Some Everyday Folk and Dawn Part 34

This being a satisfactory answer, the old favourite question, "Are you in favour of black gins wearing white stockings?" was put; and the candidate having a.s.sured us that, provided they could manage the laundry bill, he certainly was in favour of these ladies wearing any hosiery they preferred; and the loud guffaw which greeted this information having subsided, he continued--

"Now, don't vote for _me_ or for _Henderson_,--vote for the best measures for the country. (Henderson was driving the personal ticket of having lived among them,--hence this warning.) I think it an unparalleled impertinence for a man to ask an intelligent body of electors to vote for _him_--"

"When there's a swell bloke like you in the field."

"Pip! pip! Hooray! c.o.c.k-a-doodle-do!" came the chorus. The "Pip! pip!"

was a new sound to them, having been introduced to represent the noise made by the propulsion of a motor-car, in which set the candidate shone.

"Are you in favour of gas and water running up the one pipe?" inquired another, when the din had once more fallen to comparative silence.

"Don't you think that ladies ought to wear big boots now that they've got the vote?"

All such important questions having been put, the chairman called for three cheers for Mr Walker.

"Three cheers for Henderson," yelled the rabble at the back, which were given deafeningly, and the candidate, with the lively tact which bade fair to develop into his most prominent characteristic, joined in the cheers for his opponent, till some one had the grace to call "Three cheers for Mr Walker now"; and in the most delightfully uproarious, holiday-spirited clamour thus ended the last meeting but one before the election.

This was fixed for the 6th of August, and, notwithstanding there being several other towns in the electorate equally as important as Noonoon, on polling eve both candidates were to make their final speech there at the same hour.

During the week intervening, Leslie Walker's "Ladies' Committee" were very busy in the construction of dainty rosettes of pink and blue ribbon to be worn by his followers; and not to be outdone, Henderson's committee of "mere men" armed themselves with little squares of hatband ribbon of red, white, and blue--the Ministerial colours.

These were not such dainty badges as the rosettes, but they served the purpose equally well; and the sterner s.e.x, in our present stage of evolution ever to be trusted to make up in downright usefulness what they lack in mere prettiness, had attached a safety-pin to each piece of ribbon for its masculinely substantial affixing.

II.

Polling eve arrived, and the Ministerialists having secured the hall, the Oppositionists had perforce to hold an open-air meeting. We attended the hall first, intending to move on to the street entertainment later, and Dawn was attacked by an old dame in the opposing camp because she was displaying Walker's colours.

"If I liked him I'd go an' stand in the street an' listen to him, not take up the room of them as has a hall hired for 'em by the _best_ man, who has lived among us, and not some city lah-de-dah married to a hussy off the stage, an' who had women who might be any character goin' round speakin' for him," she tiraded, and turning to me aggressively demanded--

"Where are _your_ colours?"

"Could you supply me with some?" I replied; and only too pleased, she squalled to an urchin who was distributing the squares plus a safety-pin. I was such a well-poised "rail-sitter" that I was ent.i.tled to wear both colours; and as this one was being ostentatiously fastened to the lapel of my over-jacket, I remembered the injunction to live at peace with all.

A bra.s.s band played the people in, and a trio of youngsters unfurled red, white, and blue parachutes,--alias gamps, alias ginghams, alias umberellers,--which were a popular feature of the "turn."

The committee appeared on the platform one by one, each received with noisy approval, and one facetiously wearing a rosette the size of a large cabbage was tendered a particularly deafening ovation.

After these crept Henderson, who, though not a particularly inspiring individual, was wildly and vociferously cheered for everything and nothing, and after listening awhile to his catch cries,--which differed from those of Walker only in the irritatingly halting and unimpressive way they were delivered,--we rose and scrambled our way out, jeered by the old dame as we went, and our departure was further commented upon from the platform by the speaker himself, in the words--

"Getting too hot for some of the ladies," which, if correct, could not by any means have been attributed to the winter air or the dull and weakly maudlin speech he was trying to deliver.

Walker spoke from a balcony crowded by devotees--mostly women--to an audience in the street, which was further enlivened by the fighting of the numerous dogs I have previously mentioned as addicted to holding munic.i.p.al meetings. Their loud differences of opinion occasionally drowned the speakers, and the main street being also the public thoroughfare,--in fact, no less a place than the great Western Road,--there was no by-law or political etiquette to prevent the Ministerial band from strolling that way at intervals; so, much to the delight of all who were out for fun and the annoyance of those who were sensibly interested in the practical welfare of their country, and who imagined that the policy of this party would materially better matters, the cut-and-dried denouncement of the Ministry was at times drowned by the strains of "Molly Riley," "He's a Jolly Good Fellow,"

and "See the Conquering Hero Comes!"

The followers of Walker contended that Henderson was the worst of scorpions to thus come to Noonoon on the last night; but considering that he had only addressed Noonoon once to Walker's thrice, as an impartial wiggle-waggle I could not help seeing that the Ministerialists had most cause for complaint.

Dawn pinned the badge I had acquired to the coat-tail of a local bank manager who, though on her side, had lately distinguished himself by a public denouncement of "Women's Rights," so savagely virulent and idiotically tyrannous in principle as to suggest that his household contained representatives of the "shrieking sisterhood," who had been one too many for him. The boys who saw the joke enjoyed it very much indeed, as he strolled along with the self-importance befitting so prominent a citizen.

The beautiful voice of the candidate rose and fell, occasionally halting till the usual cheers or guffaws died away, and the meeting ended in the customary way. What good to the country was likely to accrue from it? On the other hand--what harm?

To be abroad in the open air with comfort at that time of the year, and at that hour of the night, ill.u.s.trated the beautiful climate of that lat.i.tude if nothing more, and every one was harmlessly entertained, for good-humour characterised the whole affair.

Tea, coffee, and cheese abounded for all comers at the committee rooms of Leslie Walker--the candidate supported by the temperance societies; and on behalf of Olliver Henderson there was an "open night" at Jimmeny's "pub.,"

with the result--as published by the Oppositionists--that boys of fourteen and sixteen were lying drunk in the gutters.

The next day, however, was the culmination of the whole thing.

Dawn almost wept that she was not of age to vote, and as I was so comfortably indifferent as to which man won, I offered to cast my vote for the one she favoured, but she declined.

"That would only be the same as men having the vote and thinking they know how to represent us," she said.

But though she couldn't vote she worked hard for her side, and with a big rosette of pink and blue decorating her dimpling bosom, and streamers of the same flying from her whip and her pony's headstall, she was out all day driving voters to the booth, where for the first time in that town women produced an electoral right. The Federal election had been conducted without them.

In the forenoon Larry Witcom drove Carry to vote in state--otherwise a brand-new sulky he had recently purchased; and such is human nature that we were all sufficiently malicious to be secretly pleased that poor old Uncle Jake could not vote at all, because he had only an obsolete red elector's right, and he should have procured an up-to-date blue one.

It was a genial sunshiny day, and the lucerne and rape fields and the Chinese gardens on either hand were beautifully green, as grandma noticed when during the afternoon she and I drove in the old sulky to cast our vote.

"Poor Jake! I'm sorry he can't vote, though he ain't goin' for my man," she remarked. "But don't it seem like a judgment on him for bein' so narked about the women bein' set free? That's always the way in life. If you are spiteful about anythink it always comes back on yourself."

The street opposite the court-house--for the time converted into a polling-booth--was thronged like a show-day with an orderly crowd of citizens of both s.e.xes. The voting had become so congested that vehicle loads of voters were being conveyed over to Kangaroo, and each contingent set out amid the cheers of small boys, who were most ardent politicians.

Laughing and banter were exchanged between people of all ages and cla.s.ses, one as important as the other for the time being.

As we crowded round the door, a jovial-looking man with a twinkle in his eyes, as he was unceremoniously shoved against a pillar, announced that women should not have been allowed the vote, for its disastrous results were already evident in this crush; while the equally pleasant-faced policeman, who, as soon as intimation came from within that there was a vacancy, wheeled us in like so many bales of wool, replied--

"Women jolly well have as much right to vote as men, and more, because they can do it without getting drunk or breaking their heads."

Many displayed colours and some did not. There was the truculent woman who voted as she thought fit, and who loudly advertised this fact; the man who voted for Henderson because he lived in the district; and the woman who supported Leslie Walker because he was rich and would be able to subscribe liberally to all local inst.i.tutions. A shallow-pated Miss favoured Walker because his colours were the prettier; and an addle-pated old man balanced this by voting for Henderson because he "shouted,"[1] and Walker was temperance. There was a silly little flaxen-haired woman who also supported the Opposition to spite her husband,--a Henderson man, and the prototype of Mr p.o.r.nsch,--because, being over-grogful, he had made tracks for the polling-booth alone, leaving his wife to go as best she could. Alas! there was a poor little woman at home who could not vote at all because she had succ.u.mbed to the gentlemanliness of Leslie Walker, and her husband being against him had tyrannously taken her right from her; and there was also the woman who _would_ not vote at all, because she considered men were superior to women, and boisterously proclaimed this to all who would listen, in hopes of currying favour with the men; but fortunately this, in the case of the best men, is becoming an obsolete bid for popularity. There was the woman who voted for the man her father named, and those electors of each s.e.x who voted to the best of their discernment great or small. Quite a crop of Uncle Jakes were disfranchised through their rights being back numbers, and the n.o.bodies who imagined themselves something altogether too lofty to consider anything so mundane as law-making at all, were also rather numerous. Ada Grosvenor's bright happy face shone like a star amid her companions, and she discharged this duty honestly and thoughtfully as she did all others, recognising it as the practical way of working for the brave, bright ideals guiding her life.

[Footnote 1: To treat to free drinks.]

Among the electresses were all the same types of vote as cast by men, except that those sold for a gla.s.s of beer were not so frequent; and as civilisation climbs higher, universal suffrage, and the better methods of administration to which it will give birth, will be exercised for the adjustment of the great human question now so trivially divided into squabbles of s.e.x and cla.s.s.

The bright Australian sun shone with genial approval on all, and in the air was a hint of the scent of the jonquils and violets, so early in that temperate region. Grandma Clay must not be forgotten, for in her immaculate silk-cloth dress and cape, her bonnet of the best material, and her "lastings," with her spectacles in one hand and her properly-prized electoral right in the other, and her irreproachable respectability oozing from her every action, she could not be overlooked. As she neared the door the gentlemen and younger ladies crowding there politely stood back and cancelled their turn in her favour; and Mrs Martha Clay, a flush on her cheeks, a flash in her eyes, and with her splendidly active, upright figure carried valiantly, at the age of seventy-five, disappeared within the polling-booth to cast her first vote for the State Parliament.

What a girl she must have been in those far-off teens when she had handled a team of five in Cobb & Co.'s lumbering coaches, when her curls, blowing in the rain and wind, had been bronze, when with a feather-weight bound she could spring from the high box-seat to the ground! Lucky Jim Clay, to have held such vigorous love and splendid personality all his own. All his own to this late day, for the old dame returning said to me, "This is a great day to me, and I only wish that Jim Clay had lived to see me vote;" and there was a pathetic quiver in the old voice inexpressibly sweet to the ear of one believing in true love.

After Grandma Clay there was myself--a widely different type of voter.

In one way it did not matter whether I voted or not. Neither candidate had a clear-cut policy to rescue public affairs from their chaotic state. The electors themselves had no definite idea what they required, but this was in no way alarming--all the materials for national prosperity were at hand, presently matters would evolve, and the demand for able statesmen would be filled when the demand grew clearly defined.

Which man would do most for women and children was also immaterial; the mere fact of women no longer being redressless creatures, but invested with rights of full citizenship, was even at that early stage having its effect. Politicians were tr.i.m.m.i.n.g their sails to catch the great female vote by announcing their readiness to make issues of questions relative to the peculiar welfare of the big bulk of the human race represented by women and children. Inspired by women's newly-granted power of electing a real representative of their demands, would-be M.P.'s were hastening in one session to insert in their platform planks which much-vaunted "womanly influence" had been unable to get there during generations of masculine chivalry and feminine disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt.

Let the women vote!

As Grandma Clay expressed it, "It ain't what things actually are, it's all they stand for." For this reason I meant to exercise my right.

A sovereign in itself may not be much, but to a starving man within reach of shops see what it means in twenty shillings' worth of food.

Similarly the right to vote in a self-governed country meant many a mile in the upward evolution of mankind.