Rougher and hotter grew his repartee till, by sheer abuse, he gained the ascendancy; but there was no sane statement of what he would propose as a remedy. Grandma Clay happened to rise as he neared the finish to see about a reticule she had dropped, and proved a target for those at the rear.
"h.e.l.lo, grandma! are you going to contradict him? Give us a straight tip about women"s rights while you"re up;" and poor grandma sat down very precipitately with an exceedingly deep blush.
"If I could only get the chance," she gasped, "I"d give "em a piece of me mind."
Third on the list came Leslie Walker, whose improvement was beyond belief. No notes or hesitation this time. Each sentence was crisp and clear, and in every detail he evinced the facility for enacting his _role_ which is supposedly a feminine accomplishment.
The chairman, in closing the meeting, rose to say--
"In reference to the interjector who said the speaker was mad--"
"Oh, that"s what every one said about _you_ when you were in the council, and so you were too, and so are they all. Look at the roads we"ve got in the munic.i.p.ality," said a voice.
So the chairman had to let the meeting terminate with the candidates thanking the electors for the extraordinarily good hearing they had been accorded; it being part of the humour of politics that the worse a candidate is boo-hooed the more stress he lays upon the _good hearing_ given him, and the more scurrilous he is regarding his opponent the more frantically he a.s.sures one that he is a bosom _personal_ friend.
Andrew and I had the distinction of going home under grandma"s tutelage, while Carry and Dawn stayed behind to go to the ladies"
committee rooms, and Ernest lingered to escort them.
"I say, grandma, are you goin" to vote for that bloke?" inquired Andrew.
"I"m goin" to hear the other side first, and give me opinion after.
There wasn"t one of the swells there, was there?"
"Dr Smalley and Dr Tinker both was."
"Yes; but I mean the wimmen: an" how on earth did old Tinker ever get away from Mrs Tinker for that length of time? You"ll never see one of them kind of wimmen at anythink that makes for progress. That"s the way they make theirselves superior to the likes of you an" me--by never doin" nothink only for theirselves. "Oh, we"ve got all we want as it is, an" don"t want the vote; a woman"s place is home," they say if you ask "em. It"s all very fine for them as has a man to keep them like in a band-box; they would have found it different if they had to act on their own like me. I"m sick of this intelligence in women they make a fuss about all of a sudden. I"ve rared a family and managed me business better than a man could; and what"s there been all along to prevent a woman from stroking out a name on a paper I never could see.
And it never seems to me much difference which name was struck out, for they"re mostly a lot of impostors that only think of featherin"
their own nests. You"ll always hear of wimmen not bein" intelligent enough to do this and that, and these things is only what men like doin" best theirselves, and the things they make out G.o.d intended women to do is them the men don"t like doin". You don"t ever hear of them thinkin" women ain"t intelligent enough to do seven things at once." Grandma was in great form that night, and not only led but maintained the conversation.
"I rather like this young feller, but he ain"t no sense much either.
All he thinks of is b.u.t.toning for the railway people, and it"s the people on the land that ought to be legislated for first. They are the foundation of everythink; other things would work right after. Every one can"t live in Sydney, an" that"s what they"re all makin" for now.
Every one is getting some little agency--parasite business. They"ve got sense to see the people on the land is the most despised and sat upon. You don"t hear no squallin" about they"ll protect the farmer.
No, he"s a despised old party that them scuts of fellers on the railway would grin at and think theirselves above, and scarcely give him a civil answer if he asked a question about his business what he"s payin" them fellers there to do for him, and which only for the prodoocers wouldn"t be there at all. Things is gettin" pretty tight on farms now. It means about sixteen hours hard graft a-day to make not half what a railwayman makes in eight hours. If you happen to have grapes or oranges, if they manage to escape the frost, an" hail, an"
caterpillar, then the blight ketches "em, or there"s a drewth, and there ain"t none; an" if there"s any, there"s so much that there ain"t no sale for "em; and the farmer"s life I reckon ought to be stopped as gamblin", for a gambler"s life ain"t one bit more precarious."
"Then why the jooce do you want me to go on the land?" said Andrew.
"That ain"t the point."
"It"s the most sticking out point to me," protested the lad. "I reckon bein" on the land is a mug"s game; sc.r.a.pin" like a fool when a feller could be sittin" in an office an" gettin" all they want twice as easy."
"Here, you don"t know what"s good. It"s more respectabler bein" on the land. You get the pony out, an" make the coffee, an" hold your tongue."
Andrew and I had undertaken to make the coffee for supper, and thus give Carry, whose week in the kitchen it was, a chance to go to the meeting.
They all arrived from it after a time--Dawn and the knight together, Carry and Larry Witcom following. Oh, where was "Dora"?
"Who"s that with you, Carry?" asked Andrew. "There was a young lady named Carry, who had a sweetheart named Larry; at the gate they often would tarry, to talk about when they would marry."
But this remark of Andrew"s to parry, Dawn good-naturedly plunged into an account of the meeting.
"What did they do?" asked grandma.
"Do?--they only blabbed. Mr Walker was there to-night. We asked that Jimmeny girl from the pub. to join, and she delivered a great parable at us, looking round all the time to see if the boot-licking tone of it was pleasing the men. She said that women ought to bring up their children to respect them--"
"The most commonest idea some people has of bringin" up their children to respect them," grandma chipped in, "is to let youngsters make toe-rags of their mother; and boys only as high as the table think they can cheek their mother because she"s only a woman an" hasn"t as much right to be livin" in the world as them, and when they are twenty-one the law confirms this beautiful sentiment. Leastways, until just lately," she concluded.
"And this Jimmeny piece," continued Dawn, "said women ought to treat their husbands decently, and she thinks a woman disgraces her s.e.x by getting up on a platform to speak. I asked her if she thought they did not disgrace themselves and the other s.e.x too by standing behind a bar and serving out drinks and grinning at a lot of goods that ought to be at home with their families,--and that was a bit of a facer. Then she said it was only the ugly old women who wanted to shriek round and get rights,--that men would give the young pretty ones all they wanted without asking! Of all the old black gin ideas, I always think that the terriblest. A nice state of affairs, if people couldn"t get honest civilised rights without being young and pretty; and _the fools_!"
said the girl heatedly, "can"t they look round and see how long the beauty and youth business will work! "Men," she says, "ought to rule; they"re the stronger vessel."" And Dawn gave inimitable mimicry of Miss Jimmeny of the pub. "If you take my tip for it, those girls that sing out that men are the stronger vessel are the sort that have a dishcloth of a husband, and never let him off a string."
This att.i.tude of mind was one of Dawn"s distinctive characteristics.
Having that beauty, which in the enslaved condition of women has always been an unfair a.s.set to the possessor, to the exclusion of worthier traits, she was not like most beauties, content to sit down and trade upon it, but had wholesomer, honester, workaday ideals in regard to the position of her s.e.x.
She was going to Sydney in the morning for her second singing lesson, and as Ernest, by a strange coincidence, happened to have business that would take him on the same journey by the same train, I accompanied him to the gate to warn him against inadvertently divulging that I had been an actress by trade.
"I want to take you into my confidence," I said, as we pa.s.sed several naked cedar-trees, and halted in the shelter of some fine peppers that grew to perfection in this valley, where I related the trouble I had had to bring the old lady round to the idea of Dawn"s singing lessons, and mentioned the girl"s ambition regarding the stage.
"Now," I continued, "if the old dame were to discover I had been on the stage, she would think I was leading Dawn to the devil, and would not credit that no one is more anxious than I am to save her from the footlights, or that the best way to stave her off is this training.
My secret ambition regarding her," I said, critically observing the strong k.n.o.bby profile, "is that within the next five years she should marry some nice youngster with means to place her in a setting befitting her intelligence and beauty."
"Have you got any one in your eye now?" he irrelevantly inquired. And, considering he stood where he filled my entire vision, as he rose between me and the light shed by the last division of the western pa.s.senger mail as it self-importantly crossed the viaduct, I answered--
"Yes; I think I know a man who would just fill the bill."
He did not ask for further particulars, but remarked warningly--
"Decent fellows with cash are scarce. They are inclined to get into mischief if they have too much time and money on their hands."
"That"s it; and I would not like to make a mess of things now that I"ve taken up matchmaking. You"ll have to advise me when matters get out of hand; a little practice may come in handy some day when you have half a dozen daughters."
"It would come in still handier now."
"Pshaw, now! You"d only have to ask to receive, at your time of life and with your qualifications."
"I"m not so sure. You"re the only one who has such an opinion of me,"
he said disconsolately. "Others look upon me as a red-headed fool with big ears, &c.;" and thus I knew Dawn"s idle words had returned to his ears, as these things invariably do, and had stung.
"Silly-billy! I"ll take you in hand when I"ve settled Dawn. I"m the one to advertise your wares, for could I turn back the wheel of time eight or nine years and make us of an age, I"d make it leap-year and propose to you myself."
"I"d like to propose to you without altering the time," he gallantly responded, apparently not in such deadly fear of a breach of promise action as was Uncle Jake.
"If I don"t move in the matter Dawn will be marrying that Eweword, and though he"s a most handsome and worthy--"
"Soft as a turnip," contemptuously interposed Ernest; "eats too much.
It would take twelve months hard training to make any sort of a man of him."
"It would be a pity to see Dawn just settling down into the dull, drudging life of a farmer"s wife, going to an occasional show or tea-meeting in a home-made dress, with two or three children dragging at her skirts and looking a perfect wreck, as most of the mothers do."
"By Jove, yes!"