Grey Town Part 10

"Sit down and talk to me," he suggested.

"I have other and better things to do," she answered.

He whistled the long-drawn note of surprise. His chair was across the door, but he made no attempt to move it.

"Angry?" he asked.

"Will you please move your chair?" she replied.

"Why should I? I am quite comfortable. Just sit down for five minutes and talk about the old people. I have any number of questions to ask you," he said.

"You always have; but I have no time to answer them. Please move your chair."

"Do you always have your own way?" he asked.

"Always--with gentlemen," she answered.

"Then you shall have it this once with Denis Quirk, who neither professes nor has the slightest wish to be--a gentleman."

He rose and put his chair on one side.

"Thank you," she said, as he held the door open for her. But, while she went up the stairs to Mrs. Quirk's room, the eternal question was repeating itself to her: "What do you think of this man?"

She found old Mrs. Quirk in her room, arranging a series of photos.

There was Denis from infancy until the period when he had left his home--ugly, but smiling from infancy to manhood.

"What do you think of Denis? Isn't he grown into a fine man, and as full of fun as if he were a boy? And doesn't he love his old mother?" asked the fond old mother.

"Why shouldn't he?" asked Kathleen. "I love her as if she were my own mother."

"G.o.d bless you, child. I believe you do. Did you see what he has brought me? Brooches and shawls! But what good is jewellery to me? You must take them."

"No, no!" cried Kathleen, hastily. "You must keep them for Mr. Quirk's wife."

A smile lit up the old lady's face as she looked at the brooch in her hand and then at Kathleen.

"I just will do that same," she said.

A peremptory knock at the door, and Denis himself entered. He smiled as he noted the array of photographs.

"Which is the uglier," he asked Kathleen, "the picture or the original?

Fire away, mother, and tell Miss O'Connor every detail of my life. Cut my first tooth when I was seven days old; spoke--or did I swear--at three months, fought my first fight on my first birthday, and I've been fighting ever since."

"Oh, Denis, Denis, you are as much an omadhaun as ever," sighed Mrs.

Quirk. "But he was a fine boy, Kathleen!"

"And into a fine man he has grown, mother!" laughed Denis. "But what could you expect with such a mother? Father alive, Miss O'Connor?"

The abruptness of the question was quite disconcerting to Kathleen.

"No," she replied; "my father is dead."

"Sorry I asked," said Denis.

"G.o.d rest his soul! They do say he was a great man; but what could you expect, and him an O'Connor?" said Mrs. Quirk.

"Hem!" began Denis, but he checked himself and asked: "Any relations living, Miss O'Connor?"

"There's her brother Desmond, as handsome as herself," said Mrs. Quirk.

"Anything like me? But that's not to be expected. Where does he work?"

"My brother is a reporter at 'The Observer' office," replied Kathleen.

Had it not been for Mrs. Quirk's presence she would have checked his questions once and for all.

"I must look him up to-day. I start operations in Grey Town this afternoon. Did it ever strike you that this place needs stirring up?

It's been sleeping ever since it was born. I have come here to make things hum, I tell you that."

Kathleen laughed at the thought of Grey Town humming. All her life she had known it as a gentle, quiet town, to which excitement was unknown and undesired.

"What do you intend to do?" she asked.

"Everything," he answered. "See here, in twelve months' time you will scarcely know Grey Town. There will be squalls, of course, and plenty of fighting. But when I get to work I'll make the old place boom. Ran a paper in the States, and divided the town into friends and enemies. I was just over the last libel action brought against 'The Firebrand' by the last enemy on my list when I sold out. The paper went like wildfire, and the town all but doubled itself in my time. Nothing like a little mustard and pepper if you want to make things go."

"I prophesy that Grey Town will subdue even you. This is a very sleepy atmosphere. No man remains vigorous for over six months; you will soon be slumbering like the rest of us."

"I shall be dead first," he answered. "You don't know me."

"Nor you Grey Town. You are not our first reformer; we have had numbers of them, and we have destroyed them without remorse," said Kathleen.

From the window of the room they could look across fields now green in the freshness of early summer, across the racecourse and park, to where Grey Town climbed irregularly towards St. Mary's Church. There it lay, a town whose streets were only partly made; where sanitation had halted in its most primitive stages; where little attempt had been made to a.s.sist the beauties of nature. Yet Grey Town was, in the distance, a pretty spot, embowered in green trees, the blue smoke resting over it, and in the distance the great blue ocean. Large buildings and small hovels, well-cared for gardens and filthy back yards, imposing factories and dilapidated shops--there was surely work here for an energetic reformer.

But Kathleen knew the strength of vested rights, the strength of contented indolence; above all, the bitter tongue of scandal that was ever ready to destroy a prophet. Others had fought with Grey Town and failed; why not Denis Quirk?

"No," he answered, reading her thoughts. "Grey Town has been waiting for me, and to-morrow I start on Grey Town. See here! This town should be a city. We need a few more cities, and Grey Town shall be one of the first. Given half a dozen factories and an improved system of railways----."

"Factories!" laughed Kathleen, her eyes straying towards the town and its open sea-front, where only a small peninsula of rock protected the bay from the south-west gales. "You are dreaming, Mr. Quirk?"

"Nothing is impossible nowadays. Why no factories in Grey Town? Shall Melbourne possess all the good things? Let us provide for ourselves and for other people, and bring money to the town. Factories Grey Town must have to make agricultural implements, to turn our wool into blankets, our wheat into flour, our milk into b.u.t.ter. Factories and an up-to-date paper."

Mrs. Quirk had listened in a dazed manner to this conversation. It delighted her to sit and listen to her son, just as it did on those rare occasions when her husband talked to her. But she never quite realised what the topic under discussion was, although she nodded or shook her head as she believed was necessary to the occasion.

"Another paper?" cried Kathleen.

"And why not?" asked Mrs. Quirk. "Denis knows what he is saying and doing. Why not another paper if Denis wants it? And what colour would it be, Denis?"

Denis Quirk laughed heartily at his mother's misapprehension, but he threw his arm around her and stooped to kiss her.

"Black and white," he replied; "a newspaper, old lady, up to date and go-ahead, like the old 'Firebrand.'" Then he turned again to Kathleen.

"You don't know me," he said. "You imagine I am nothing better than a talker; just wait for three months before you judge me."