The Workingman's Paradise Part 35

"Don't razzle-dazzle!" repeated Connie, laughing. "Don't dance on champagne, like many of the society gems?"

"The men, you mean."

"The men! My dear Ned, you ought to know a little more about high life and then you'd appreciate the Strongs. I've seen a dozen fas.h.i.+onable women, young and old, perfectly intoxicated at a single fas.h.i.+onable ball.

As for the men, most of them haven't any higher idea of happiness than a drunken debauch. While as for fas.h.i.+onable morality the less you say about it the better. And the worst of the lot are among the canting ones. The Strongs and their set at least are decent people. Wealth and poverty both seem to degrade most of us."

"Ah, well, it can't last so very much longer," remarked Ned.

"It could if it weren't for the way both sides are being driven,"

answered Connie. "These fat wine-soaked capitalists would give in whenever the workmen showed a bold front if cast-iron capitalists like Strong didn't force them into the fight and keep them fighting. And you know yourself that while workmen get a little what they want they never dream of objecting to greater injustices. And if it weren't for the new ideas workmen would go on soaking themselves with drink and vice and become as unable to make a change as the depraved wealthy are to resist a change. Everything helps to make up the movement."

"I know I'm inconsistent," she went on. "I talk angrily myself often but it's not right to feel hard against anybody. These other people can't help it, any more than a thief can help it or a poor girl on the streets.

They're not happy as they might be, either. And if they were, I think it's better to suffer for the Cause than to have an easy time by opposing it. I'd sooner be Geisner than Strong."

"What a comparison!" cried Ned.

"Of one thing I'm sure," continued Connie, "that it is n.o.ble to go to prison in resisting injustice, that suffering itself becomes a glory if one bears it bravely for others. For I have heard Geisner say, often, that when penalties cease to intimidate and when men generally rise superior to unjust laws those special injustices are as good as overthrown. We must all do our best to prevent anything being done which is unmanly in itself. If we try to do that prison is no disgrace and death itself isn't very terrible."

"I know you mean this for me," said Ned, smiling. "I didn't mind much, you know, before. I was ready for the medicine. But, somehow, since I've been here, I've got to feel quite eager to be locked up. I shall be disappointed if it doesn't come off." He laughed cheerfully.

"Well, you might as well take it that way," laughed Connie. "I can't bear people who take everything seriously."

"There was one thing I wanted you to do," said Ned, after a while.

"Nellie promised me years ago to tell me if ever she was hard up. I've got a few pounds ahead and what my horses are worth. If anything happens can I have it sent down to you so that you can give it to her if she needs it?"

Connie thought for a moment, "You'd better not," she answered. "We'll see that Nellie's all right. I think she'd starve rather than touch what you'll need afterwards."

"Perhaps so," said Ned. "You know best about that. I must go now,"

rising.

"Can't you wait for dinner?" asked Connie. "Harry will be here then and you'd have time to catch the train."

"I've a little business to do before," said Ned. "I promised one of our fellows to see his brother, who lives near the station."

"Oh! You must have something to eat first," insisted Connie. "You'll miss your dinner probably. That won't do." So he waited.

They had finished the hurriedly prepared meal, which she ate with him so that he might feel at home, when Stratton came in.

"He's always just in time," explained Connie, when the greetings were over. "He gives me the cold s.h.i.+vers whenever we're going to catch a train. Say 'good-bye' to Ned now, and don't delay him! I'll tell you all he said, all but the secrets. He's going to Queensland to-night and hasn't a minute to spare."

"I'm sorry you can't stay overnight," said Harry, heartily. "I'd like to have a long talk but I suppose my fine society lady here hasn't wasted time."

"I've talked enough for two, you may depend upon it," announced Connie, as they went to the front door together, chatting.

"Well, good-bye, if you must go," said Harry, holding Ned by both hands.

"And remember, whatever happens, you've got good friends here, not fair-weather friends either."

"He must go, Harry," cried Connie. "I've kept him just to see you. You'll make him miss the next boat. Come, Ned! Good-bye!"

Ned turned to her, holding out his hand.

"Bend down!" she said, suddenly, her lips smiling, her eyes filling.

"You're so tall."

He bent to her mechanically, not understanding. She took his head between her hands and kissed him on both cheeks.

"The republican kiss!" she cried, trying to laugh, offering her own cheek to him as he stood flushed and confused. Something choked him as he stooped to her again, touching the fair face with his lips, reverentially.

"Good-bye!" she exclaimed, her mouth working, grasping his hands. "Our hearts are with you all up there, but, oh, don't let your good heart destroy you for no use!" Then she burst into tears and, turning to her husband, flung herself into the loving arms that opened for her. "It's beginning again, Harry. It's beginning again. Will it never end, I wonder? And it's always the best it takes from us, Harry, the bravest and the best." And she sobbed in his arms, quietly, resignedly, as she had sobbed, Ned recollected, when Geisner thundered forth that triumphant Ma.r.s.eillaise.

Her vivid imagination showed her friends and husband and sons going to prison and to death as friends and father and brother had gone to prison and to death in the days gone by. She knew the Cause so well--had it not suckled her and reared her?--with all the depth of the nature that her lightness of manner only veiled as the frothy spray of the flooded Barron veils the swell of the cataract beneath, with all the capacity for understanding that made her easily the equal of brilliant men. It was a Moloch, a Juggernaut, a Kronos that devoured its own children, a madness driving men to fill with their hopes and lives the chasm that lies between what is and what should be. It had lulled a little around her of late years, the fight that can only end one way because generation after generation carries it on, civilisation after civilisation, age after age.

Now its bugle notes were swelling again and those she cared for would be called, sooner or later, one by one. Husband and children and friends, all must go as this bushman was going, going with his n.o.ble thoughts and pure instincts and generous manhood and eager brain. At least, it seemed to her that they must. And so she bewailed them, as women will even when their hearts are brave and when their devotion is untarnished and undimmed. She yearned for the dawning of the Day of Peace, of the Reign of Love, but her courage did not falter. Still amid her tears she clung to the idea that those whom the Cause calls must obey.

"Ned'll be late, Harry," she whispered. "He must go." So Ned went, having grasped Harry's hand again, silently, a great lump in his throat and a dimness in his eyes but, nevertheless, strangely comforted.

He was just stepping on board the ferry steamer when Harry raced down, a little roll of paper in his hand. "Connie forgot to give you this," was all he had time to say. "It's the only one she has."

Ned opened the little roll to find it a pot-shot photograph of Nellie, taken in profile as she stood, with her hands clasped, gazing intently before her, her face sad and stern and beautiful, her figure full of womanly strength and grace. He lovered it, overjoyed, until the boat reached the Circular Quay. He kept taking it out and stealing sly peeps at it as the bus rolled up George-street, Redfern way.

CHAPTER IX.

NED GOES TO HIS FATE.

At the station some of the Sydney unionists wore waiting to see Ned off.

As they loaded him with friendly counsel and encouraged him with fraternal promises of a.s.sistance and compared the threats made in Sydney during the maritime strike with the expected action of the Government in Queensland, a newspaper boy came up to them, crowded at the carriage door.

"h.e.l.lo, sonny! Whose rose is that?" asked one of the group, for the little lad carried a rose, red and blowing.

"It's Mr. Hawkinses rose," answered the boy.

"For me!" exclaimed Ned, holding out his hand. "Who is it from?"

"I'm not to say," answered the urchin, slipping away.

The other men laughed. "There must be a young lady interested in you, Hawkins," said one jocularly; "our Sydney girls always have good eyes for the right sort of a man." "I wondered why you stayed over last night, Hawkins," remarked another. "Trust a Queenslander to make himself at home everywhere," contributed a third. Ned did not answer. He did not hear them. He knew who sent it.

Then the guard's whistle blew; another moment and the train started, slowly at first, gradually faster, amid a pattering of good-byes.

"Give him a cheer, lads!" cried one of his friends. "Hip-hip-hurrah!"

"And one for his red rose!" shouted another. "Hip-hip-hurrah!"

"And another for the Queensland bush men! Hip-hip-hurrah!"

Ned leaned over the door as the train drew away, laughing genially at the cheering and waving his hand to his friends. His eyes, meanwhile, eagerly searched the platform for a tall, black-clad figure.