Some Everyday Folk and Dawn Part 33

Near the appointed time of tryst, when the first division of the Western mail was roaring by--the warm red lights from its windows shedding a glow by the viaduct--she and I betook ourselves to the far end of Grandma Clay's vineyard, where we were securely screened by the osage orange hedge on one side and the grape-canes and their stakes on the other. Dawn carried a two-pound treacle-tin filled with tar, and which had been sitting on the end of the stove during the afternoon to melt into working order. Carry, who had entered into the affair with vim, had her share of the arrangements in readiness, and was secreted nearer the house to act as sentinel, and to run to our a.s.sistance if summoned by a prearranged whistle.

Dawn placed me and the superannuated hair broom, with which she had armed me, behind a grape-vine, and herself took up a position before it and beside a hole about eighteen inches deep and two feet square which she had excavated.

Mr p.o.r.nsch was soon to be heard tripping and blundering along, while the starlight, to which our eyes had grown accustomed, showed the river where the dead girl whom we were there to avenge had ended her miserable existence.

"Dawn, my pet, where are you? Curse the grape-vines," he gasped.

"I'm here, _uncle darling_," she responded, the two last words under her breath.

Directed by her voice, he neared till we could discern his bulk.

"My little queen," he exclaimed, the tone of his voice betraying that which defiled the crisp glory of the night for as far as it carried.

"Just wait a minute till I see where we are," said Dawn, "or we will be getting all tangled up in these canes."

With this she started back, causing him to do likewise, and drawing a swab on a stick from the pot in her hand, she brought a consignment of the black sticky tar a resounding smack on his face, and following it with others thick and fast, exclaimed--

"There! There! That's all for you!"

Mr p.o.r.nsch naturally stepped backwards into the excavation, as designed, and sat down as completely and largely helplessly as one of his figure could be counted upon to do, and coming to Dawn's a.s.sistance I planted the broom on his chest, and bore with my feeble strength upon him. It was quite sufficient to detain him, seeing he was now stretched on the broad of his back with his amids.h.i.+p departments foundered in two feet of indentation.

Dawn thoroughly plastered his face and head, and in spitting to keep his mouth clear he lost his false teeth. He attempted to bellow, but jabbing his mouth full Dawn soon cowed him into quietude.

"Shut up, you old fool; if you make a noise we have six more girls waiting in a boat to fling you in the river and drag you up and down for a while tied on to a rope like a porpoise. Do you think you'll float?"

This had the desired effect, though he spluttered a little.

"What is the meaning of this? Have you all gone mad? I met you here at your own request to speak about helping you with your singing, and you've evidently put a wicked construction on my action. I demand a full explanation and an abject apology."

"Well," said Dawn, punctuating her remarks with little dabs of the tar, "the explanation is that we're doing this to show what we think of a murderer. Even if Miss Flipp had not drowned herself, but had lived to be an outcast, you would be still a murderer of her soul."

"What's this?" he bl.u.s.tered.

"We have several witnesses ready to give evidence regarding all that pa.s.sed between you and the unfortunate girl supposed to be your niece during your midnight calls upon her," I interposed, speaking for the first time, "so bluff or pretence of any kind on your part is unavailing. Remain silent and hear what we intend to say."

"We're dealing with this case privately," continued Dawn, "because the laws are not fixed up yet to deal with it publicly. Old alligators--one couldn't call you men, and it's enough to make decent men squirm that you should be at large and be called by the same name--can act like you and yet be considered respectable, but this is to show you what _decent_ women think of your likes, and their spirits are with us in armies to-night in what we are doing. They'd all like to be giving your sort a wipe from the tar-pot, and then if you were set alight it would not be half sufficient punishment for your crimes.

We haven't a law to squash you yet, but soon as we can we'll make one that the likes of you shall be publicly tarred and feathered by those made outcasts by the system of morality you patronise," vehemently said this ardent and practical young social reformer, who was more rabid than a veteran temperance advocate in fighting for her ideal of social purity.

There was silence a moment while we listened to ascertain was there any likelihood of our being disturbed, but the only man-made sounds breaking the noisy crickets' chorus were the rumble of vehicles along the highroad and the shunting of the engines at the station, so I chimed in with promised support.

"Yes, good women have to continually suffer the degradation of your type in all life's most sacred relations. They have to endure you at their board and in their homes, and leering at their sweet young daughters; and, alack! many in shame and humiliation own your stamp as their father or the father of their sons and daughters. They have had to endure it with a smile and hear it bolstered up as right, but those whose moral illumination has taken place would be with us in armies to-night if they could."

"I'm dying to give him a piece of my mind," said Carry, coming up.

"How do you like our little ill.u.s.tration of what we think of you?

We've done it out of a long smouldering resentment against your reign, and this is a species of jubilation to find that the majority of Australian men are with us, because in the vote they have furnished us with a means of redress," and Carry finished her previously prepared speech by throwing a clod of dirt on him.

"My grey hairs should have protected me," he muttered.

"You mean they should have protected Miss Flipp," said Dawn, "and when a man with grey hairs carries on like this the crime is twice as deadly. There was nothing about grey hairs when you used a lead comb and got yourself up to kill. I thought you didn't want to make an especial feature of them, and that's why I'm dyeing them this beautiful treacley black. They'll look bosker when I'm done."

"Get up out of that, lest I'm tempted to do you a permanent injury," I said, taking the broom off him.

"You can go to the stable," said Dawn, "and I hope you won't contaminate it. Carry has a lantern and some grease and hot water, so you can clean yourself there and put on your overcoat. Never let us hear of you on a platform spouting about moral bills again unless you say it is on account of the practical experience you've had of the need of them to save weak and foolish young women from the clutches of such as you."

Mr p.o.r.nsch arose with difficulty while Dawn struck matches to see what he was like, and a more deplorably ludicrous spectacle never could be seen in a pantomime. The only pity of it was that it was not a punishment more frequently meted out to the sinners of his degree. He raved and stuttered how he would move in the matter, but Dawn, who had a commendable fearlessness in carrying out her undertakings, only laughed merry little peals, and told him the best way for him to move in the tar was towards the stable, and the best way to move out of it was by the aid of grease, soap, hot water, and soda. The expression of his eyes rolling and glaring amid the black was quite eerie, but eventually we reached the stable, where Carry instructed him how to clean himself, while Dawn jeered at him during the operation.

Having cleaned his face somewhat, he hid his neck and clothes in his overcoat which Carry handed, put on his hat, m.u.f.fled his face in his handkerchief, and went away, Dawn administering a parting shot.

"Now, Uncle p.o.r.nsch, dear, next time you go ogling and leering round a _decent_ girl, remember, though she may be so situated that she has to endure you, yet she feels just as we do, that is, if she is a decent girl, whose eyes have been opened to the facts of life."

"I feel better than I have done for a long time," she concluded, as bearing the implements used in the adventure we three, who had agreed upon secrecy, made towards the house.

"So do I," said Carry. "If we could only do it to all who deserve the like, it would be grand!"

TWENTY-THREE.

UNIVERSAL ADULT SUFFRAGE.

I.

Electioneering matters ripened, and so did Carry's love affair with Larry Witcom. In fact it got so far that she gave grandma notice, and announced her intention of going to a married sister's home for that process known as "getting her things ready," while Larry, in keeping up his end of the stick, bought a neat cottage and began furnis.h.i.+ng it in the style approved by his circle, with bright linoleum on the floors, plush chairs in the "parler," and china ornaments on the overmantels.

Mrs Bray, one of those very everyday folk whose G.o.d was mammon, and who naturally hung on every word issuing from a person of means while she would ignore the most inimitable witticism from an impecunious individual, began to regard the lady-help from a new point of view.

"She mightn't have done so bad for herself after all. Some of these girls knockin' about the world not havin' nothink to their name, don't baulk at things the same as you an' me would who's been used to plenty and like to pick our goods, so to speak. The way things is, Larry is as likely as most to be in a good position yet," was a sample of the modified sentiments falling from her full red lips.

Carry was to remain at Clay's until after the election day, so that she could cast her vote for Leslie Walker.

The political candidate thus favoured scarcely allowed three days to pa.s.s without personally or by proxy stumping the Noonoon end of the electorate. His last meeting in the Citizens' Hall was jam-pack an hour before the advertised time of speaking.

The candidate on this occasion made no fresh utterances to entertain, he merely repeated the catch cries of his party; but the air was heavily charged with human electricity, and the questions and "barracking" of the crowd were supremely diverting.

"Are you in favour of the Chows going to South Africa?" bawled one elector.

"My dear fellow, we are going to govern New South Wales--not South Africa."

"Yes; but when we sent contingents out to fight for the Empire in the Transvaal, do you think it fair that white men should be pa.s.sed over in favour of Chows in the South African labour market?"

This question being ignored another was interjected.

"Are you in favour of the newspapers running New South Wales?"

"Certainly not!"