicker-bockers they'll be better than 
 nothing. ' ' 
 
 To his immense relief Mullens assented 
 with a grin, first taking the precaution to 
 transfer from the pockets some marbles 
 and other treasures. 
 
 Swete groaned in sheer horror of the 
 situation as he puffed out deep breaths and 
 wrestled with the top button: the 
 "knickers" had been cut short to leave 
 the marble-player's knees free; they fitted 
 Swete like bathing trunks. 
 
 "But how about you, Mullens you '11 
 have to get out too. We must wrap you 
 
 up somehow. Here " he pulled off his 
 
 clerical coat. "Come along put your 
 arms in I'll roll up the sleeves button 
 it all the way down that's fine." 
 
 So far the boys had been curiously sub- 
 dued, speaking in whispers and hiding
 
 St "BULL-DOGS." 
 
 their smiles. The distress of the kindly 
 clergyman was so obvious that it became 
 a vague trouble to them also. But Mullens 
 had f no special claim on their consideration, 
 and now their suppressed feelings found 
 relief in yells of derision. 
 
 "Yes, we are a queer pair," said Swete 
 with a forced smile, trying to draw their 
 fire from the boy. He pulled out his hand- 
 kerchief and looked at it fixedly, but only 
 wiped his face, and sat staring down at 
 his obtrusively white legs. A thought 
 struck him : he glanced anxiously along the 
 line of sunburnt calves. 
 
 "Shall I ask my sister for 'ers?" said 
 a quick-witted youngster. 
 
 * ' No ! No ! my boy certainly not, ' ' said 
 Swete emphatically. 
 
 Yet time was flying, and there were pos- 
 sibilities in the suggestion. With stock- 
 ings he might pass as a cyclist, and his 
 face being unknown attract little atten- 
 tion. Yes he would consult with Mrs. 
 Hogg she might suggest something of the 
 sort herself it would come so much better 
 from her. And, in spite of her unpleasant 
 manner, she was a good churchwoman 
 she would appreciate his difficult position 
 and be anxious to save him the Church 
 from public scandal.
 
 "BULL-DOOS." 893 
 
 With the desperate courage of a timid 
 animal at bay, he pushed the boys from 
 the window nearest the girls* compart- 
 ment, knelt on the seat, and looked out. 
 
 To his surprize all the windows were 
 up. He rapped his knuckles sharply on 
 the nearest, but there was no response: 
 moments were precious so he leaned out 
 and managed to look in. 
 
 Mrs. Hogg, white with indignation, re- 
 fused to see him, but his facial action and 
 excited gestures threw the girls into fits 
 of laughter. He put his lips to the glass 
 and shouted "Mrs. Hogg!" and the girls 
 told the distracted lady he was blowing 
 them kisses. 
 
 In truth Mrs. Hogg had apparently ex- 
 cellent reasons both for anger and fear. 
 She had severely cross-examined the girls 
 on their first statement and could not 
 doubt its truth. The wretched man must 
 have brought a pocket-flask. So it was an 
 act of real courage on her part when at 
 last she nerved herself to lower the window 
 with the intention of saying gently, "Dear 
 Mr. Swete, be calm, compose yourself. " 
 
 The intention was excellent, but the 
 novelty of the situation was too much for 
 her. Never before had she talked to a 
 tipsy man in the next compartment of a
 
 40 "BULL-DOGS." 
 
 train going full speed. The moment she 
 lowered the window, the roar of the wheels 
 deafened her, the rushing wind choked in 
 her throat, her first word exploded in a 
 hiccough. Her mental confusion, and the 
 shy man's diffidence about plainly saying 
 what he wanted, made it impossible that 
 they should understand one another, es- 
 pecially as Swete took it for granted that 
 the girls had seen and reported his loss. 
 He got the first word in. 
 
 "Madam!" he shouted "most unfor- 
 tunate might be worse boy's knicker- 
 bockers must avoid scandal honour of 
 my cloth what's left of it," he added, 
 with a smile she might well have thought 
 imbecile. 
 
 He was drunk she was quite sure now 
 yet there was a glimmer of sanity in his 
 evident wish that she would shield him 
 from the "scandal" of his disgraceful con- 
 duct. She decided to humour him. 
 
 "Dear Mr. Swete be calm," she 
 shrieked as soothingly as she could in his 
 ear. Then, thinking to divert his thoughts 
 into a more wholesome channel, "You eat 
 so little to-day there's some milk left, 
 and a sandwich V 3 
 
 But Hector had no appetite perhaps he
 
 "BULL-DOGS." 41 
 
 did not hear her, and continued, anxiously 
 watching her face. 
 
 "I'm partly fixed up, you understand 
 partly got them from Mullens much too 
 short." He paused, but she gave no sign 
 of intelligence. 
 
 "But I might pass for a cyclist or 
 tourist " 
 
 Again he waited, but Mrs. Hogg's eyes, 
 half closed against the wind, did not 
 respond. 
 
 " or a Moderator or even a bishop 
 
 surely, madam " 
 
 What a fool the woman was! A long- 
 whistle, and the roar of a passing culvert, 
 warned him the train was nearing Boonbi : 
 He grew desperate scarcely conscious of 
 what he said. 
 
 "I want possibly there's a pair in the 
 provision basket STOCKINGS !" 
 
 To his delight the lady gave him a sym- 
 pathetic nod: he leaned nearer hopefully. 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Swete, it was shocking but 
 calm yourself remember you'll have to 
 preach to-morrow. ' ' 
 
 His face was flushed deep red, partly 
 from agitation, and partly because of the 
 window ledge in the pit of his stomach: he 
 flung propriety to the winds. 
 
 "STOCKINGS!" he roared hoarsely.
 
 42 "BULL-DOGS," 
 
 The lady drew back. 
 
 "Oh I never meant you but perhaps 
 one of the girls " 
 
 Mrs. Hogg threw up the window with a 
 bang, and remained with her back against 
 it to screen her flock from contamination. 
 
 The brakes grated: the train stopped. 
 The boys and girls swarmed out and 
 loitered expectantly, Mrs. Hogg striving 
 in vain to "shoo" them home. 
 
 Mr. Swete in his shirt-sleeves and with 
 a very red face, was leaning out through 
 the shut door, gesticulating and shouting 
 "Hi!" to the stationmaster. Mullens, in 
 clerical garb, stood beside him grinning 
 self-consciously, not indifferent to the 
 wondering gaze of the girls. The station- 
 master came forward, but Mrs. Hogg got 
 in the first word. 
 
 "Oh! Mr. Jenkins!" he lifted his cap 
 to the leading storekeeper's wife it's too 
 dreadful for words it's Mr. Swete the 
 
 new clergyman " she sank her voice 
 
 "he's High Church, you know and they are 
 so lax of course we must make allow- 
 ances he's so young and inexperienced, 
 
 but I really am afraid he's " her voice 
 
 stopped, but her pained expression posi- 
 tively shrieked in Jenkins' ear "tipsy 
 
 squiffy drunk paralytic shikkered" :
 
 "BULL-DOGS." 43 
 
 he couldn't help hearing it: a woman's 
 tongue is all very well for ordinary scandal, 
 but in the dangerous region of libel her 
 eloquent eyebrows safely say everything 
 without saying anything. 
 
 "DisgustinM" muttered the station- 
 master. 
 
 "Yes, indeed but we must hush up the 
 scandal try to get him away quietly 
 humour him." 
 
 Mr. Jenkins was "Low" Church lower 
 even than Mrs. Hogg in fact, as low as 
 he could possibly get, short of joining the 
 Wesleyans. And, as might be expected, 
 he was also addicted to total abstinence 
 his over-indulgence in soft drinks had long 
 scandalized every Avsll-oonducted bar in 
 the district. So Mrs. Hogg's suggestion 
 that he should humour iniquity in high 
 places revolted his hundred-per-cent.- 
 underproof spirit: he knew his duty: he 
 sternly approached Swete, who greeted 
 him exuberantly. 
 
 "Welcome, Mr. Stationmaster ! I sup- 
 pose Mrs. Hogg has explained my predica- 
 ment? You come, like the good Samaritan 
 to aid an unfortunate whose trousers have 
 fallen out of the window any old pair 
 will do " 
 
 1 ' Don 't talk nonsense ! ' ' Jenkins ' brows
 
 44 "BULL-DOGS." 
 
 darkened at the tipsy humour, and profane 
 allusion to something in the Bible. He 
 stared at Mullens, who felt he had to speak. 
 
 " 'E dropped 'em out of the window all 
 right Vs got mine on now we 
 swopped. ' ' 
 
 " 'E was waving 'em to us," tittered a 
 leggy girl, edging closer. 
 
 "I seen him," said another. 
 
 "I'm afraid there's no doubt about it," 
 murmured Mrs. Hogg. 
 
 11 We all seen him!" chorused all the 
 girls, supporting Mrs. Hogg, true to their 
 sex. 
 
 "Eats!" shouted a boy at the back, sup- 
 porting Swete, true to his sex-antagonism. 
 
 "Bulldogs it was bulldogs," clamoured 
 others, proud of their inside information. 
 
 Jenkins turned on them. ' ' Here ! yous 
 clear out!" They obediently shrank back 
 several inches, and stopped shouting they 
 didn't want to miss a word of what was 
 coming. 
 
 "You call yourself a clergyman?" 
 
 "I am a clergyman in a fix, through 
 an unhappy accident. I say, old chap, do 
 get me a pair of trousers any old things 
 will do I'm really sorry to trouble 
 you " 
 
 Had Jenkins been His Excellency or the
 
 "BULL-DOGS." 45 
 
 Prime Minister, or anyone less important 
 than himself he would have thought twice, 
 but it is the nature of Conscious Perfec- 
 tion that it can only think once. 
 
 "Come! Out with you!" He grasped 
 the door-handle. "Nice goin's on dress- 
 in' up with the boys frightenin' the girls 
 gettin' drunk at a Sunday School 
 picnic " 
 
 "How dare you! no you don't hold 
 tight, Mullens!" In the tug-of-door that 
 followed Jenkins had no chance. 
 
 " 'Arry! 'Ere! Quick!" The engine 
 whistled impatiently as a youth sprang 
 from the lamp-room with a lamp in his 
 hand to show he hadn't been listening. 
 
 "Go for the policeman." The guard 
 hurried up the platform. 
 
 "What's all this delay? We're ten 
 minutes behind time as it is!" 
 
 The engine again whistled a prolonged 
 curse of a whistle. Once more Jenkins 
 grabbed the handle. "Lend us a hand, 
 guard, to get him out I'll give him in 
 charge he's drunk beastly drunk " 
 
 It was all over in a moment. Swete was 
 young, and he had suffered much. He was 
 too good a sport to punch the stupid face 
 he swung his open hand and boxed its ear. 
 The boys stared awestruck in all their
 
 46 " BULL-DOGS." 
 
 early-bought experience they had never 
 known such a smack! He staggered back- 
 wards a boy skilfully caught his flying 
 cap his green flag waved wildly as he 
 sprawled on the platform: there came a 
 crescendo clatter of couplings, the car- 
 riage jerked forward, and Swete and Mul- 
 lens crashed sideways out of sight. 
 
 Mullens scrambled to the window. ' ' The 
 guard's got in, and the p'liceman's talking 
 to Jenky my word ! that was a real beaut 
 you gave him " 
 
 "We've got to get out of this- 
 
 Swete rushed to the other door and opened 
 it. "Here! quickly! You go first get 
 down on the footboard, and drop facing 
 the engine." 
 
 "Bight 0!" Mullens jumped at the 
 chance of transgressing the by-laws and 
 landed safely: Swete followed; they slid 
 down the embankment as the van rumbled 
 by: the guard shook his fist at them. 
 
 "Cut home, Mullens dress yourself, 
 and go for my trousers, and bring them and 
 the coat to Mr. Hogg's but what about 
 your supper?" 
 
 "Wot supper?" 
 
 "I mean your dinner you mustn't miss 
 it."
 
 "BULL-DOGS." 47 
 
 "Oh! yer mean my teaI'll eat some- 
 thing as I go along." 
 
 "Right I'll never forget your kindness 
 now let's see how you can run!" Mul- 
 lens showed him the long coat-skirts 
 hampered his knee action at first, until he 
 rolled them comfortably round his waist. 
 
 Swete made a bee-line for Hogg's store 
 and his portmanteau. Sprinting up the 
 street in his shirt sleeves and tights, he 
 was just a boy to those he passed, and at- 
 tracted no attention except from a 
 woman on a verandah who screamed, 
 "That you, Willie?" as he whizzed past. 
 
 Mr. Hogg was at home. Swete breath- 
 lessly explained what had happened as he 
 scrambled into his best suit. Mr. Hogg 
 was very human: ly.s laughter was com- 
 forting, and when he grasped the fact that 
 his wife was at the bottom of the misunder- 
 standing, his very stomach vibrated with 
 delight. He had recently celebrated his 
 silver wedding, so he knew Mrs. Hogg: he 
 foresaw pleasurable discussion in which 
 she would be hopelessly in the wrong. 
 
 "What's the hurry?" he asked. 
 
 "I must go straight back to the station 
 I'm sorry I hit that idiot I must tell him 
 so,"
 
 48 "BULL-DOGS." 
 
 "Yes speakin' as a churchwarden 
 p'raps you're right." 
 
 When they reached the station all Boon- 
 bi was there: the children's confused 
 rumours had brought their elders flying 
 to see the finish between "Jenky" and the 
 new parson who had got tight on "bull- 
 dog." 
 
 Swete walked up to the stationmaster 
 and held out his hand, "I've coine to apolo- 
 gise"; he spoke for all to hear. "You 
 must forgive me." 
 
 Conscious Perfection stood sullen, but 
 Mr. Hogg interposed with breezy authority. 
 
 "Come! Come! Jenkins, shake 'ands." 
 He added in a whisper, "It was all Mrs. 
 'Ogg's mistake, and you mustn't put her 
 in an unpleasant position." 
 
 Jenkins saw his chance to retreat with 
 dignity: he took Swete 's hand. "Of 
 course, as Mrs. Hogg told me, and it was 
 her mistake " 
 
 "Oh! Mr. Jenkins! However can you 
 suggest such a thing? I never so much 
 as mentioned the word, or even hinted I 
 smelt anything, because I didn't poor 
 young man." 
 
 Jenkins stood speechless. 
 
 "Deny it if you dare!" She tossed her 
 head triumphantly and turned to the
 
 "BULL-DOGS." 4d 
 
 crowd. "But I will say this, it does look 
 very much as if someone I accuse nobody 
 has been having a drop too much mak- 
 ing false accusations and falling about the 
 platform." She turned her back on 
 Jenkins. 
 
 Hogg chuckled: "Well well! it's all 
 over now. Come on, Mister Swete come 
 along, Augusta. Good-night, all mornin' 
 service to-morrow at 11 don't forget," 
 
 "I fear it will do me harm in the parish," 
 said Swete gravely. 
 
 ' ' Harm ! All the good in the world ! the 
 church will be packed to-morrow they'll 
 like you all the better for it don't be 
 downhearted why, you've set the whole 
 parish laughin', an' we don't get too many 
 laughs out west."
 
 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 
 
 ''The Vicarage," a weatherboard cot- 
 tage of four rooms with a kitchen at the 
 back, stood at the far end of a by-road 
 on the straggling outskirts of Boonbi. 
 Lean horses nosed and winnowed the dust 
 along the two-rail fence, and wayfarers 
 were few. Here Parson Swete snatched 
 hasty meals at irregular intervals and 
 slept when he had time. 
 
 His housekeeper, Mrs. Callaghan, whose 
 every fat wrinkle suggested "experience" 
 knew a good place when she had it, and 
 never flew in the face of Providence by 
 quarrelling with her bread and butter. 
 But she sniffed in secret at the new par- 
 son's High Church enthusiasm with its 
 erratic time-table, and still pursed her lips 
 when cronies discussed his doings at the 
 picnic, so their relation remained formal, 
 though she had now faithfully turned his 
 mattress every morning for a month. 
 
 Swete leaned listlessly over the front 
 gate, waiting for his tea. He was de-
 
 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 51 
 
 pressed. All day out on the plains the sun 
 had been dreadful, and he had just dis- 
 covered that his fuchsia was dying the 
 pioneer plant in the red dust patch he 
 called his garden: every evening for a 
 week he had nourished it on Mrs. Cal- 
 Jaghan's greasy dish water he was pay- 
 ing five shillings a barrel for river water 
 and had to economize. 
 
 It was nearly dark, but fierce heat still 
 quivered under a lowering pall of dust, and 
 smoke. The myriad voices of evening were 
 silent, for the pools were caked dry, and 
 the tanks and wells were empty, and the 
 grass was ashes. Up the road a pair of 
 hobbles jingled with unsatisfied persist- 
 ency. There was no other sound. 
 
 A shrill whistle. Swete turned keen 
 annoyance in his face to see a boy ap- 
 proaching from the common in which the 
 road lost itself : he carried a long stick and 
 had a sack on his shoulder. As he ap- 
 proached the gate 
 
 "Good evening, Mullens," Swete said 
 with forced geniality. "Hurrying home to 
 tea?" he added suggestively. 
 
 For answer, Mullens carefully swung the 
 sack to the ground, climbed astraddle on 
 the fence, and, taking deliberate aim, spat 
 on the dying fuchsia.
 
 52 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 
 
 The irreverence of Australian children 
 often pained Swete not for his own sake 
 but for the dignity of his office. Ever 
 since the picnic he had carried a heavy 
 cross, and so far had carried it bravely. 
 The embarrassing curiosity of the children, 
 the gross witticisms of parishioners, the 
 winks of the ungodly on the public house 
 verandah, the outrageous article in the 
 local paper headed "A REVEREND 
 HIGHLANDER," the "full and immedi- 
 ate*' explanation he had been obliged to 
 forward to his bishop all these had sorely 
 tried his patience, yet they were as nothing 
 to the daily irritation of Mullens' aggres- 
 sive friendship. 
 
 The lad simply basked in his notoriety 
 as the parson's understudy. When they 
 met about the town he would cheerfully 
 turn back for company's sake, and if Swete 
 sighted him walking ahead, still there was 
 no escape, for the alert boy would look 
 round and beckon, and sit on a fence till 
 he came up, and whistle imperiously with 
 his fingers if his victim sought to escape 
 across a paddock or down a side street. 
 And now, uninvited, he sat on the vicarage 
 fence, expectorating over the vicarage 
 garden !
 
 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 53 
 
 "Be off with you," he shouted roughly, 
 "and try to learn manners." 
 
 Mullens stared from the angry face to 
 the sack, and back again. 
 
 " Wot 'sup with yer?" 
 
 "Do you hear me be off!" 
 
 He climbed down, lifted the sack against 
 the gate right under Swete's nose, and 
 dawdled off. 
 
 "Here what's this sack?" shouted 
 Swete. 
 
 "Crorfish," answered Mullens sullenly. 
 
 All at once Swete realised his blunder, 
 and, full of contrition instinctively did the 
 right thing. "Wait a moment!" he rushed 
 through the house to the tea table, snatched 
 up a cake hot from the oven, and returned 
 to the gate. 
 
 "Crayfish, eh?" he remarked, just as if 
 nothing had happened, "and for me? 
 Thank you, Mullens. Here! you must be 
 hungry. ' ' 
 
 Mullens broke the cake in halves and 
 silently offered one to Swete who accepted 
 a morsel with a quick nod of thanks: 
 Mullens' hands did not look clean. 
 
 There was a silence. 
 
 "What bait?" asked Swete at length. 
 His nature unconsciously adapted itself to 
 his company. Now he was mere boy
 
 54 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 
 
 even to his drought-stricken brevity of 
 speech. 
 
 "Pig's guts but they was rotten " 
 
 Swete coughed violently into his hand, 
 and furtively dropped something behind 
 the gate for a terrible moment he was 
 mere vicar. 
 
 "Claws pulled through before I could 
 jerk 'em out, ' ' continued the angler warm- 
 ing up. 
 
 "But where did you catch them? that 
 is what I'm trying to get at," interrupted 
 the vicar desperate to escape a horrible 
 taste in his mind. 
 
 Mullens' face beamed. 
 
 "River at 'The Bend' you know 
 where we 'ad the accident." He grinned 
 at the clergyman. 
 
 Swete took up his cross once more in 
 heroic submission. 
 
 "Good-night, Mullens, and thank you." 
 He lifted the sack inside the gate. "I'll 
 ask Mrs. Callaghan to cook them to-night. ' ' 
 
 "They'll keep a week they're alive," 
 shouted Mullens from the darkness. 
 
 Swete gripped the mouth of the sack 
 closely as he went through the house to the 
 kitchen. 
 
 "Tea ready, Mrs. Callaghan?"
 
 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 55 
 
 "Well, if you like to call it 'tea' there's 
 bread and butter." 
 
 "Oh, that will do " 
 
 "There was a cake," she interrupted 
 severely. 
 
 Swete's face expressed sudden disgust. 
 
 "You eat the 'ole o' the last one," she 
 said indignantly. 
 
 "Yes yes I know, but the fact is, I'm 
 rather tired of cake." A thought struck 
 .aim and he held out the sack. "Besides, 
 cake wouldn't go well with crayfish, would 
 it? so I gave it to the boy who caught 
 them and we may as well have some for 
 tea." 
 
 "Did I understan' you," she spoke with 
 acid deliberation, "to say you wanted them 
 things for tea?" 
 
 "Well, I don't exactly want them, but 
 they're a present, and we can't throw them 
 
 away and " he spoke with sudden 
 
 emphasis "they're very awkward things 
 to have about the place yes, we'll have 
 them for tea." 
 
 "They'll take 'arf an hour to bile, an' 
 it's dark now." 
 
 "All right," he said absently, "I'll have 
 time to change." 
 
 Ten minutes later there was a sharp 
 knock at his door; his coat was off and by
 
 56 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 
 
 the light of a candle he was bathing his 
 feet in the hand-basin. 
 
 "I'm go in' out for the evenin', which 
 
 I told you this mornin' to me brothers " 
 
 there was a high-pitched note in her voice 
 Swete already knew too well. "I'm late 
 now, an' the kettle's bilin' for yer tea, an' 
 I've put them things in the big pot ! 
 
 Swete stood up in the basin. 
 
 "What! Alive ?" he shouted. 
 
 -An' if you'll take 'em orf in 'arf 
 
 an hour, ' ' she continued, ignoring his ques- 
 tion, "they'll be a lovely colour be care- 
 ful 'ow you 'andle 'em the spikes on their 
 backs is deadly poison. ' ' Her heavy boots 
 creaked towards the kitchen. 
 
 As she entered, the clergyman, coatless, 
 barefooted, bounded past, bumping her 
 hat awry and jolting the lamp she carried, 
 as he rushed to the range. 
 
 Fresh wood crackled under the big pot. 
 The water was evidently getting warm, 
 for there was an agonizing clatter within, 
 and a large claw protruded under the lid, 
 opening and shutting convulsively. Swete 
 dragged the pot to the floor and deliber- 
 ately tipped out an avalanche of warm 
 water and crayfish. Mrs. Callaghan 
 shrieked, and instinctively clutching her 
 skirts, the lamp crashed as she floundered
 
 \ 
 
 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 57 
 
 up on a chair against the wall. Swete, 
 suddenly conscious of his bare feet, sprang 
 sideways to a small table opposite, and 
 wriggled up, staring wildly into the sud- 
 den darkness. 
 
 "Good heavens! woman, what have you 
 done?" he stammered, almost inarticulate 
 with excitement, and vaguely thinking she 
 had thrown the lamp at him. 
 
 "Well! did you ever 'ear the like of 
 that!" she screamed, apparently address- 
 ing the invisible crayfish that now seethed 
 and clattered over the floor with pathetic 
 agility. 
 
 "Where are you, woman why don't you 
 strike a match?" he shouted angrily. 
 
 "Never you mind where I am " the 
 
 poor thing would have gone off in hysterics 
 but for the necessity of gripping the back 
 
 of the chair "- and don't you call me 
 
 'woman.' An' if you think I'm goin' to 
 get down in the dark with all them 'arf- 
 boiled lobsters rackettin' round you're 
 greatly mistook. The matches is on the 
 left 'and corner of the chimley-piece and 
 them as wants 'em can get 'em." 
 
 There was silence for a moment but 
 for their quick breathing, and the animated 
 tapping of claws on the boards.
 
 58 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 
 
 "Ain't yer found 'em yet!" she asked 
 querulously. 
 
 Swete, loathing the vulgar woman, and 
 his ridiculous position, recklessly lowered 
 a foot to the floor. What he trod on he 
 never knew a crayfish, or perhaps a frag- 
 ment of hot lamp glass but it was suffi- 
 cient to wring from him a cry of mingled 
 pain and horror. Mrs. Callaghan shrieked 
 responsively her nerves also were greatly 
 shaken. 
 
 "Wot are yer up to now!" she gasped 
 with her returning breath. "An' you call 
 yourself a Christian, playin' monkey tricks 
 on a lonely woman! An' I'd like to know 
 who's goin' to wipe up that mess! now 
 I know wot pore Mrs. 'Ogg must a' suf- 
 fered I'm glad it is dark for all I know 
 yer wavin' yer " 
 
 "Silence!" The clear low-pitched voice 
 found its way through her passion, and sur- 
 prised her into a pause. He continued 
 rapidly: "God forgive me if I have caused 
 you anger, but I was horrified at your 
 cruelty thoughtless, I am quite sure 
 and only wished to save the unfortunate 
 creatures from torture I am sorry my cry 
 startled you I trod on something; my foot 
 is bleeding." 
 
 "0 dear! it 'ill fester 'orrible," she ex-
 
 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 59 
 
 claimed, suddenly forgetting everything in 
 the sympathy of her sex. " There's a nice 
 clean bit o' linen in the dresser drawer 
 if 'e bathed it in watrm water or p'raps a 
 
 bread poultice " her voice murmured 
 
 along as though she were talking of the 
 sufferer to another woman as indeed she 
 was. 
 
 "Couldn't you get the linen for me?" 
 he craftily suggested, thinking to use her 
 sympathy as a stepping-stone to the 
 matches. 
 
 "Not if you was to give me all Boonbi"; 
 her voice rose as her intelligence re- 
 asserted itself "the idea! with me all 
 
 of a tremble an' 'ardly able to stand steady 
 on the chair." 
 
 The fear of a poisoned foot had already 
 troubled Swete. He now nearly rolled off 
 the table trying to suck the wound. 
 
 "0 wot a night," moaned Mrs. Calla- 
 ghan. 
 
 "Couldn't you sit down?" 
 
 "As if I ain't been tryin' all the time!" 
 
 There was another silence. 
 
 "They seem to be fewer now," he said. 
 "The doors are open: perhaps they are 
 making for the fresh air. ' ' 
 
 "I only 'ope they don't take to climb- 
 in'," she said despondently.
 
 80 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 
 
 The movements on the 8oor slowly 
 ceased. More than once Swete gently 
 reminded her of her strong boots, but the 
 poor old thing was quite unnerved and a 
 frenzied crayfish in the dark is no laughing 
 matter, even to the strongest minded. 
 
 He also availed himself of this unique 
 opportunity to speak of higher things, and 
 his diffident earnestness soothed the simple 
 soul and reminded her of a similar experi- 
 ence long ago in England when Callaghan 
 was courting her and the gas in the church 
 went out she interrupted Hector to tell 
 him all about it and the parson preached 
 in the dark to keep the people quiet till 
 candles were brought from the vestry. 
 "And" she concluded "though Calla- 
 ghan 's dead these twenty years I said it 
 to his face, and I say it now 'e 'ad some- 
 think to do with that gas goin' out 'e set 
 beside me larfin' all the time, and 'is con- 
 duck was somethink disgraceful!" 
 
 Fortunately relief came before the spiri- 
 tual but absent-minded man had time to 
 say "and now, let us pray." Heavy foot- 
 steps approached the back door. 
 
 "It's John comin' to meet me!" she ex- 
 claimed joyously. "That you, John?" 
 
 "Where the devil are you parson out!" 
 he added apprehensively.
 
 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 61 
 
 "I am here," said Swete quietly, "and 
 if you'll kindly strike a match mind the 
 crayfish ! ' ' 
 
 John groped his way to the door, and 
 struck a match on his trousers. Holding 
 it over his head, he peered into the kitchen. 
 His sister stood on a chair against* the 
 wall, and the half -dressed vicar sat on the 
 table opposite: both were looking fixedly 
 at the floor. 
 
 "They're gone!" Swete slipped down 
 joyously and hopped to the mantelpiece. 
 
 "Did you ever!" exclaimed the lady, 
 slowly descending backwards and sitting 
 with a sigh of satisfaction. 
 
 Swete lit a candle. 
 
 "You didn't happen to meet any cray- 
 fish?" he laughed, but changed his tone 
 when he noticed the stern expression on 
 John's face, and changed it to such good 
 effect that John soon roared till he had to 
 lean against the dresser. 
 
 "There's the cror fish!" he shouted 
 suddenly. 
 
 "Lord a' mercy!" screamed his sister, 
 leaping to her feet and planting a foot on 
 the chair. But there was no call for alarm 
 they lay along the wainscoat in huddled 
 groups quite still. 
 
 While Mrs. Callaghan now thoroughly
 
 62 MRS. CALLAGHAN. 
 
 reconciled was bustling about preparing 
 the parson's long-deferred meal, John 
 whispered confidentially : 
 
 "I've bin thinkin', Mr. Swete, we'd bet- 
 ter not say too much about this business." 
 
 "Precisely the same thought had oc- 
 curred to me" said Swete, with difficulty 
 restraining his eagerness "people are so 
 ready to turn everything connected with 
 religion " 
 
 "0 it ain't that " John waved religion 
 up the chimney. 
 
 Swete looked pained. 
 
 "It's Hemma's good name I'm thinkin' 
 of."
 
 CROWS. 
 
 The "Pommy" parson made good, as a 
 good man always will, and when the long 
 drought closed down on the ten thousand 
 square miles of sheep-run that he called 
 his "parish" the sufferings of man and 
 beast overwhelmed him. His grief at his 
 parishioners' profanity and irreligion soon 
 passed in pity for their losses and admira- 
 tion of their courage. They seldom spoke, 
 and then only about stock feed water. 
 They toiled incessantly. The railway sid- 
 ings were congested with trucks laden with 
 fodder purchased at famine prices from 
 the coastal fatrmers. This feed, with vast 
 quantities of green-stuff lopped from the 
 river-belts, was carted miles to the dying 
 flocks. 
 
 The new chum saw with horror the fam- 
 ished brutes licking the very dust as he 
 thought; in reality, nosing for the seeds 
 and dead stalks of vanished herbage. He 
 rode a bicycle, and his flying black coat- 
 tails were soon familiar in the district. A 
 feverish pity and a longing to help drove
 
 64 CROWS. 
 
 his wheel far out on the plains. The hateful 
 crows flapped heavily and cawed curses as 
 he spurted past dead sheep, and pedalled 
 slowly through thousands that could not 
 die. The wicked blue mirage came and 
 went about him; silent little waves of im- 
 palpable dust leapt from under his tyres; 
 rhymes from the Ancient Mariner rang in 
 his ears he, too, was adrift in a silent sea 
 of phantoms, and death, and corruption. 
 
 One day he came upon a stockman stoop- 
 ing over a young ewe, still alive, but lying 
 helpless. Her exposed eye was picked out, 
 and her lamb lay near, dead both eyes 
 gone, the kidneys ripped out. The man 
 lifted her on her legs, but she was too weak 
 to stand. 
 
 * ' Kargh kargh kar-r-gh. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Look, ' ' said the stockman. 
 
 The parson glanced up. 
 
 "No here!" The man pointed at the 
 ground. The ewe lay in a dusty circle of 
 innumerable hoof -prints. He shook Ms 
 fist fiercely in the clergyman's face. 
 
 "She faced them bloody crows for two 
 days round and round her little 'un be- 
 side her all the while suckin' her strength 
 but they got it at last ! ' ' 
 
 Swete rode on, sick at heart. 
 
 "Hey, parson "
 
 CROWS. 65 
 
 He glanced back over his shoulder. The 
 man was holding up the dead lamb by the 
 tail. 
 
 ' * Feed my lambs ! ' ' 
 
 As his head again bowed forward the 
 little carcase thudded almost under his 
 wheel and rolled over and over in the dust. 
 He spurted in horror the insult was not 
 meant for him. 
 
 At some of the larger tanks pumping 
 engines had been rigged to lift what water 
 remained into radiating troughs, but at the 
 smaller hole he now approached there was 
 other work forward. 
 
 The thirst-maddened sheep had stag- 
 gered by scores into the quagmire, and, too 
 weak to return had remained bogged ; some 
 still living, others trampled under foot. 
 Three men worked in the stinking slime, 
 dragging out the living sheep, and building 
 a protecting wall round the bog with the 
 swollen carcases; from these the wool 
 would easily be plucked by hand later. He 
 dismounted on the blistered brink and 
 looked down. 
 
 There was something eerie, inhuman, 
 abominable, in the scene the yellow pit 
 quivering in white light the mud- 
 plastered men so active among the shape- 
 less, silent, grey things, It was like $
 
 66 CROWS. 
 
 glimpse through a microscope at a drop of 
 putrid water, swarming with elementary 
 life. 
 
 "Storm comin'," said one of the men, 
 looking up, and trying to wipe his forehead 
 on his shoulder. A cylindrical dust-cloud 
 was rolling from the west. He had spoken 
 cheerfully; dust was preferable to stench 
 and flies. The others scrambled to the 
 brink to look. 
 
 "I've brought the Sydney papers." The 
 parson threw a roll on the ground. They 
 nodded thanks, and returned to their work; 
 he remounted and followed his shadow 
 homeward. 
 
 The white sunlight suddenly fled before 
 him. He looked back and saw that all the 
 west was blotted out by a billow of red dust, 
 It seemed as though the plains themselves 
 were upheaving in a tidal wave. 
 
 He loved Nature; despite Oxford, and 
 gold crosses, and ascetic illuminations, they 
 twain were still one flesh, and her rising 
 passion thrilled him. He dismounted and 
 leaned on his wheel, waiting. The lamb, 
 the tainted slough, were forgotten in the 
 thought that whenever Creation thus ap- 
 pealed to him he heard the voice of the 
 Creator. 
 
 Scattered puffs of dust trailed towards
 
 CROWS. 67 
 
 him as catspaws fleck on oily sea then the 
 storm burst. He turned his back to the 
 wind that licked the baked soil bare as con- 
 crete. The heavier particles, driving along 
 the ground, tinkled against the steel spokes, 
 and piled to windward of the tyres. He 
 moved his foot, and already its outline was 
 ridged in dust. He looked at it curiously, 
 remembering the strange heaps of red 
 earth against the western side of every 
 post. He pictured the fate of a sick or 
 drunken man lying there, the earth-tide 
 rising against him rippling over 
 
 ' * Kargh-kargh-kar-r-gh ! ' ' 
 
 He could not see the black wings driving 
 and wheeling in the blinding dust, nor the 
 wicked eyes that had found him, but the 
 lightning thought of a dead lamb with 
 bloody eye-sockets seared his soul he be- 
 came conscious of an obscene power of 
 which the evil birds were a manifestation 
 a power malefic, wide-winged, triumphant, 
 with cruel beak, and tearing talons 
 
 "Kar-r-gh!" 
 
 He stared up into the murk dull red, 
 like dry blood and shook his fist at the 
 accursed cry. An imprecation tore his soul 
 and distorted his face 
 
 "God ."he stopped. 
 
 The Great Name rang through his horror
 
 68 CROWS. 
 
 in a voice that was not his own he flung 
 down his machine and fell on his knees, his 
 
 hands clasped, sobs shaking him 
 
 "Then the Lord answered Job out of the 
 whirlwind. ' '
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 The rattle of the typewriter stopped. 
 With fingers motionless on the keys, she 
 sat forward listening. There was a quick 
 knock. Fear was in her face as she sprang 
 up, glanced at the mirror, touched her hair, 
 and opened the door. 
 
 " Arthur! you must be mad! " then 
 
 she noticed his ashen face, his laboured 
 breath, and hand clinging for support. 
 " Come in you must." She looked fear- 
 fully down the passage as she drew him 
 into the little office, closed the door, and 
 supported him to the sofa, on which he fell 
 helpless. She had never seen him like that 
 before, and thought he was going to die. 
 She straightened him on the sofa, put 
 water to his lips, and dabbed his temples 
 with her handkerchief. Madness! wicked 
 selfish madness ! knowing he is so ill poor 
 darling ! 
 
 Love for him clashed with terror for her- 
 self if he died now an inquest scandal 
 ruin ! Her hand shook as she bathed his 
 forehead. When at last he showed signs
 
 70 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 of life, she fell on her knees and kissed him 
 passionately for sheer joy that he was not 
 dead as well as for sheer joy that he was 
 alive. Only in the very clutch of passion 
 does a woman lose sight of the other things 
 that matter. 
 
 He looks at her, vaguely, at first. 
 
 "Lyn? yes sorry stairs too much 
 for me." 
 
 "What! you came all the way up by the 
 stairs?" 
 
 "Automatic not working." 
 
 "It's dreadful it's wicked of you to do 
 such things how can you hope " 
 
 "I don't doctor gives me three months 
 saw him yesterday three months that 
 is, if I'm careful much too long without 
 you you haven't kissed me yet, Lyn." 
 
 "Oh! I'm so terrified." She tiptoed to 
 the door and listened. Then she knelt be- 
 side him. "Darling you feel better now? 
 Don't you think that if I helped you down 
 stairs, and got a taxi, you could go home 
 safely?" She kissed his forehead. 
 
 "None of your baptismal kisses for me 
 keep them for our baby." His arm went 
 roughly round her neck, and drew her lips 
 down to his ; she did not resist. 
 
 He laughed when he let her go. "Yes, 
 I do feel better now more fit to run down
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 71 
 
 the marble stairs than up the golden ones. 
 God ! this passion of mine keeps me alive ! 
 See! The strength your lips have given 
 me ! woman of mine, if only you would 
 give if only we could have all our hearts' 
 desire, you and I together could beat the 
 Doctor and Death you will you must " 
 then he saw even through his blind passion, 
 the suffering in her face. 
 
 "Arthur" she could hardly speak "I 
 do understand all you say and feel oh, 
 so well I would gladly die for you, but 
 not that not that ! Why is life so terribly 
 cruel ! Why does any girl keep on being- 
 good, when her own heart oh, I can't ex- 
 plain, it's all so dreadful listen! Some- 
 one's coming!" She clutched his arm, star- 
 ing at the door. They heard only the 
 throbbing silence that filled the great 
 warren of offices after office hours. 
 
 "Don't be a little goose, Lyn it's all 
 right I told her I had another manuscript 
 to leave with you. ' ' 
 
 "Have you? Oh, I'm so glad give it 
 to me." 
 
 "And that I should go on afterwards to 
 the second-hand book shops ; it 's all right. ' ' 
 
 "Another manuscript! A story! How 
 lovely! Is it about that red-haired girl at
 
 72 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 the tea rooms, who puts her engagement 
 ring in her mouth when she scrubs?" 
 
 ' ' Sit down here beside me and talk. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, please, Arthur, give it to me now 
 Mild I'll begin it at once." 
 
 "Do you think I climbed those stairs to 
 watch you thump that thing, and to listen 
 to its clatter! Nestle down here beside me 
 you shall, I tell you that's right dar- 
 ling." 
 
 "Oh, have you no pity you frighten me 
 you don't understand! I love you, but I 
 am terrified all the time. It would kill 
 mother if she knew. You may have been 
 followed just think what would happen ! ' ' 
 
 "Impossible! She's waiting in for a 
 friend this afternoon she told me so and 
 besides, if she did come she would find I 
 told her the truth approximately. I have 
 a manuscript for you, and I am going for 
 a prowl round the book shops later on. 
 Now let's forget everything but ourselves 
 put both arms round me God! how I 
 love you." 
 
 But she strained away from him, staring 
 at the door. "Listen! Listen! Im sure I 
 heard steps." 
 
 "It's a policeman in the street don't be 
 a fool, Lyn." 
 
 "Let me go! Someone's coming!" As
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 78 
 
 she sprang from him, her white terror 
 brought him to his feet. They stood listen- 
 ing. Footsteps sounded along the passage. 
 He quickly turned the key in the door and 
 whispered, " Don't answer if anyone knocks 
 pretend you are out. ' ' 
 
 "No! No! Madness!" She unlocked the 
 door. "Lie down again quickly!" Her 
 tragic gesture sent him to the sofa like a 
 shot. "You're ill stairs too much for you 
 let me do all the talking." Already she 
 was clicking the typewriter vigorously, her 
 eyes on the door. 
 
 No knock came. She stopped typing. The 
 footsteps passed, and died away. She sank 
 back, her face covered with her hands. He 
 got up and lifted her in his arms. Triumph 
 was in his face as he kissed her again and 
 again her pallid lips, her closed eyes The 
 passing of imminent danger had left her 
 limp ; it left him laughing. The male, when 
 lie goes a-huntmg accepts peril as a con- 
 dition of conquest. This is an ingrained 
 instinct of ages. Every man's hand is 
 against him, and every woman's but one. 
 Her jungle tribe, and all the jungle world 
 have ever hated him, fought him with every 
 weapon from stonp axe to legal proceedings. 
 Yet still he lives ! Still laughs at danger- 
 still glories in the chase. And the nobler
 
 74 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 his quarry the keener his delight. A tiger 
 skin that nearly cost his life is a trophy 
 well worth the risk better than the silly 
 pelts of a hundred rabbits. 
 
 Woman is one : she is herself. But man 
 is two: he is himself, and he is male, and 
 when he is mere male he is never himself. 
 The fierce strife between these two is at 
 once his tragedy and his triumph. Tragedy, 
 because in his prime he alternates between 
 two clashing regrets that he wasted so 
 much time burning the midnight oil of 
 romance, and that he squandered so much 
 of his glorious youth in the immoral pur- 
 suit of mere morality. And his triumph, 
 because age brings this knowledge that 
 he has won through in spite of his passion 
 that passion was in truth the inspiration 
 and not the enemy of his soul. 
 
 Happy he, however, grey or gone his 
 hair, who still counts the glamour of life 
 greater than its glory. For him life still 
 lives, even though his many tender mem- 
 ories are shadowed by regrets that they are 
 not more. 
 
 "Lyn! Lyn! Isn't it wonderful. This 
 life of ours transports us into its wilder- 
 ness of fierce joy, and danger, and strange 
 enchantments. Do you remember that 
 hustling world and hot city far down there.
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 75 
 
 where we waited so long for one another 
 that dead grave from which we sprang 
 together through the stars to this last star 
 of passionate love I Open your eyes, Lyn ! 
 In their depths the altar-light of your soul 
 never flickers. I love your tearless love 
 so restful so true so strong ! The devil 
 take all weepy women artesian bores- 
 forever welling tepid sentiment tears to 
 order that are not tears at all, but only the 
 unpleasant excretion of disordered emotion. 
 The weepy woman has dry lips and a veno- 
 mous tongue the weepy woman " 
 
 "Darling, I'm only frightened I'm not 
 crying. ' ' 
 
 "I'm praising you, Lyn, by contrast 
 I have never once seen you cry.'* 
 
 "But I do cry sometimes when I'm 
 alone." 
 
 "Moral, never be alone, or only cry when 
 I can kiss away your tears. You're not 
 really sad, Lyn, only tired, and a bit over- 
 strung. You lie down now come on and 
 I'll tell you about Thistledown." 
 
 "Your new story? "Will you really? 
 It's a lovely name no, Arthur! please- 
 I'd much rather sit beside you it's you 
 who should be resting." 
 
 "Lie down at once there! Is that com- 
 fortable? Say 'yes'."
 
 76 THISTLfiDOWN. 
 
 4 ' Yes, dear I always love to be with you 
 and yet I am never really happy. All 
 this secrecy and lying and deception and 
 danger terrifies me so ! Sometimes I think 
 I'm beginning to look different. Mother 
 asked me last night if I had anything on my 
 mind. Only this morning a lovely girl 
 fresh as a flower brought some verses and 
 waited while I typed them for her. She 
 looked so happy in her radiant innocence as 
 she sat on this very sofa, and I couldn't 
 help wondering what she would think of me 
 if she knew oh! it's dreadful." 
 
 "She brought verses what sort*?" 
 
 "Just simple little (love verses she's 
 having them typed for a friend. ' ' 
 
 "Ah! Good luck to them both!" 
 
 "No, Arthur you're quite wrong I 
 couldn't imagine her " 
 
 "Any more than she could 'imagine' you ! 
 All the time you were admiring her, she was 
 probably envying you your tranquil happi- 
 ness in your work." 
 
 "Oh, no! Men always think girls are 
 like themselves I'm certain she was quite 
 different from me. Now, do sit quietly for 
 a little, and tell me all about 'Thistle- 
 down'." 
 
 "I wrote it last night after I had seen 
 the doctor. I couldn't sleep. It wasn't
 
 tHISTLEbOWN. 7? 
 
 fear that kept me awake I didn't think of 
 the act of dying that never troubled me-- 
 I die every night when I sleep it is nothing 
 at all. But one's outlook on life is so amaz- 
 ingly different from one's outlook on three 
 months with care. Thoughts came throng- 
 ing. Great thoughts, and great emcticns 
 shook me through and through. I realised 
 why Madam Eoland at the foot of the guillo- 
 tine asked for pen and paper to set down 
 the strange thoughts that were rising in 
 her. I felt as I feel now a feverish access 
 of physical and mental power the startled 
 rush of every faculty of mind and body to 
 fulfil its work while yet there is time all 
 the unbegotten children of body and soul 
 crying out for birth. You were the centre 
 of every thought every emotion: all the 
 work undone, the children unborn are yours. 
 Lyn, this passion-in-death is too big for us 
 we can't fight it even if we would. It is 
 not I at all ! My body is only the trampled 
 battlefield where life desperately fighting 
 is slowly yielding to death. My passion 
 for you now is a thousand times more im 
 perious because it is life heroic life itself 
 that pleads through me. Lyn! " He 
 kissed her again and again. "You will be 
 mine I know it now I am sure " 
 "No ! No ! No ! darling have pity on me '
 
 78 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 If only you were well I should feel less ho'p- 
 less. Tell me please more about those 
 great thoughts, and "Thistledown,' I'm 
 quite sure little Thistledown is the loveliest 
 of all our children." She kissed him. 
 
 "Yes, I'll talk quietly now. I wrote it 
 last night after I had seen the doctor. I 
 think it's good " 
 
 "Don't I know that! I hear your soul 
 in all you write." 
 
 "Good, because it is you, not me, or 
 rather it is the wedded best of both of us I 
 wonder if you will find your soul in it?" 
 
 "My love for you? Even your genius 
 could never express that! Will you send 
 it to the "Bulletin" or keep it for your next 
 book?" 
 
 "I wrote it for you, Lyn you only." He 
 flung an envelope on her desk. " No ! leavo 
 it there we have one another now. How 
 long is it since I came that morning with 
 'Alone'?" 
 
 1 ' Nearly six months how quickly things 
 happen! It was June the tenth you 
 noticed my violets, don't you remember 1 
 And now the Christmas bush is in flower. 
 Arthur, I never told you before but after 
 you went I read 'Alone' over and over, and 
 when I tried to type it I couldn't, my hands
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 79 
 
 were shaking so. It was all so wonderful 
 so terrible." 
 
 "What was terrible?" 
 
 " ' Alone!' Poor Jim, married to that 
 stupid woman with her pretty face. And 
 her vile friend! How I hated the little 
 beast with his squeaky voice, thin lips, and 
 Charlie Chaplin moustache." 
 
 4 ' You little humbug ! It wasn 't only poor 
 Jim's tragedy made your hands shake." 
 
 "Of course it was you, too after you 
 said 'good-bye' the way we looked at one 
 another such a long time without speaking, 
 and I could not take my eyes from yours 
 but that was not terrible only wonderful. ' ' 
 
 "Was it love I" 
 
 "Oh, no love is much more wonderful 
 than that it takes time to learn love yet 
 perhaps it was the tiny seed of the great 
 flower that has grown up since. Perhaps I 
 felt Jim's story so much because I imagined 
 him like you." 
 
 "You little darling! So your pity for 
 poor Jim was akin to love for me. Lucky 
 for Jim! I suffer no rival in print, and 
 even if he 's out of print he shall be brought 
 to book. I'll re-publish him as a curate, 
 and marry him to a fat widow in the first 
 chapter. Darling, I love your muffled little 
 laugh,"
 
 80 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 "I love your nonsense do go on." 
 
 "Lyn. I'll write a nonsense book just 
 for you. A very balloon of a book, lighter 
 than air, inflated with little muffled laughs, 
 to be sold in the streets, swaying skyward 
 in bunches. Magic books! The moment 
 you open them they will vanish in a burst 
 of merriment. That's the sort of book this 
 worried old world wants just laughing 
 gas prose or verse? Why, gas-metre of 
 course!" 
 
 "Go on, darling," she pressed her cheek 
 against his. 
 
 "People try to reason with sorrow no 
 good! You can't argue sorrow away,, but 
 you can laugh it away. That's why I go 
 to see Charlie Chaplin when I can't see 
 you." 
 
 "Pig! What boys men are! To think of 
 the author of 'Alone' liking Chaplin." 
 
 ' ' And what women women are ! To think 
 that Queen Lyn, the last and loveliest of 
 all her royal line, detests Charlie exactly as 
 all queens and fair ladies of old must have 
 detested the court fool." 
 
 "But his vulgarity! No court jester ever 
 made offensive allusions to the state of the 
 king's socks if he wore socks, or sneezed 
 food over the royal table." 
 
 "No, but he did make allusions that even
 
 THISTLEDOWN. n 
 
 the Film Censor of to-day would ban. 
 Charlie is the favourite jester at the Court 
 of Democracy. His trousers and boots are 
 his cap and bells. His coarseness is the 
 least part of him. Because, beneath all his 
 antics is a deeper wisdom than perhaps he 
 himself knows. He symbolizes the eternal 
 revolt of men and children against conven- 
 tions. That is why men and children love 
 him. And woman detests him because the 
 conventions he outrages are her very own 
 woman-made laws." 
 
 "But there are unconventional women " 
 
 "Now, Lyn, be honest! Of course there 
 are! But what is your secret opinion of 
 them?" 
 
 "I always loathed the mad feminists, but 
 why talk about them? What have they to 
 do with us!" 
 
 "Nothing don't call them feminists, 
 they're neuters, at war, not with men, but 
 with life. Just an unpleasant by-product 
 of over civilisation but let's get back to 
 Charlie Chaplin." 
 
 ' ' What ! When you Ve got me ! " 
 
 "A fair knock out! Count me out in 
 kisses." 
 
 "Oh, Arthur, if only you could write 
 more just to please yourself, and less for 
 the papers ! I often feel quite unhappy at
 
 82 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 all the clever thoughts you waste when you 
 are talking to me." 
 
 "No, the thoughts worth anything al- 
 ways come back again all the brighter 
 because you have smiled at them. But I 
 really will write your nonsense book, Lyn 
 I mean it the idea has got hold of me let 
 me see ! As a Christmas present it would 
 go well publish next Christmas thick 
 paper good type yes I could finish it in 
 twelve months " 
 
 "How lovely, darling." Her arms held 
 him closely as she kissed his cheek "Go 
 on., dear." 
 
 "Lyn, you noticed what I said?" 
 
 "Yes yes you will finish it in twelve 
 months. ' ' 
 
 "Lyn sometimes we feel that we are 
 greater than we know. Eeally, it is a big 
 thing to have been a man even for half a 
 life time. Just a man among his kind. To 
 share with all mankind the supreme dis- 
 tinction of its unconscious heroism. Think 
 of that vast crowd that pours cityward 
 every morning. Men and women, old and 
 young, all marching onward, side by side. 
 Age so serene, youth so full of laughter, 
 and never a sign of fear on any face. Of 
 course they make-believe that they are only 
 going to their shops and offices, but all know
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 83 
 
 they are merely marching through them 
 into the graveyard just beyond. They are 
 hurrying to death, and not one of them 
 cares a damn! I really doubt if horses 
 would trot along so quietly if they knew 
 the knacker's yard was waiting for them at 
 the end of the street. Man's claim to im- 
 mortality is established by his lifelong in- 
 difference to death Lyn, there really was a 
 breath of immortality in your little muffled 
 laugh just now and my nonsense." 
 
 "Don't don't you will, you must get 
 well." She took his head between her hands 
 and drew down his face to hers. 
 
 "Yes, dear." 
 
 "But you must you must promise you 
 will try." 
 
 "Of course I shall try, darling." 
 
 "But that's not enough I'm terrified, 
 Arthur you mustn't die no no no!" 
 Her voice rose to a wailing cry. 
 
 "Hush, Lyn," he looked at the door; 
 "there's someone in the passage listen." 
 
 "It's only the caretaker sweeping he 
 always come round after hours he knows 
 my ways approximately " She laughed 
 wildly "and nothing matters anyhow, if 
 you are going to die." 
 
 "Be quiet, Lyn!" He put his hand on 
 her mouth. The bumping broom came
 
 84 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 nearer, banged loudly against the door ; and 
 passed on. He lifted his hand. 
 
 "Lyn crying? My God!" 
 
 Her two arms closed round his neck she 
 passionately kissed his mouth again and 
 again. There ! there ! there ! I kiss all the 
 life of my love into you you shall live- 
 yon must or I shall die. ' ' 
 
 ' 'Love I will live I never felt 
 stronger." 
 
 "And I have no strength left." 
 
 He took her in his arms. 
 
 # * * * 
 
 When at last he stood at the window, the 
 crimson rim of the sun was sinking in the 
 horizon of city smoke. 
 
 "It is later than I thought. I must 
 hurry." 
 
 "Yes, you must be going." 
 
 "Yes, I must go." He turned to her 
 little shelf of books. "Have you one to 
 spare? It will save me time I'll let you 
 have it again, later on." 
 
 "Take any one!" He took a worn cloth 
 bound copy of Omar Khyyam, tore out the 
 title page with her name, and in the top 
 corner of the next, scribbled "9d." 
 
 She put her arms round him, "love 
 love, you ivill take care of yourself? Never 
 come again after hours, but write, and I'll
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 15 
 
 meet you anywhere. What about the 
 Gardens to-morrow? I'll bring some of 
 your special sandwiches, but don't come if 
 you're tired." 
 
 "Yes, the Gardens, at one I really must 
 go now. No, don't come with me. I'll take 
 things easy. Good-bye, darling." 
 
 He kissed her cheek. When she had 
 closed the door, she hurried to her desk, 
 carefully smoothed out the crumpled fly- 
 leaf of Omar Khyyam, and put it away. 
 
 Then she took up the envelope. On it 
 was written, "For Lyn when she's alone,'' 
 She locked it away; it was not a letter, it 
 was his work something very sacred in- 
 deed it would be beautiful to have it when 
 the time came. She was not alone yet, she 
 would see him to-morrow in the Gardens. 
 But she was quite enough alone for tears. 
 
 n. 
 
 Next day she reached their seat in the 
 Gardens at a quarter to one. The blue 
 wrens were there; she took care to move 
 quietly; he always looked round for them 
 after he had kissed her. Everywhere she 
 found his thoughts. She looked up into the 
 cool depths of the Port Jackson Fig above 
 her it was their "vast umbrella." Beyond 
 the smooth lawns and bright flower-beds
 
 86 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 lay the white semicircle of sea-wall, and the 
 blue harbour. All the dazzling beauty was 
 a part of his soul. And there was no wind. 
 He hated the wind. He called it "demora- 
 lizing" "it scandalized the feathered 
 skirts of little Mrs. Wren" it stirred the 
 flapper-flowers to madness they danced 
 and danced in their beds till their hair flew 
 every way, and every stitch of petals came 
 off." How she had laughed ! She was hold- 
 ing her hat on and her dress down at the 
 time. He was always saying lovely daring 
 things like that even from the first- 
 things that he could say, but other men 
 couldn't. 
 
 She saw the white puff of smoke from the 
 one o'clock gun on Fort Denison, and 
 counted, "one, two" before the report 
 came. Arthur said "That showed it was a 
 mile away." She looked toward Mac- 
 quarie Point; he would certainly take a 
 tram round by the Quay to save walking 
 over the hill. He had promised to be care- 
 ful, and must be walking slowly. She was 
 glad he was a little late. 
 
 At a quarter past one she spread the 
 table napkin, on the seat, and set out the 
 thermos, the special sandwiches, and a /me 
 peach. At half-past one she put them back 
 in her bag, but still she waited. He had
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 87 
 
 never been late before, yet something might 
 have delayed him. At a quarter to two she 
 left the seat and loitered to the pond where 
 they always threw their crusts to the black 
 swans. She took out the sandwiches and 
 put them back again, turned away, and 
 hurried off to her office. 
 
 There, she typed incessantly from two 
 to half past four, when the great building 
 emptied to the sound of many feet, and the 
 constant clatter of lift doors. She closed 
 the typewriter, aranged her desk, and sat 
 quite still, thinking and listening till 
 half past five. Then she took out the 
 "Thistledown" envelope, looked long at it, 
 locked it away again, and set out for home. 
 
 In the Dulwich Hill tram she sat opposite 
 a pair of legs and a wide-spread evening- 
 paper. She read the big headlines not 
 thinking about them at all; that is to say 
 her eyes read them because, from sheer 
 habit, the eyes always read visible print. 
 THE GREAT PRIZE FIGHT. 
 ROW AT THE STADIUM. 
 REFEREE HUSTLED. 
 
 CHOOK JONES WINS ON A FOUL. 
 
 She saw the gibberish, but her mind sat 
 blindfolded in its own thought. "GABY 
 FIRST FAVOURITE FOR THE CUP
 
 88 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 TATT'S. SPECIAL" all the diurnal 
 heart-throbs of democracy left her un- 
 moved. But low down there was a small 
 headline: "SUDDEN DEATH/' Death was 
 only three months away from her; her 
 soul was ever conscious of its shadow. 
 "Death" was a word that caught her mind 
 as well as her eye she leaned forward and 
 read what followed : 
 
 "Mr. Arthur Brent, a local journalist, 
 collapsed shortly after his return to his 
 home yesterday evening and expired an 
 hour later without regaining conscious- 
 ness." 
 
 She half rose, with hands uplifted, like 
 a frightened seabird poising for flight. As 
 the tram slowed toward the railway stop, 
 she swung off and flew across the square 
 to the taxi rank. 
 
 "Quick! Quick! to Mr. Arthur Brent's 
 very quickly, or it will be too late " She 
 stopped, her eyes closed, her hand pressed 
 on her forehead. 
 
 The driver said nothing, he had his 
 doubts. 
 
 "No," she said, speaking very gently. 
 "I forgot it would be too late now it was 
 last night he died I didn 't realise. I think 
 I ought to go he is dead, but will you 
 take me?"
 
 THISTLEDOWN. $ 
 
 ''Right, Miss!'' be touched his cap for 
 the first time. ' ' Where is it 1 " 
 
 "Old South Head Road Mr. Arthur 
 Brent, journalist and writer. He died yes- 
 terday yes, it was yesterday didn't you 
 see it in the paper?" 
 
 "Can't say I did, Miss, but hop in." He 
 banged the door and took his seat. "What's 
 the number?" 
 
 "I never heard the number." 
 
 "Well, how would you address a letter 
 there?" 
 
 "Oh, I never wrote never." 
 
 "Well, I suppose you'd know the house 
 if you saw it ? " 
 
 * ' No, I Ve never seen it I mean I am not 
 certain where it is, although I must have 
 passed it once or twice at night. But I 
 know there's a big date palm not far away. 
 We'll look out for the date palm when we 
 get there." 
 
 He sized her up again, and resolved to 
 curb his riotous sense of humour. 
 
 "Right 0! Miss Old South Head Road 
 it is, and a date palni when we get there. It 
 takes more than a date palm to bush yours 
 truly but I wish it was a bread-fruit tree 
 I know every bread-fruit free in 
 Sydney!" 
 
 "Do they grow in Sydney?" she asked
 
 90 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 politely. Her soul lay numb, but her senses 
 still "carried on" as best they could under 
 the non-commissioned leadership of instinc- 
 tive courtesy. 
 
 ' ' No chance ! Not while there 's a baker 's 
 union." 
 
 "Of course I never thought of that!" 
 
 He stared round at her the car started 
 with a jolt. 
 
 It was nearly dark when they entered the 
 Old South Head Eoad. She leaned forward 
 anxiously. ' ' Everything looks so different 
 by gaslight. I think it's much further on, 
 but you had better watch that side and I'll 
 watch both." 
 
 A moment later he put the brake hard on 
 
 "No! No! that's a banana go on what 
 a lot of trees there are ! ' ' 
 
 "My side's an avenue. I give it up, but 
 I'll drive slower, Miss, and you can pick 
 your own tree. Botany's not my strong 
 point." Soon the road grew more open, 
 cottages only here and there with dark 
 areas of waste land between. Then a 
 cluster of lights brightened toward them 
 a cross-road, collection of houses and small 
 shops. 
 
 "There's a policeman at the corner! 
 Stop, and I'll ask him." 
 
 The big man looked and listened, thought-
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 91 
 
 fully sifting her hurried words for clues. 
 He found two. The corpse was at home; 
 it's name was Brent. The problem was 
 locate the corpse. 
 
 "This is my beat, but I don't live round 
 here wait a moment." He strode to the 
 door of a shop, spoke to someone, and re- 
 turned. 
 
 "It's that house on the other side next 
 the butcher's shop all the windows are 
 dark." 
 
 "I think there's a light in the attic win- 
 dow I know he always worked upstairs." 
 She stared at the window. 
 
 The two men looked at one another. 
 
 She took out her purse "No, I'll take 
 the tram back it's an easy walk from here. 
 Thank you very much." 
 
 "Good-bye, Miss." He wanted to say an 
 appropriate word, but the policeman was 
 listening. As he turned the car he had a 
 happy thought; he drove away whistling 
 softly: 
 
 "Pack up your troubles in the old kit bag, 
 and smile, smile, smile." 
 
 What had she come for? She did not 
 know. She did not reason because she could 
 not. Her well-poised mind, her inspired ( 
 love no longer sustained her. Her spiritual , j 
 self was still unconscious from the blow
 
 92 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 only the physical went on. Instinctively 
 she had whimpered her way here like a 
 faithful dog to the body of his lost master. 
 
 And yet so deep is the mystery of our 
 being! how finely her mere senses and in- 
 stinct sprang to her protection. For the 
 first time in her life she was painfully con- 
 scious of the presence of a policeman an 
 enormous man, standing there with an air 
 of unimpeachable aloofness, and yet with- 
 out doubt interested in her movements. Had 
 he not been there but he ivas there, wait- 
 ing for her to cross the road and knock. 
 There was nothing else she could do. If she 
 loitered away now, what would he think? 
 What might he not do? He might even 
 take her name. 
 
 She smiled him ''goodnight and thank 
 you," crossed to the house next the 
 butcher's and knocked very softly, with 
 her gloved knuckles. 
 
 A light gleamed. There came a sound of 
 shuffling slippers and a heart-rendering 
 sigh, as a large handsome woman in a 
 kimono opened the door. She held a candle ; 
 in its swaying light they looked at one an- 
 other. 
 
 "Mrs. Brent?" 
 
 Tears welled. 
 
 "I have only just heardMr. Brent was
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 93 
 
 so good to me I typed his work for 
 him" 
 
 "Oh, you are the typiste, Miss Lyndon 
 Buasell!" 
 
 The tears were suddenly switched off; 
 the big eyes half closed as if trying to focus 
 a suspicion. But all they found was a little 
 insignificant scrap of a woman, without any 
 style not at all the sort to attract Arthur 
 whose excellent taste was certified in her 
 marriage lines. 
 
 "Yes it gave me a great shock I saw 
 him only yesterday afternoon. I hope his 
 end was without pain." The conventional 
 phrases came mechanically people had 
 said such things to her when her father 
 died. She still lived as in a tranca con- 
 scious only of utter desolation. Arthur was 
 gone; nothing was left. But suddenly she 
 caught sight of his grey felt hat and long 
 mackintosh hanging in the hall. Emotion, 
 keen as the pangs of death shook her, as 
 her soul returned from its wandering 
 among phantoms. Their beautiful love was 
 not dead. It still lived in her, and it would 
 always be hers she was glad she had come 
 it was right that she should be here 
 close to him. 
 
 "Poor dear Artie told me about you. And 
 you saw him yesterday afternoon he said
 
 94 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 he was taking you something to type, when 
 he went out." She staggered against the 
 wall "I can't bear it!" More tears fell; 
 the swaying candle guttered on her thumb. 
 
 "Won't you come in for a little while? 
 Sympathy is so " Lyn stepped inside, 
 Mrs. Brent closed the door and turner! into 
 a side room. As Lyn followed she touched 
 the mackintosh with her hand. 
 
 "Sympathy is so take that chair, it's 
 got a cushion so beautiful, isn't it?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "That's why I love to talk about him 
 my nature is so sympathetic I couldn't 
 sleep a wink last night a kind neighbour 
 a Mrs. Jones stayed with me she's a 
 little common, but so sympathetic; and poor 
 Artie took you something to type yesterday 
 his last words were " 
 
 "He looked in at my office just for a 
 moment but he left nothing to be typed 
 he seemed very ill I thought. ' ' 
 
 "That's very strange his last words 
 were " 
 
 "But he did say he would have work for 
 me next week, and called to know if I should 
 be able to do it on his way to the book- 
 shops." 
 
 "Yes, yes, he said he was going on to the 
 book-shops poor dear Artie. You
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 95 
 
 wouldn't believe the money he wasted on 
 books I was just packing a big box with 
 them when you came, but I'll never get back 
 the money they cost. Oh, dear ! what women 
 have to put up with! But you're not mar- 
 ried. I'm leaving here to-morrow. They 
 cut off the gas this morning that's why 
 I'm using candles you can't imagine what 
 my feelings are in this silent house all alone. 
 Don't you notice the dreadful silence!" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You wouldn't believe the way poor 
 Artie used to walk up and down on my ceil- 
 ing at all hours of the night. It was very 
 trying, and yet now " she looked upward 
 "if only I could hear one more sound of 
 his returning feet I'd say "Come the Better 
 Land." 
 
 Great sobs set her vibrating in the arm- 
 chair, large tears fell without spoiling in 
 any way the full dress rehearsal of her 
 pretty features. "Do you know that song! 
 It's called 'One More.' I've sung it to poor 
 Artie hundreds and hundreds of times, The 
 last verse is so beautiful. It goes: 
 
 "One more passionate prayer, 
 That Christ in Heaven may be, 
 
 My Guide as I climb the golden stair, 
 Then come Eternity." 
 
 "And he's climbing them now getting
 
 16 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 further and further from me every minute 
 while I sit here talking." She wept and 
 wept, quite overcome by the beauty of her 
 grief. 
 
 "Mrs. Brent, before I " 
 
 "Peace, perfect peace I know I ought 
 to think of that." 
 
 "Before I go " 
 
 "Oh you're not going yet, Miss Russell 
 not while I'm all alone? This silence gets 
 on my nerves so." 
 
 "I wished to suggest that possibly 
 Mr. Brent has left papers he spoke of 
 something to me you remember? and I 
 should be so glad to type them for you 
 not as a matter of business ' 
 
 "I'm sure you're very kind, but there's 
 nothing only poitry not the sort that 
 sells I never could make head or tail of 
 it." 
 
 "Oh! but do let me type it." 
 
 ""Waste of time, Miss Russell he never 
 could get a publisher for his poitry be- 
 sides I burnt it this morning when I was 
 ridding up his room. Ah, me ! how one re- 
 members." Her limpid eyes gazed into the 
 candle flame, remembering with a rapt ex- 
 pression. 
 
 Without any warning, a loud noise of 
 something falling rang through the house.
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 97 
 
 Lyn sprang up; Mrs. Brent gasped with 
 terror; then she shouted angrily: 
 
 "That you, Joe? Can't you come in 
 quietly?" 
 
 A deep bass voice answered, "What are 
 you gassing about, Flo? I only dropped 
 my pipe." 
 
 She shouted back: "I've a visitor here, 
 Joe a visitor you nearly frightened the 
 wits out of us ! " She whispered to Lyn 
 "An old friend of the family known me 
 since I was a child helping me to pack." 
 
 A man looked in. He was tall; he had 
 thick red lips and a full black beard. 
 
 "Mr. Jones Miss Russell Artie's 
 typiste, Joe. Mr. Jones is an old friend of 
 the family. Mrs. Jones will soon be here, 
 won't she, Joe?" 
 
 He stared at her. "Oh, yes, she'll be 
 here soon." 
 
 "All right, Joe! go on with the packing, 
 but don't make noises." He went, filling 
 his pipe. 
 
 "Would you like a last look before you 
 
 'Yes." 
 
 "This way, if you'll be so good. He's 
 laid out just as he died; the casket won't 
 come till the morning. You'll find him ly- 
 ing so contentedly now on his bed that any
 
 98 THISTLEDOWN. 
 
 how's this it goes anyone would think 
 he was dead yes, indeed ! You remember 
 Poey's poem?" She pointed up the dark 
 stairs. "You'll see the room, it's lighted. 
 I won't come; I can't bear it; my nature is 
 so sensitive. ' ' 
 
 Two doors opened on the little landing 
 at the top of the stairs. One was ajar and 
 showed a faint light. Lyn entered on 
 tiptoe. 
 
 A candle stood on a chair at the head of 
 the narrow bed. Its thin flame lit only the 
 long white form lying there under its 
 canopy of shadows, so still and aloof, like 
 the dim effigy of some dead crusader. But 
 that impression passed when she bent over 
 him, and folded back the sheet from his 
 face, because she saw the old boyish smile 
 still on his lips. In the greatness of her 
 love she had no thought for herself and the 
 tears that were her due. Remembering- 
 only his brightness, and funny sayings, and 
 tenderness and caressing ways, she kissed 
 his forehead, lightly, as if he were a sleep- 
 ing child, covered his face, and so left him. 
 
 Mrs. Brent was waiting to show her out. 
 "Will you please tell me the way to the 
 nearest tram?" 
 
 "Go straight down this street till you 
 come to a big date palm at the corner; then
 
 THISTLEDOWN. 99 
 
 turn to your left good-night. Oh, but wait 
 a minute." She hurried down the dark 
 passage and in a moment returned. 
 
 "A little keepsake just to remind you of 
 us both. I was with him the day he bought 
 it for me, poor Dear! So I value it but 
 you will value it too." She put something 
 into Lyn's hands. 
 
 "Thank you. Goodbye." 
 
 When Lyn reached the date-palm she 
 lingered and looked at the little keepsake, 
 by the light of the lamp at the corner. 
 
 It was a worn cloth-bound copy of Omar 
 Khayyam; the title page was torn out, and 
 on the top corner of the next was scribbled 
 "9d."
 
 THE "TA TA" WOMAN, 
 
 The Battalion of the Australian In- 
 fantry Brigade trailed up Elizabeth Street 
 toward the troopship in "VVoolloomooloo 
 Bay. Its progress was strangely different 
 from the processions at the beginning of 
 the war, when the whole city flocked to 
 cheer, and bands led the way, and toy flags 
 fluttered from rifles, and the troops 
 sang "Tipperary" and laughed and waved 
 their hands, swinging gaily to the Quay. 
 Dreadful casualty lists had come streaming 
 back since then filled with the names of 
 thousands of those laughing, singing boys, 
 who marched singing and laughing to suf- 
 ering and death, and whose blood is the 
 seed of Australian nationhood. 
 
 No cheering crowds now thronged the 
 route. All news of military movements 
 was strictly censored, and only the rela- 
 tives and intimate friends of the soldiers 
 had learned the secret of their going. It 
 was these chiefly, who crowding in, formed 
 the narrow lane through which the troops 
 passed. So close was the press that in
 
 THE "TA f A" WOMAN. iol 
 
 places the heavily-laden men could scarcely 
 thread their way. Love broke down all 
 military formation. In vain the mounted 
 police widened a passage ; the elastic lines 
 stretched apart as the troops passed, only 
 to tighten again on the broken ranks. The 
 soldiers themselves were indifferent to the 
 outward form of discipline at that keen 
 moment of parting. Yet it only yielded 
 place to the nobler discipline of the soul. 
 Their Australian eyes blue, bleached 
 steel-grey and puckered in endless sunshine 
 looked straight ahead, seeing quite 
 clearly the end of their journey. It was no 
 picnic they were going to. Gallipoli was 
 not Clontarf . How finely they passed from 
 us with their whispered words of comfort 
 to speechless women, their cheery hand- 
 grips, and nodded "So longs." The for- 
 mation of their courage remained unshaken 
 in the fierce ordeal of those last "good- 
 byes," and we have since learned how far 
 it carried them in their great charge at 
 Lone Pine. 
 
 Never before had Australia seen such a 
 procession. "Weighed down with baggage 
 and arms, the men passed slowly by. Yet 
 their burdens had little to do with their 
 pace, which was set by the feet of clinging 
 women, mostly grey-haired, with lined
 
 102 THE "TA TA" WOMAN. 
 
 faces and fixed unseeing eyes, and lips 
 biting back the tears for the boy's sake 
 just till he had seen the last of her. Mother- 
 love triumphed over all lesser loves: it 
 was her right hers only to go with him 
 to the very brink, as her sleepless thoughts 
 would still follow him in the darkness 
 beyond. 
 
 Here and there a sweetheart strutted be- 
 hind mother and son, with Bill's rifle on 
 her shoulder. It was Bill's cute way of 
 getting rid of her, and what did he care 
 that she was quite happy and satisfied and 
 flushed with vanity, her greedy little eyes 
 glancing everywhere for anybody's notice! 
 But she didn't matter; mere sweetheart 
 never does not mere wife either; it is 
 only the mother that counts. 
 
 A profound spirit of sympathy drew the 
 onlookers together. They spoke freely to 
 one another in low tones, like old friends. 
 They themselves had become a part of that 
 spiritual pageant, and great thoughts of 
 duty and sacrifice were taking vague shape 
 in many a half-awakened mind. Gallipoli 
 
 "Tata! Tata! Tata! Tata!" 
 It was really a shameful interruption- 
 like foul language in a consecrated place. 
 Men turned, and stared a moment at the
 
 THE "TA TA" WOMAN. 103 
 
 speaker; women glanced, and glanced 
 away. Yet, having looked, one and all 
 seemed reconciled to the jarring discord. 
 It apparently satisfied the men that the 
 speaker was only a woman, and the women 
 that she was a woman. 
 
 She certainly was: the group of tram- 
 conductors just behind her recognised the 
 fact instantly, whispering and smiling to 
 one another. Really, she was what is called 
 a "fine" woman that is, a tall, redundant 
 mass of youthful flesh, braced and stayed 
 to over-emphasise her emphatic sex. Her 
 face, with its clear skin, low forehead, 
 bright eyes and great mouth and jaw. was 
 the sort that most easily subdues the young 
 male. She was well-dressed not over- 
 dressed no, certainly not a "bad" 
 woman; the experienced tram conductors 
 (who were merely waiting for their blocked 
 trams, and so had time for such thoughts) 
 realized that fact at once. By all appear- 
 ances she was just an average young 
 woman, joyously dreaming the dream of 
 her adorable self, till she should awake 
 to find it an adorable baby. 
 
 "Tata! Tata!" 
 
 Pier voice was high and clear, and car- 
 ried far in that silent throng. From the 
 moment she pushed to the front till the last
 
 104 THE "TA TA" WOMAN. 
 
 soldier liad passed she kept cm repeating 
 that one phrase as only parrots and 
 women can repeat themselves in exactly 
 the same tone, with exactly the same set 
 expression. The conviction grew upon the 
 mind that the persistent monotone was not 
 human speech at all, but merely the rhyth- 
 mic outpouring of an over-mastering 
 emotion. During the forty minutes in 
 which a thousand men passed by she said 
 "Ta ta!" fully five hundred times. Per- 
 sonally the men were nothing to her, apart 
 from their glances, for which she clam- 
 oured. Her ceaseless throaty note 
 suggested neither greeting nor farewell. 
 It was not human speech at all ; it was her 
 sub-conscious love-call, uttered not only to 
 attract the soldiers, but also embracing 
 the crowd the city the universe. 
 
 It is a dreadful truth that no woman in 
 her prime is always herself; too often she 
 is only her sex. That is when the mind 
 of man, infinitely pitiful, says she is "not 
 quite herself. ' ' Clearly this Ta ta ! woman 
 was not a human being at all, as children 
 and men and mothers are human. She was 
 just vital force, unconscious of any law 
 but the law of itself the force that never 
 lets weary matter rest, but is forever 
 agonising it into new and strange forms
 
 THE "TA TA" WOMAN. 105 
 
 of life. She was the fertility of soil the 
 sunshine that opens the flower and swells 
 the seed-pod the warm spring wind that 
 scatters the pollen: she was all that and 
 nothing more. 
 
 Never did croaking huckster cry his 
 wares in the market place with so little 
 effect, yet her serene faith in her own per- 
 fection never flickered. Occasionally she 
 caught the eye of some motherless boy; if 
 he smiled she grabbed his hand as he 
 passed, but never once did she turn her 
 eyes to follow him: she was there to be 
 seen, and he had seen her. There was an 
 end of it she had no use for blind backs. 
 
 "Ta ta! Ta ta!" 
 
 The horrible monotone never ceased. 
 Her soulless eyes saw nothing of the splen- 
 did pageant of self-sacrifice sweeping by. 
 In the tense silence her ears heard nothing 
 but the shuffle of male feet. If intelligence 
 be the distinctive trait that sets humanity 
 above the brute, then that handsome, well- 
 dressed, respectable, excited young woman 
 was not a human being at all. Her human- 
 ity was blotted out by insurgent sex. With- 
 out doubt she had been a human daughter, 
 and would evolve into a human wife and 
 mother normally, she doubtless was a 
 woman. But, standing there, she was that
 
 109 THE "TA TA" WOMAN. 
 
 horror every man knows, and dreads, and 
 pities, and shields sheer female, and that 
 only sex running amok a river in flood 
 a fire beyond control 
 
 "Tata! Tata!" 
 
 A dripping tap a runaway alarm-clock 
 a cackling hen a heat-wave a dust- 
 storm a suffragette a 
 
 "Tata! Tata!" 
 
 In short, a " Ta ta ! woman. ' ' Her offen- 
 sive clatter was more alien and repugnant 
 to the human mind than the strident shrill 
 of the sun-struck cicada, or the night-long 
 croak of breeding frogs. 
 
 "Tata! Tata!" 
 
 Sex, and nothing but sex, she stood there 
 in the midst of that spiritual world, naked 
 and unashamed 
 
 "Tata! Tata!" 
 flirting and preening her sex plumage 
 
 "Ta ta!" 
 and uttering her evil note 
 
 "Ta ta!" 
 at such a time 
 
 "Ta ta!" 
 like an obscene bird on a wayside crucifix. 
 
 Once only did she vary her cry. A short, 
 sturdy, middle-aged man, wearing spec- 
 tacles, stood near her in the front rank. 
 Beside him, but in the second rank, was a
 
 THE "TA TA" WOMAN. 107 
 
 grey-faced woman in black. She stood 
 silent and lifeless, while he, leaning for- 
 ward, peered intently down the line of ap- 
 proaching soldiers. So they stood, wait- 
 ing and watching for a long time. At last 
 he suddenly turned and dragged her, 
 almost roughly beside him. 
 
 "Tata! Tata!" 
 
 A tall, gentle-faced boy drew near, 
 marching alone. He stopped a moment by 
 the grey-faced woman ; she put her face up 
 to his; he kissed her. She spoke not one 
 word, nor did she show any emotion 
 
 "Ta ta! Ta ta!" 
 
 Then the little man reached up and kissed 
 the boy's cheek 
 
 "Ta ta! Ta Kissin' a man! Well, I 
 never!" 
 
 The boy passed on with bowed head; 
 the two stood still, gazing after him. They 
 took not the slightest notice of the female's 
 remark; it seemed not to have penetrated 
 their world of spiritual tears. Nor did the 
 crowd seem to hear except one of the 
 young tram-conductors, who, with his eye 
 on the seductive abomination, came to her 
 support with a joke. 
 
 The little man heard the male voice; he 
 turned squarely, round on the group, his 
 dry eyes blazing behind his spectacles.
 
 108 THE "TA TA" WOMAN. 
 
 "He's my only son!" 
 
 That was all. But Ms sudden action, liis 
 great voice ringing with indignation and 
 suffering, shook the very heart of the 
 crowd. The conductor blurted out a frank 
 apology. A gentleman standing behind the 
 little man laid a hand on his shoulder. At 
 that moment every human being seemed to 
 draw away from the handsome, well- 
 dressed, respectable, excited young female, 
 as from something non-human monstrous. 
 
 "Tata! Tata!" 
 
 She alone realised nothing felt nothing. 
 Even that father's cry, tingling with the 
 passion and sacrifice of his soul, could no f 
 penetrate her deaf, dumb, blind universe 
 of sheer sex sex implacable and bestial - 
 sex that forever over-runs the defenceless 
 frontiers of woman's helpless self, batter- 
 ing down the ramparts of her mind, and 
 blasting with fire the temple of her soul. 
 
 "Ta ta! Ta ta!"
 
 "Father!" 
 
 He blew a cloud of smoke. 
 
 "Jack!" Her voice trembled. "I ain't 
 called yer 'Jack' often since 'e was chris- 
 tened. To-day 's the anniversary ' ' 
 
 "Don't / know that!" She understood 
 his roughness. 
 
 "And I thought " 
 
 She leaned back over her chair and care- 
 fully unhooked from the wall a photograph. 
 She wiped the glass, and tenderly stroked 
 the red-plush frame with her rough fingers. 
 
 "I thought we might put a In Memorial 
 notice in the paper next Saturday with 
 p'raps a bit o' poitry." 
 
 "It won't bring 'im back." 
 
 "No, father; but it's like doin' some- 
 thing for 'im. You can't think 'ow I miss 
 sendin' the letters and things. The mails 
 goin' out hurt as much as the mails comin' 
 in except his letters that came after we 
 knew " 
 
 She flung forward on the table, her face 
 bowed on her arms. He laid his hand very
 
 110 "HIS PHOTO ON THE WALL." 
 
 gently on the grey head. She looked up 
 quickly, wonder in her tearless eyes. 
 
 ' ' I think we ought to put him in, father 
 he deserves it. Lots go in every week not 
 'arf as good as 'im." 
 
 ' ' My oath, yes ! Wot 'ill it cost ? ' ' 
 
 "I've got the money," she said eagerly 
 ''five shillings. It's two shillings for the 
 notice and sixpence a line for the poitry. 
 We'll 'ave six lines like the Smithers." 
 
 * ' Sixpence a line ! " he shouted. ' i Wot 
 pay yer, or charge yer ! ' ' 
 
 "That's wot they charge." 
 
 He thumped the table, and fiercely 
 chewed his pipe sideways. "An' the 
 poitry 's made up for 'em given to 'em 
 free. It's downright damn daylight rob- 
 bery! Talk about sweatin'! I tell yer, the 
 capitalistic press " 
 
 "Yes, father, I know. But wot about 
 Jack? Only last week the Smithers 'ad a 
 notice and six lines of poitry about their 
 'Arold " 
 
 "Wot! That bloke! Why, 'e never got 
 near Gallipoli!" 
 
 "No and 'e giv' his mother a terrible 
 lot o' trouble before 'e went " 
 
 * ' To Egypt only to Egypt. And got bit 
 to death by a damn camel. ' ' 
 
 "Yes and still 'e's got 'is notice and
 
 "HIS PHOTO ON THE WALL." Ill 
 
 six lines of poitry in the Memorial it's 
 lovely poitry, too. Mrs. Smithers says 
 they all wrote it together, sittin' round the 
 parlor table, but I know better! She 
 pinched every line of it from the news- 
 papers I've got it 'ere." 
 
 She took an exercise book from her lap. 
 It was filled almost from cover to cover 
 with military "In Memoriam" notices 
 clipped from the daily papers. She peered 
 and read very slowly, following the lines 
 with her finger : 
 
 " 'Arold Smithers, aged 19, killed on 
 active service in Egypt, December 1, 
 1915. 
 ' ' Our 'Arold dear is now no more, 
 
 'E like a 'ero fell, 
 'E is not lost but gone before. 
 
 But where we cannot tell, 
 And now we've nothink left at all, 
 
 Except 'is photo on the wall. 
 "Inserted by his lovin' father, mother, 
 brother, sisters and Aunt Maria." 
 There was a long silence. 
 " 'E wasn't a bad bloke, when you come 
 to think of it and 'e tried to do 'is bit, any 
 way." 
 
 "Oh, yes, father. And 'is pore mother 
 was tellin' me only last week wot a good 
 'eart 'e 'ad, and 'ow 'e was the loveliest
 
 112 "HIS PHOTO ON THE WALL." 
 
 baby you ever saw. ' ' She leaned back and 
 re-hung the photograph on its nail. "It's 
 good poitry, ain't it, father! All except 
 their draggin' in their Aunt Maria, just be- 
 cause she's got some money and no kids." 
 
 "Read it again, mother." 
 
 She read it again, right through. 
 
 He laid down his pipe. "It's wot I call 
 real poitry 'specially about 'is photo on 
 the wall. It makes it all so reel to yer 
 brings it right 'ome like, don't it? If 
 young Smithers gets all that, our Jack de- 
 serves somethink extra-special eight lines 
 at least." 
 
 He collected from various pockets a shil- 
 ling in small change, and laid it on the 
 table. 
 
 " 'Ave you made up any think yet, 
 mother?" 
 
 "Yes, I've tried to make up somethink 
 about 'im. It's very 'ard. There's so 
 much to put in." 
 
 She unfolded a sheet of paper ; her hands 
 were trembling. 
 
 "Let's hear it, mother." He soothingly 
 cut fresh tobacco and filled his pipe. She 
 began in a low voice : 
 
 1 1 Our only son a year is dead, 
 'E like a 'ero fell, 
 
 A Turkish bomb exploded on 'is 'ead.
 
 "HIS PHOTO ON THE WALL." US 
 
 And blew 'im to where the angels 
 dwell ; 
 
 And empty now is Jacky's bed, 
 
 'Is photo's on the wall instead." 
 
 There was a long silence. Once she 
 glanced at him; he was puffing heavy 
 clouds of thought. 
 
 "Do you think it will do, father? I mean, 
 after we've put in your two extra lines?" 
 
 "Bead it again, mother." He leaned 
 over, following her finger as she slowly 
 read. 
 
 "You'll 'ave to shove that extra bob's 
 worth somewhere into the middle," he said 
 emphatically. "The poitry must finish up 
 with the photo on the wall thought I don't 
 like imitatin' the Smithers!" 
 
 "Bother the Smithers!" She rapidly 
 turned the pages of the exercise-book. 
 "Why, there was five photos on the wall in 
 last Saturday's paper! Ain't there thou- 
 sands of photos on thousands of walls? 
 Ain't we got a photo on the wall?" She 
 turned and looked at it. 
 
 "Right-o, mother! Now about them two 
 extra lines. I'd like to get in somethin' 
 about 'is bein' the champion lightweight of 
 Woolloomooloo, and 'ow real plucky 'e wos. 
 'E wos only ten when 'e threw that gibber 
 at the cop, and when I tanned the 'ide off
 
 114 "HIS PHOTO ON THE WALL." 
 
 'im for goin' to the two-up school 'e never 
 squeaked 'is lips just kep' movin', cur- 
 sin' me all the time under 'is breath." 
 "0, father, p'raps 'e was prayin'!" 
 "P'raps" he blew a huge cloud at the 
 lamp. 
 
 "An' 'ow good 'e wos after 'e never 
 went again." 
 
 "I never caught 'im again." There was 
 a note of pride in his voice. * ' 'Ow cute 'e 
 wos cunnin' as a monkey." 
 
 "And, father, when 'e wos three, wot a 
 little trick 'e wos such ideas 'e 'ad! Al- 
 ways askin' questions!" 
 
 The man smiled just as she had meant 
 him to, and once again told the memories 
 that were his very own. She listened as 
 though she had never heard them before. 
 
 "I'll never forget 'is face the day we 
 moved down 'ere from Paddington 'e was 
 lookin' up at the sky puzzled like, and sud- 
 denly 'e says : ' Daddy, is Gord in Padding- 
 ton?' 'Course 'E is,' I says. Wot else 
 could I say? 'And is 'E in Woolloomoo- 
 loo?' he says, leadin' me on like the prose- 
 cutin' sergeant in the police court. 'Course 
 'E is, 'I says. Wot else could I say? Then 
 'e looks at me as solemn as if 'e was the 
 beak, and says, * Then why does 'E spread
 
 "HIS PHOTO ON THE WALL." 115 
 
 'Imself out?' You could 'ave knocked me 
 down with a feather. 
 
 " 'E wos three years and one month old 
 the day we moved 'e 'ad 'is blue overall 
 on. Wot was that other joke, father?" 
 
 He laughed loud. ' 1 1 asked Father Mac- 
 guire that very question last time 'e 'ad 
 some words with me about keepin' the 
 pledge. 'A man can't do every think,' I 
 says, leadin' 'im on. * 'E can,' 'e says, 
 'with prayer.' 'Why even Gord can't do 
 every think,' I says. He jumped as if a 
 black snake 'ad bit 'im, 'is eyes blazin'. 
 But I says quite solemn, just like the Nip- 
 per, ' Could Gord make a mountain so big 
 'E couldn't lift it?' 'E stood thinkin' and 
 frownin' for a minute; then 'e says: 'Jack 
 Nolan, pray more and think less, or you'll 
 come to a bad end. ' ' ' 
 
 It was her turn for memories now. "And 
 wot a lovely baby 'e was" but the 
 thoughts were too much for her; her lips 
 quivered in silence. Then she broke out 
 passionately: "It's not that I want 'im 
 back; 'e's safe with Gord if only I could 
 keep on sendin' 'im warm socks and things, 
 and get a letter now and then sayin' 'The 
 socks was bosker.' She sobbed un- 
 restrainedly. 
 "Mother" his hands closed on hers
 
 116 "HIS PHOTO ON THE WALL." 
 
 11 couldn't you put that into the two extra 
 lines about not bein' able to send 'im 
 socks and gettin' no more letters?" 
 
 She looked up quickly. ''Why, father, 
 that's fine !" A very spasm of inspiration 
 shook her vas she seized the pencil land 
 sucked its point. 
 
 "Yes," she said excitedly, as she wrote, 
 "and I've got your tins of tobacco in as 
 well. Listen : 
 
 " 'We sent no more tobacco or socks, 
 
 And now the postman never 
 
 "Knocks!" He shouted the happy 
 rhyme with her; it was the only word of 
 poetry he ever composed. 
 
 1 1 Now read it through, mother. ' ' 
 She read : 
 
 "Our only child a year is dead, 
 'E like a ''ero fell, 
 
 A Turkish bomb exploded on 'is 'ead, 
 And blew 'im to where the angels dwell. 
 We send no more tobacco or socks, 
 And now the postman never knocks, 
 And empty now is Jacky's bed, 
 'Is photo's on the wall instead." 
 "It's grand, mother quite different 
 from the Smitherses', and a dam side bet- 
 ter, too." 
 
 "I'm glad yer think so, father. I think
 
 "HIS PHOTO ON THE WALL." 117 
 
 we've got everythink in now poitry 
 means such a lot. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, mother." 
 
 " 'Our only child.' Everyone who's 'ad 
 a child will know all that means about 'is 
 little tricks, and the way 'e looked at yer, 
 and 'is clothes and " 
 
 "Yes, it means all that. Wot about the 
 next line, mother?" 
 
 " "E like a 'ero fell' that reminds us 
 of 'is boxin' and 'is pluck, and all 'is 
 monkey- tricks when 'e was little." 
 
 "So 'elp me, mother, you're right 'e 
 couldn't 'ave fell like a 'ero if 'e 'adn't 
 been born one. And the next line 's fine, be- 
 cause it shows 'e wos at Gallipoli, and 
 wasn 't bit to death by a camel. ' ' 
 
 "And I put that in about the angels, be- 
 cause we know where 'e's gone all right; 
 and, besides, it's much nicer than wot the 
 sergeant wrote" she stopped. 
 
 He thought hard. "Ye-s-, I s'pose so 
 the Smithers might 'ave thought you wos 
 'avin' a dig at 'em if you'd put 'smither- 
 eens.' She hurried on: 
 
 "We send no more tobacco and " 
 
 Her voice broke. 
 
 "Socks," he said firmly. " 'Ere, 'and it 
 over to me, mother. ' ' He finished the lines 
 in a voice that was not his own. She
 
 118 "HIS PHOTO ON THE WALL." 
 
 looked at him wonderingly; tears were 
 rolling down her cheeks. 
 
 "Father Jack I'm goin' to call you 
 'Jack' again you been growin' more an' 
 more like 'im ever since he went." 
 
 He stood up, put his arm round her, and 
 lifted her to her feet. Together they looked 
 long at the photograph. 
 
 * ' 'E would 'ave made a fine man, if Gord 
 'ad spared 'im just like you, Jack. ' ' 
 
 " 'E was a fine man a damside finer 
 than me. ' ' 
 
 "P'raps but I always think of 'im as 
 my baby. ' '
 
 ANCESTORS.
 
 PERCY. 
 
 Call it murder if you like ! I had nothing 
 to do with it ! He died because my ances- 
 tors hated him: he irritated them: he was 
 a parasite in their fur, and they scratched 
 him off. There is the whole story, in a 
 nuishell an everyday incident in the pri- 
 vate toilet of the ancestors. 
 
 For, in Percy Talbot, their bloodshot 
 eyes saw not a handsome, bright-souled 
 boy, but only an active flea one of those 
 innumerable creeping things that have 
 made life fretful for a million years. So 
 they scratched him off, blinked their eyes, 
 and felt better. 
 
 He was hateful to the ancestors yet 
 surely not to all 1 ? Dim wraiths of mother- 
 love and angel-womanhood stood afar off, 
 gazing with terror-dimmed eyes; the mute 
 anger of forgotten manhood stood by him 
 to the last, but all these were trampled 
 under foot, when the boy went down. For 
 what chance had they? What chance can 
 inherited good ever have against inherited 
 evil our gentle allies of yesterday's civi-
 
 122 PERCY. 
 
 lisation against the innumerable rabble of 
 primeval night monstrously unhuman 
 all-powerful, implacable, cunning the 
 were-wolf pack from which Life flies and 
 flies in vain. The Future has no terrors 
 but to be suddenly stricken through the 
 back clawed down by the bestial Past ! 
 
 I had no hand in Talbot's death: I never 
 asked my ancestors to come and live with 
 me. But, when a promiscuous rout of un- 
 invited ancestors burst into your house, and 
 explain with familiar gestures and 
 grimaces, and tricks of manner, that they 
 are on their way to visit your remote des- 
 cendants, and have just dropped in till you 
 are dead then, clearly, the situation calls 
 for tact; particularly when an aggressive 
 majority of them have prognathous jaws, 
 and ferocious manners. 
 
 I am tactful with these free-and-easy 
 boarders; in fact, they do pretty well as 
 they like. And, after all, what could I do 
 without them nay, more, what would I be ? 
 At best, only an insignificant variation in 
 type an abnormally broad thumbnail, or 
 an inflamed appendix. So just now my 
 ancestors are having the time of their 
 lives ; my time will come when I look in on 
 my grandchildren. 
 
 Meanwhile, whenever the incorrigible
 
 PERCY, 123 
 
 laziness and drunken rioting of the old folk 
 bankrupt my resources, and scandalize the 
 neighbourhood, I take it all in good part, 
 remembering the fate of the hermits who 
 dared to rebel. Their reckless audacity al- 
 most deserved a better fate than to be 
 trampled down to childless oblivion by the 
 plantigrade fury of their race. But in vain 
 did they imprison their ancestors in desert 
 caves in vain did they scourge and starve 
 them in vain did they smother their 
 cleanly forest instincts in filth and fleas. 
 And in vain did they shriek blasphemy at 
 Woman, whom the ancestors, kneeling, 
 adored, and still adored, and will adore for 
 ever. It was She who slew the hermits 
 She who never forgets the old love, or for- 
 gives the old wrong; she laughed when the 
 horror of everlasting death clutched those 
 apostates of Life, and, as their foul flea- 
 bitten souls fled wailing She spat. 
 
 Perhaps the fact is now clear that, how- 
 ever closely I may have been associated 
 with Percy Talbot's disappearance, his 
 blood rests neither on my broad thumbnail, 
 nor on my vermiform appendix ; it was the 
 ancestral push that dealt out stoush to 
 Percy. 
 
 Newly arrived from England, a total 
 stranger, but with excellent testimonials,
 
 124 
 
 he obtained the position of tutor in the 
 home of an old acquaintance of mine. 
 There I met him. He was a fresh, blue- 
 eyed, ingenuous youth, aglow with poetry, 
 and optimism, and the wildest rainbow 
 visions of social regeneration. Usually 
 averse from strangers, I found myself 
 curiously alert in his presence watching 
 him listening drawing him out yet 
 ever on my guard. Ignorant, and there- 
 fore fearless as a little child, the inexorable 
 laws that torture destiny were no laws for 
 him; ever advancing in his own circle of 
 radiance, the outer darkness still shrank 
 back, and he passed serenely through the 
 horrors that shadowed him. And when his 
 wide eyes flashed their naked fire, I shrank 
 from him, as from physical pain, withdraw- 
 ing deeper into myself from his blinding 
 defiance : he bewildered me : he was a por- 
 tent disquieting as the strange flame that 
 first flared terror through the primaeval 
 forest. 
 
 These were my first impressions and 
 who can say whence first impressions 
 spring? But they rapidly wore off, as I 
 realised how completely the boy was at the 
 mercy of the world the ancestral world. 
 Then, I found him merely amusing; he 
 showed a frank liking for me, and his
 
 PERCY. 12S 
 
 appreciation became so whole-hearted and 
 deferential that my idleness readily suf- 
 fered his company for a time: his boyish 
 delight in our earlier walks together 
 tickled my vanity very pleasantly. 
 
 But irritation begins when tickling 
 leaves off. After a few months his hectic 
 innocence, and death-tainted ideals, became 
 hateful to me irritating and poisonous as 
 a plague-infected flea the ancestors were 
 growing restless. And still the little fool 
 hopped gaily round and burrowed deeper 
 into their fur. Then it happened that we 
 took our last walk together to The Gap. 
 
 There is a secret nook in those great 
 ocean cliffs that I have long known and 
 loved. A narrow ledge leads round the 
 face of the precipice further than at first 
 sight seems possible: it terminates in a 
 little niche hidden from sight under over- 
 hanging rock the long Pacific swell slowly 
 sways and foams far below. 
 
 Percy had good nerves; he led, as we 
 crouched our way round. Dangling his 
 legs over the abyss, he lit a cigarette, and, 
 pushing the case towards me, blew out with 
 the first puff a laugh of sheer enjoyment. 
 But to the grizzled ancestors, who sat on 
 their heels silent and expressionless behind 
 him, there was something profoundly alien
 
 126 PERCY. 
 
 and hostile in his gay laughter, and in- 
 solent assurance of safety. Never a hand 
 reached for the cigarette-case, but an un- 
 human voice, articulating with difficulty, 
 said: 
 
 "A huge blue groper lives right under 
 your feet ; I have watched him many a time 
 during calms." 
 
 Percy was a keen sportsman: his gaze 
 fell from the wide horizon, and outward- 
 bound mail boat : he leaned forward, as he 
 looked down and sudden hairy arms shot 
 out behind him. As he overbalanced, he 
 glanced swiftly round, and for one in- 
 stant his fierce ancestors glared at mine, 
 but uttered no cry. We fell flat on our 
 bellies, our bestial-human faces peering 
 down at him as he turned in air: bright 
 boot-protectors flashed on the soles of his 
 smart English tan shoes: the swarming 
 cliffs gibbered with delight to discover so 
 quaintly his secret poverty. He must have 
 struck bottom, for a little patch of red foam 
 trailed away southward or, perhaps he 
 hit the groper. 
 
 Something white about the size of a 
 thumbnail flickered after him all the way 
 down; it was, I fancied, his half -finished 
 cigarette, but a full-blooded gorilla, who 
 was just lighting up, assured me without
 
 PERCY. 117 
 
 a smile that it was my soul's variation in 
 type. 
 
 Anyhow, I felt better at one with the 
 ancestors ; I had, as it were, returned their 
 call had lived one red moment in the sun- 
 less forests that were now coal far under 
 my feet, and had returned purged by blood 
 of all degenerate scruples. I had found 
 the great Secret. All-powerful, implac- 
 able, cunning, I came back re-incarnated 
 pure beast, and therefore a conqueror of 
 men, to prey at large on a race false to its 
 type, and enervated by spiritual aspira- 
 tions. That baleful wisdom was now mine 
 and mine alone by which the ancestors, 
 brooding in darkness, and slime, and drip- 
 ping forests, had alone survived * ' Slay to 
 live, and live to slay."
 
 HORROR. 
 
 I was reaching forward over the billiard- 
 table in the act of striking, and every inci- 
 dent connected with that hideous moment 
 remains to this day seared upon my 
 memory. The close, heavy heat of the 
 Summer night ; the distant mutter of a com- 
 ing thunderstorm; the dark, deserted 
 entertainment room, its silence occasion- 
 ally startled by strange cries from the sur- 
 roundings wings of the great asylum; the 
 peculiar smell noticeable in all such institu- 
 tions, particularly so in that room recently 
 occupied by the quieter patients ; the half- 
 seen figure of my companion the doctor, 
 standing without the brilliant glare of the 
 shaded-lamps ; the exact position of the 
 balls, even the streak of silver left upon the 
 green cloth where I had hastily brushed 
 aside a moth all these petty details flash 
 upon my mind's eye as in fancy I hear 
 again and again the reverberating horror 
 of that inhuman cry. 
 
 I started back from the table and looked 
 at the doctor, my whole skin tingling with
 
 HORROR^ 11* 
 
 horror. It did not compose me to see that 
 he had left his place, and was hurrying to- 
 wards the other end of the long room. At 
 the same moment a key grated in a distant 
 door, a lantern flashed, and to my great 
 relief I saw the doctor joined by a night 
 attendant. 
 
 Again! My fingers gripped deep into 
 the rubber cushions in sheer fright. I have 
 a curious recollection of the doctor's white 
 fox-terrier jumping through the open win- 
 dow from the bench where he had been 
 sleeping, his stumpy hindquarters dis- 
 appearing into the night between the up- 
 right iron bars. I heard upon the leaves of 
 the Virginia creeper outside the heavy pat- 
 ter of scattered thunder-drops. 
 
 Again! The terrified gabble of the 
 awakened lunatics that now rang through 
 the asylum was like music to my ears. It 
 was the frenzy of madness but it was 
 human. In an adjoining cell a deep voice 
 bellowed snatches of the Lord's Prayer. I 
 knew that a mad Chinaman was near me. 
 I heard the muffled sound of fists beating 
 against the padded doors around me ; these 
 sounds at least were human. The doctor 
 came hastily towards me. 
 
 "Sorry, old fellow," he said, very hur- 
 riedly, as he turned toward the door by
 
 HORROR. 
 
 which we had entered, his key in his hand. 
 He stopped as he heard the rain, now beat- 
 ing furiously against the outer wall and 
 driving in through the open window. 
 
 ' * Hang it ! I can 't turn you out in that 
 but this is a terrible matter anyhow, I can 
 rely upon your discretion don't follow 
 us," he added, again leaving me, the 
 attendant at his heels. 
 
 I had then no wish to do so. I remained 
 standing close to the lighted table, and saw 
 the two men disappear through a door on 
 the right-hand side of the hall. Whatever 
 it was, those two were face to face with it 
 now, and that idea first gave me strength to 
 reason as well as to feel. But when I dared 
 to ask myself the question, "What is it!" 
 thought seemed only to magnify the horror 
 of my abominable association. It was not 
 the voice of a reasoning human being, or 
 even a human body bereft of reason, nor 
 was it the cry of a beast. In the ranges 
 of the Upper Hunter I had heard the night- 
 long howl of dingoes. It was something 
 far lower than that, my senses told me, and 
 fainting reason was fain to admit that the 
 apalling croak that had suddenly paralysed 
 the mind of a sane man, and had made mad- 
 ness itself sane for the moment, in the
 
 HORROR. 131 
 
 sanity of its terror, was belched from the 
 throat of neither man nor brute. 
 
 The sound was not repeated, and the 
 lessening cries of the inmates told that one 
 by one they were turning again to the 
 phantom horrors and delights of their 
 illimitable dreamland. But with the return- 
 ing silence and the continued absence of the 
 doctor and his attendant the old terror 
 rushed back upon me, and with it came a 
 desperate determination to see. All 
 thought of propriety was consumed in that 
 sudden desire. It may be that at that 
 moment it was necessary for the salvation 
 of my mind that I should do something. It 
 may be that my brain, with only the evi- 
 dence of hearing to assist it, was breaking 
 down under the terrible strain of this in- 
 comprehensible thing, and imperatively 
 called for reinforcement of the senses see 
 the thing, aye, touch it anything to ter- 
 minate this horrible doubt. 
 
 Without compunction I stealthily crept 
 from the lighted table down the dark hall 
 towards the half-open door. Near it I lis- 
 tened a moment. The storm outside had 
 already spent its fury. Within the room I 
 heard no sound either from the doctor or 
 his companion. But I heard something 
 stertorous breathing I was content to name
 
 134 HORROR. 
 
 it as I crept close to the door and looked 
 in. To the right of the door, and only just 
 inside, stood the doctor, holding the lan- 
 tern, which threw a brilliant disc of light 
 upon the furthest corner of the cell. Within 
 that light there were two figures the 
 attendant was one. He was bending over 
 the other, pressing what appeared to be an 
 immense gag into its mouth. Shame for 
 humanity makes it difficult for me, even 
 now, to say what that other seemed to be. 
 It was quite naked. At first glance I really 
 thought it was a man. Swollen in body, 
 shrunken in limbs, its face almost hidden 
 by the gag and the hand of the attendant, 
 I was yet glad for a moment to believe it a 
 man. But a second glance scared away any 
 such fancy. Its discoloured body was drip- 
 ping wet ; huge bare feet, webbed between 
 the toes, sucked the surface of the stone 
 floor; hands equally hideous sprawled in 
 turn against the wall behind. Half-choked 
 with the gag, its thick, flabby throat puffed 
 like a bellows with every laboured breath. 
 I saw the doctor glance at the high grated 
 window of the cell, and as he did so a 
 breath of cool night air brought from the 
 room an unwholesome smell of mud. 
 
 "The storm has passed, " he said, in a 
 low whisper ; " he will be quiet now. ' ' The
 
 HORROR 133 
 
 gag was gently withdrawn, and the huge 
 mouth gaping from ear to ear slowly 
 closed. The heavy eyes, bulging from the 
 top of its forehead, blinked in the unaccus- 
 tomed light as they rolled their grim terror 
 from one to the other. The two men left 
 the room, locking the door. Overcome by 
 a sudden mental and physical reaction, I 
 sank upon a bench, retching violently, my 
 heart shaken with sobs. I felt the doctor's 
 hand upon my shoulder. 
 
 "The storm has passed." I shuddered 
 at the unconsciously repeated phrase. 
 ' ' Come over to my quarters, we need some- 
 thing." 
 
 His voice trembled, and as he peered 
 under the reflectors to turn out the gas, I 
 saw his face, white and drawn. He un- 
 locked the door, and we passed into the 
 sweet, cool night. A flying drizzle was still 
 in the air, but the clouds were breaking, 
 and the stars were in their places. I left 
 behind me the great stone walls, beauti- 
 fully veiled from gutter to foundation in a 
 mass of dripping Virginia creeper, but 
 gashed with cruel barred windows, and 
 within that living corruption. To my ter- 
 rible experience I owe a twofold feeling of 
 infinite humility and infinite hope. 
 Humility, when I think of that mad peri-
 
 134 [HORROR. 
 
 odic revolt of Nature known to scien- 
 tists as " reversion to type," which ac- 
 counted for the mis-shapen thing, spawned 
 from the blood of human parents, yet dank 
 with the odour of primaeval mud. Hope, 
 when I realise more plainly than I ever did 
 before the deep gulf from which mankind 
 has sprung, and how the stars alone now 
 veil our souls from God.
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS. 
 
 The Old Boy and the Young Chap 
 strolled from the dining-room into a pleas- 
 ant, star-roofed place of palms, and marble 
 tables, and reflected lights, and the blue 
 atmosphere of deep voices remote from 
 treble discord. Somewhere a band played. 
 They settled down in a well-padded corner 
 and lit their cigars. 
 
 "How little women understand men?" 
 said the Old Boy, after a long silence . 
 
 "The big ones are just as cunning!" the 
 Young Chap laughed morosely. Bella had 
 bowled him clean out last week, and, after a 
 frightful scene, had hurled the engagement 
 ring at his feet. He had grown to love 
 Bella what wonder that he should now 
 seek to satisfy the cravings of an acquired 
 taste by going to the Devil ! 
 
 "How little women little and big 
 understand men," repeated the other with 
 unruffled serenity. For a moment his 
 smooth kindly face was the face of a sing- 
 ing- cherub, as he blew himself a halo. 
 
 "They're all fools!"
 
 1S8 GUARDIAN ANGELS 
 
 "Yes and no. We men realise with in- 
 finite pity what a fool a woman is to be a 
 woman ; yet, if she were not a woman, what 
 a fool she would be ! " 
 
 "They can never see that." 
 
 "No no; I think we may safely say 
 'No.' Not in any sense reflecting on their 
 intelligence, but because they have always 
 some pressing engagement " 
 
 "Which they regard as a 'scrap of 
 paper'!" 
 
 "Yes or even terminate by telephone. 
 Just 'Ring off, Charlie.' The 'Central' of 
 their heart let us put it that way is for 
 ever listening with both ears for rings from 
 the Manly Exchange." He laughed so 
 delightedly that an accidental little ring 
 leapt heavenward from his lips. 
 
 "And now, my dear boy" he lowered 
 his voice "let me tell you a good story." 
 
 The Young Chap stared in surprise. 
 
 "Yes a red-hot story. One of the best 
 that is, the worst. ' ' 
 
 "That 'snot like you!" 
 
 "No, it's not like the old friend who 
 taught you to swim, and introduced you to 
 
 Bella; but, then, are you? However, 
 
 this is no time for moralising, so just sit 
 back and listen. It's a paralyser." 
 
 The Young Chap glanced at his watch,
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS. 187 
 
 "It seems but as yesterday," began the 
 Old Boy, lying back comfortably, and ad- 
 dressing the blurred stars, * ' that I, too, had 
 an urgent appointment" again the watch 
 clicked "an urgent appointment at 7.30 
 sharp. Correct me if I am wrong, but I 
 gather from your exceedingly bad manners 
 that your appointment to-night is also 
 sharp ! ' ' 
 
 "I can spare fifteen minutes." 
 
 "Then we have ample time without en- 
 croaching upon the eternity you will be 
 kept waiting. So I shall tell you every- 
 thing I can recollect everything of my 
 strange nocturnal adventure, without the 
 slightest delicacy or regard for those 
 honorable reticences which " 
 
 The Young Chap sat forward, staring 
 as well he might. 
 
 "But you don't mean to say that you're 
 going to give a woman away?" 
 
 The Old Boy bounced forward. Hot ash 
 showered on his knees. He blew a thunder- 
 cloud. His cigar blazed. 
 
 "You young " He lay back again 
 
 with a queer laugh. "Waiter! two cherry 
 brandies you'll have one! You're not 
 yourself, lad, or you would never have said 
 that. And while the drinks are coming" 
 he looked very straight at the other "I
 
 188 GUARDIAN ANGELS. 
 
 shall begin my little story, exactly as 
 promised. ' ' 
 
 The Young Chap still stared. 
 
 "How strangely life repeats itself! I 
 vividly recall on such a night as this, a 
 long-demolished fish-shop. Upstairs, ladies 
 room. Within that hall of dazzling light 
 four distinct impressions remain. I re- 
 member, one, the crimson-and-gold wall- 
 paper ; two, hanging up a little velvet cloak 
 (I loathe touching velvet) ; three, the 
 young Greek waiter with his gleaming 
 smile, I remember him chiefly because of, 
 four, his thumb in the soup, but perhaps, 
 also for the glowing thoughts he stirred 
 thoughts that harmonised with the volup- 
 tuous wallpaper and my gorgeous anticipa- 
 tions; thoughts of immortal Helen of 
 Avoirdupois Troy, I mean; really, Nor- 
 man Lindsay has a lot to answer for. By- 
 the-way, what fish did we have for dinner 
 to-night?" 
 
 "Fish?" repeated the other, dazed by 
 the sudden digression. * ' Fillet of whiting, 
 wasn't it!" 
 
 The Old Boy chuckled. "Fillet of whit- 
 ing was 'off.' I spoke severely to the 
 waiter about it. We had grilled bream. At 
 least, I had; you left yours untouched." 
 
 "When's the story going to begin?"
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS. 139 
 
 " Which only shows with what fidelity 
 life repeats itself " 
 
 "That's no reason why you should- 
 
 -repeats itself, because I also forget 
 every detail of that romantic dinner, except 
 the thumb. You follow the plot so far, Bed 
 wall-paper velvet cloak handsome 
 young Greek thumb-soup " 
 
 "And Helen, of course, also handsome," 
 
 "There was, as you shrewdly hint, also a 
 hansom. Would to Heaven that I could 
 forget it! A ricketty contraption that 
 rattled through the ill-lit purlieus of the 
 city, by an alarming series of bounds. At 
 first I thought the driver was lashing the 
 horse, but soon realized there was some 
 more dreadful reason for its kangaroo 
 action. " 
 
 "Do you call this a love-story," 
 
 "Peering through a tear in the leather 
 apron at the brute -" 
 
 ' ' The nightmare ! ' ' 
 
 " 1 saw, to my horror, that, owing to 
 
 short traces, constant friction had worn its 
 tail to a ghastly red stump. My God! it 
 was horrible! Ah! here are the drinks 
 just in time!" 
 
 "How did the girl take it!" 
 
 "As I have already told you, the poor 
 brute must have suffered agonv. Had I
 
 140 GUARDIAN ANGELS. 
 
 remembered its sex I should have men- 
 tioned the fact. Fortunately, a moment 
 later the driver pulled up in a dismal 
 street, opposite a house you know the sort 
 of house," 
 
 ' ' Get on I mean, get out. ' ' 
 
 "I next remember standing in a dim and 
 stuffy passage, whispering to a poisonous 
 green dressing-gown. Whatever was in it 
 has vanished utterly. The garment doubted 
 that I really was Aubrey Fortescue till I 
 proved it with a sovereign." 
 
 "You really remember the sovereign. 
 Cash is such a petty detail at such times. 
 Confess, now, that the sovereign slipped in 
 as an artistic touch ! ' ' 
 
 "My salary at that time was three-ten a 
 week I remember the sovereign. And be- 
 lieve me, once again, that the artist who 
 strives truly to paint the tragic face of 
 Life has no time for 'artistic touches,' and 
 if, in these semi-obliterated memories, you 
 fail to recognise an Old Master, watch 
 closely and you will assuredly see 
 
 "An old mistress! Eeally, some of your 
 puns are horribly obvious ; their advancing 
 footfall sounds like a policeman corning to 
 arrest my attention." 
 
 "Your ear is keener than mine for a 
 policeman's step. I was going to say. you
 
 GUARD AN ANGELS. 141 
 
 will see something you will not forget. ' ' He 
 paused impressively. 
 
 ' ' A tragedy queen ? I loathe tragedy ! ' ' 
 
 The Old Boy sat silent for a moment, a 
 faint smile on his face. His impulsive 
 friend was such a boy only twenty-five 
 years old ! ' ' 
 
 The next thing I remember is a room " 
 
 ''Lights low, and passionate violins!" 
 
 "A room " 
 
 "What kind of room?" 
 
 "A fairly large one " 
 
 "Was the grand piano brass-mounted?" 
 
 "I am wrong in saying I remember the 
 room. All I really remember is the exact 
 position of two pictures in relation to the 
 door." 
 
 * * Took her to a damned picture gallery ! 
 The flippancy was forced. He was con- 
 scious of a relentless purpose beneath the 
 easy phrases of his friend, who sat forward 
 to the table and took some wooden matches 
 from the stand. 
 
 "Here was the door" he placed a match 
 "and here" another match "was the 
 little boy toppling over the precipice, and 
 here" a third match "the guileless 
 maiden midway on the breaking plank that 
 spanned the bottomless chasm." He 
 pointed at the three matches. "There you
 
 142 GUARDIAN ANGELS. 
 
 see the room exactly as my memory now 
 stands in it a phantom room, consisting 
 solely of a door and mural decorations float- 
 ing in space." 
 
 " Bather draughty, wasn't it?" 
 
 "The pictures were German oleographs. 
 It may be that motives of delicacy 
 prompted me to study them longer than I 
 might otherwise have done ; of that I have 
 no recollection. Anyhow, they remain for 
 ever in my memory, stored there amidst a 
 jumble of curious relics from the buried 
 Pompeii of passionate youth. Cunningly 
 designed to satisfy the artistic and 
 spiritual aspirations of the English public, 
 they yet remained essentially German, in 
 conception and in treatment. The fat 
 masses of ruthless colour assaulted the eye 
 just as though it were a Belgian woman, 
 while the Guardian Angel have you ever 
 by any chance seen a German Guardian 
 Angel?" 
 
 "I shall to-night!" 
 
 "Then I hope you've got your revolver. 
 I have mentioned the two pictures, the boy 
 stumbling over the brink of the precipice 
 and the girl on the breaking plank with an 
 ostentatiously shattered handrail. The 
 same fiendish Guardian Angel was luring 
 each to destruction an exuberant-bosomed
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS. 141 
 
 harpy in a low-necked nightdress. The 
 glazed smile with which she awaited the 
 catastrophe was hellish. Her gross person 
 and flat wings hinted neither womanly pity 
 nor angelic grace. She was the Guardian 
 Angel of Prussian infancy, a cross between 
 a Taube warplane and a prolific sow. My 
 dear boy, why is it that whenever my 
 speech touches Germany it smells of the 
 pigsty!" 
 
 "Try a lighter touch." 
 
 "I will. To put it more decently, that 
 Guardian Angel was what we must 
 imagine the Crown Prince's Guardian 
 Angel to be." 
 
 "To have been. Men don't have Guar- 
 dian Angels." 
 
 "German men do. The utilitarian genius 
 of Germany has evolved an adaptable 
 Guardian Angel that passes quite naturally 
 from the nursery to the stud." 
 
 "I didn't catch that?" 
 
 "Nothing, nothing; the pigsty again! 
 And now, my dear boy, what do you think 
 of my story?" 
 
 "You want me to believe that you stood 
 staring at those oleographs all night?" 
 
 "I want you to believe nothing. My 
 story stops there, because my recollections 
 stop there."
 
 144 GUARDIAN ANGELS. 
 
 "Never even turned round once by mis- 
 take ?" 
 
 "My story ends there." 
 
 ' * Damn it all, what about the woman I ' ' 
 
 "So far as my memory serves, there was 
 no woman." 
 
 ' ' Rats ! ' ' He stood up impatiently. The 
 Old Boy got up, too, and put both hands on 
 his shoulders. 
 
 " So-help-me-God, " he said slowly, "I 
 have forgotten the woman utterly; I ad- 
 mit it with deep shame." 
 
 "But you mean to say " 
 
 "I mean to say only what I have said- 
 all I can say." 
 
 "But, surely, in the cab?" 
 
 "I recall no woman in the cab." 
 
 "But she must have been there, because 
 you hung up her velvet cloak." 
 
 "Ah!" The Old Boy's hands gripped 
 the other's shoulders. "Not till you are 
 my age will you realise the pathos of that 
 little velvet cloak hanging for ever un- 
 claimed in the dusty lumber-room of an 
 old man's memory. Her fading image 
 must have lingered near my vagrant 
 thoughts for weeks, months, years even, 
 flitting glimmers now and then of a smile or 
 a pert action, or a tress of hair you under- 
 stand? But at last, while I went rollicking
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS. 145 
 
 on through other loves and other lives, her 
 fading wraith knew it was not wanted even 
 as a memory, and slipped quietly away, so 
 hurt and flurried that it left behind its 
 velvet cloak. Do you know that often of 
 late years I have forced myself to stroke 
 velvet, hoping the shock might stir dead 
 memories of her dress her face her 
 name? If only I could recall her for one 
 moment! Just to ask her forgiveness for 
 having forgotten all her beauty and tender- 
 ness, and remembered only the pigstye 
 horror of a German Guardian Angel! 
 Good-bye! Good luck! I'm afraid I have 
 kept you." 
 
 He turned away and very deliberately 
 laid the dead stump of his cigar in the ash 
 tray. The Young Chap, with a silent nod, 
 hurried off.
 
 "DON'T TELL MOTHERS 
 
 " That Dr. Wilson !" 
 
 "For God's sake, come quickly! My 
 husband's had a fit I can't bring him 
 round - " 
 
 "Who's speaking?" 
 
 "Mrs. Burton you don't know me - 
 
 "What address?" 
 
 "108 Little Wilson Street, Woolloomoo- 
 loo." 
 
 "Bight I'll be round in five minutes." 
 Bag in hand he hurried into the night and 
 hailed a taxi, which soon pulled up at a 
 terrace house. 
 
 "Wait forme." 
 
 He rang the bell; a woman instantly 
 opened the door. 
 
 "Oh, Doctor! I'm Mrs. Burton; it's 
 good of you to come so quick. I'm 
 afraid - " 
 
 He neither saw nor heard her; he saw 
 only the white face peering over her 
 shoulder. Grief distorts the features, but 
 terror petrifies them he stared in amaze-
 
 "DON'T TELL MOTHER!' 147 
 
 ment at stark terror, where he expected to 
 find only grief terror that hardened a 
 pretty face into a rigid and dreadful mask. 
 
 " Won't you step inside, Doctor! This 
 is my daughter Emily, my first husband's 
 child. This way, please." As he followed 
 her, he patted the girl's shoulder. 
 
 "You must pull yourself together, for 
 your mother's sake," he whispered. 
 
 She flinched from his touch; he saw her 
 eyes were dry terror has no time for 
 tears, even for itself. 
 
 On the bed, in a dressing gown, lay a 
 full-blooded handsome man of middle age ; 
 his face was deathly pale. The doctor 
 examined him. 
 
 "How long has he been like this?" 
 
 "Only since just before I rang you up; 
 he had had a hot bath, and was shaving 
 when it happened we were going out to 
 see some friends we heard a fall, and 
 found him lying on the bathroom floor the 
 razor was beside him." 
 
 The girl sank on a sofa, and bowed her 
 face in her hands ; the Doctor watched her 
 while he held the man's pulse. 
 
 "Is he subject to fits?" 
 
 "Oh, no; that's why we were so 
 frightened." 
 
 "Show me the bathroom."
 
 148 "DON'T TELL MOTHER I" 
 
 As they went out Emily rose to follow 
 them, but the Doctor stopped her. "No, 
 you stay here with him." The two went 
 into the bathroom. 
 
 "No call for anxiety, Mrs. Burton; it's 
 just as I thought ; the hot room and fumes 
 of the gas-heater were too much for him 
 nothing serious ; he '11 come round in a few 
 minutes. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Burton's fervent "Thank God!" 
 doubtless included the Doctor. They 
 stepped into the passage. 
 
 "Your daughter seems greatly upset?" 
 
 "Oh, Doctor, I'm so glad you spoke. 
 She's all nerves; I'm anxious about her: 
 she's taken on something dreadful; I 
 thought she'd go out of her senses; he's 
 been so good and patient with her, though 
 he's only her step-father." 
 
 "Yes, he looks a good sort." 
 
 "Oh! the best in the world; but lately 
 we've been worried about Emily; she eats 
 nothing, she's grown terribly thin; we 
 can't interest her in anything. I wish 
 you'd examine her now you're here; per- 
 haps she wants a tonic." 
 
 "I will. How long have you been mar- 
 ried to Mr. Burton?" 
 
 "Only six months. Why, Doctor?" 
 
 "Everything going smoothly?"
 
 "DON'T TELL MOTHER!" 140 
 
 "Well, perhaps I ought to have told you 
 before; we were as happy as could be at 
 first, but lately the child seems to have 
 taken a dislike to rny husband; answers 
 him rudely, avoids him whenever she can; 
 and he's so good to her he's felt it very 
 much. ' ' For the first time she broke down, 
 biting her lip. 
 
 He patted her arm, and smiled cheerily. 
 
 "I thought so! This accident has come 
 as a blessing in disguise. Young girls are 
 subject to all sorts of queer moods; her 
 grief now is the surest proof that she feels 
 remorse for her past conduct. Say nothing 
 to her about it leave her alone, and it 
 will all come right. Now " 
 
 They returned to the bedroom. Emily 
 sat as they had left her, huddled on the 
 sofa, her face in her hands. 
 
 "It's all right, Emily," said the Doctor; 
 she seemed not to hear. 
 
 "Emily! Whatever 's the matter with 
 the child?" The Doctor signalled silence; 
 he turned to the bed, and again felt the 
 man's pulse. 
 
 " He 's coming round ; you stay with him, 
 Mrs. Burton, while I have a chat with Emily 
 outside our voices might possibly disturb 
 him. Come along, little woman." 
 
 "Oh, mother please!"
 
 OOIBO "DONT TELL MOTHER 1" 
 
 " Go with the Doctor, dear into the sit- 
 ting room." 
 
 "Now, you sit there and I'll sit here," 
 he sat facing her, their knees almost 
 touching. 
 
 "What's the trouble, Emily?" 
 
 "Oh, Doctor, there's nothing really the 
 matter with me." 
 
 ' * Yes, there is tell me. ' ' 
 
 "Well, I have no appetite." 
 
 "Yes what else?" 
 
 "I always feel tired; sometimes I can't 
 even help mother about the house." 
 
 "Naturally what else?" 
 
 She stared at him; her eyes fell. 
 
 "Tell me; I can't cure you unless you 
 tell me the truth." 
 
 "No, there's nothing more to tell you; 
 you can't do anything." Her lips quivered; 
 silent tears fell. 
 
 He leaned forward. "Perhaps I could 
 help you to cure yourself?" 
 
 "No! No! No!" She covered her face 
 with her hands. He drew them away. 
 
 "Tell me." 
 
 A paroxysm of sobs; she pulled herself 
 together bravely, and turned on him. 
 "You're a doctor it's for you to tell me." 
 
 "Yes perhaps it is," he said gravely. 
 
 "No no I didn't mean that; I'm sorry
 
 "DON'T TELL MOTHER!" 1SI 
 
 I was rude." She tried to smile. " I really 
 think it's only a tonic I want." 
 
 1 'No tell me the truth." 
 
 "Oh, please! I can't bear it!" 
 
 He leaned forward and grasped her thin 
 shoulders with both hands. 
 
 "I want to die!" she sobbed. He shook 
 her gently. 
 
 "Emily, I know what's the matter." 
 Abject terror widened her innocent eyes. 
 "You're in love with your step-father." 
 
 She glanced wildly at the door, fell on 
 her knees, flung her arms round his neck 
 and gasped, "Don't tell mother." 
 
 "One question first: Does he do you 
 think he " 
 
 "Oh, no! How could you think such a 
 thing ! ' ' Her horrified protest shamed him. 
 "But you won't you won't tell mother?" 
 
 "You little goose trust me but you're 
 going to be sensible 1 Promise me ! " 
 
 "Oh, yes yes I will try." 
 
 "Have the old happy times back again, 
 eh?" 
 
 "Yes yes I'm glad I've told some- 
 one. ' ' 
 
 With his hand on her shoulder they re- 
 turned to the bedroom. 
 
 "Well, how is he?" 
 
 "He opened his eyes a moment ago. I 
 think he's sleeping now."
 
 15S "DONT TELL MOTHER!" 
 
 "Yes that's good; let him sleep re- 
 member about the bath-heater; always 
 keep the window open while it's in use. Mrs. 
 Burton, you were quite right about Emily. ' ' 
 
 "Just a tonic?" 
 
 "Just a tonic she's anaemic. Have you 
 a sheet of paper?" 
 
 He solemnly wrote a prescription. 
 
 ' * There ! Have that made up she won't 
 need another bottle, or I'm much mis- 
 taken. ' ' 
 
 Emily put her arms round her mother 
 and kissed her; she looked up at the 
 doctor. 
 
 "I'm sure I won't want another bottle, 
 Doctor." 
 
 "You little scamp! Happy old times 
 coming back, eh?" 
 
 "Mother, may I kiss dad?" 
 
 "To be sure," said the Doctor rather 
 noisily. 
 
 "Stay with him, dear, while I show the 
 Doctor out." At the door she whispered. 
 "Why, Doctor, you've worked wonders 
 that's the first time she's called him 'dad' 
 for ever so long." 
 
 "Nonsense; she's ashamed of herself, 
 poor little thing, but Mrs. Burton" he 
 paused in his best professional manner 
 "be sure she takes the tonic regularly. 
 Good-night." 
 
 Wholly set up and frinltd Australia & 
 Btatty, Richardson * Co., Equitable Building, Sydney,
 
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