Australian Writers Part 11

Mr. Piper is at length informed of the progress of the inquiries, but shows a provoking obtuseness and indifference concerning them.

'I am--hem!--I am pursuing a task of the utmost consequence to your family interests,' Mr. Cavendish had told him one day. 'In fact, my dear sir, I am engaged in a work of no less moment than that of reconstructing your family tree.'

'My what-do-you-call-it tree?' exclaimed Mr. Piper, with a hazy idea that Mr. Cavendish had been trying some unwarrantable experiments upon his lemon and orange bushes. 'Don't you take and put any rubbish in the garden. I've got a new lot of guano, and I don't want it meddled with.'

'Guano!' echoed Mr. Cavendish, with a tone of the most withering compa.s.sion. 'I'm afraid you don't quite apprehend my meaning. I am not alluding to coa.r.s.e material facts at all. I am speaking of a genealogical tree--a ge-ne-a-lo-gi-cal tree, you understand? I am trying to rescue your ancestors from the dust of oblivion. I am....'

'You'd better leave 'em alone,' interrupted Mr. Piper, with the sulky accent of one whose suspicions have not been altogether allayed. '_They_ won't do you any good--no more than they've done for me. You've got some of your own, I expect; that's enough for any man, I should think.'

Mr. Cavendish shrugged his shoulders and held his peace. If the matter had not become a hobby by this time, he would have abandoned it then and there. As it was, he contented himself by deploring the sad effects of low a.s.sociation upon the undoubted descendant of a count, and pondering upon the possibility of introducing a hog in armour instead of a stag at gaze into the coat-of-arms that he foresaw would be the result of his researches.

Equally comical is the spectacle of Mrs. Cavendish, on the eve of the first meeting of the two men, humbly wondering how she could soften the heart of her discontented lord towards the low-born brother--'how lead him to pardon, as it were, his benefactor for having dared to benefit him,' and the subsequent reflection of Cavendish that not only was wealth an acknowledged power, 'even though pork-sausages should have been its alleged first cause,' but that, after all, 'politic members of the great ruling houses in the old world had been known to make concessions to trade,' and he 'was prepared to make concessions too!'

Accordingly, he resolved that the meeting with his relative should bear the semblance of cordiality.

'This is a real pleasure, my dear sir,' he said, with ten white fingers--the fingers of thoroughbred hands--closing round Mr.

Piper's plebeian knuckles. No onlooker could have supposed for an instant that he had come, with the whole of his family, in an entirely dest.i.tute condition, to live upon his wife's brother.

Besides, we know that among well-bred people, to receive a favour is virtually to oblige a man. You only accept cordialities from people you esteem....

'You're welcome, sir,' said Mr. Piper.

Then there was a pause, during which Mrs. Cavendish wiped her eyes, and Mr. Piper said very heartily, 'You're welcome, the lot of you.'

Cavendish is the only character that the author has treated in a consistently farcical vein. Eila Frost's canting old father-in-law in _Not Counting the Cost_ is made ridiculous in his harangue on the duties of the young wife to her insane husband; but, with this exception, little is said of him in the story. It would seem that Tasma regards broadly humorous exaggeration to be scarcely compatible with her somewhat grave style, for in all the later stories her satire, if not less pungent, is of a quieter kind.

Next to their humour and skilful presentation of character, the most noteworthy feature of these novels is their lucid and polished language.

The style is, perhaps, scarcely easy enough for fiction. Its qualities and culture are those that equip the essayist or critic rather than the novelist. Indeed, judged by some of her early work in the reviews, and by the little philosophic exordiums with which she opens so many of her chapters, Tasma would have made a brilliant essayist. To a large cla.s.s of thoughtful readers it will always seem that what her novels lack in dramatic interest is fully compensated for by their more than usually faithful sketches of both men and women, and by their intimate and sympathetic view of our common life.

THE END.