Some Everyday Folk and Dawn Part 36

"Forgotten what?"

"That dish of water," she faltered with changing colour, "and then he saved me so cleverly from being trampled on! If he had ridden over me I wouldn't have cared, as it would have made things square; but as it is, can't you understand that I'd rather _die_ than see him?" said she in the exaggerated language of the day, and burying her face in her hands.

"I can better understand that you are _dying_ to see him," I returned, pulling her head on to my shoulder; "but never mind, you'll see him some other day, and it will all come straight in time."

I forbore to press her farther, but that Ernest might not be too discouraged I gave him some splendid oranges Andrew had picked for me, and said--

"Miss Dawn kept these for you, but as she is not visible this afternoon I am going to make the presentation."

His face perceptibly brightened, and also noticeable was the brisk way he terminated his call upon learning that there was no prospect of seeing Dawn that day. I watched him bounding along the path to the bridge carrying the oranges in his handkerchief, and watched also by another pair of eyes from an upstairs window.

Carry left us during that week, and as she had now fixed her wedding-day the tax of wedding presents had to be met. Grandma, in bidding her good-bye, presented her with a generous cheque, and paid her a fine compliment.

"I wish you well wherever you go, for I never saw another young woman--unless it was meself when I was young--who could lick you at anythink."

Carry's departure put the cap on our quietude at Clay's, but soon a movement transpired to stir the stagnation.

The out-voted electors of Noonoon were so galled by their defeat that they ignored the British law under which it was their boast to live, and refused to acknowledge that the man who had been voted in by the majority was const.i.tutionally their representative in parliament. They also failed to see that he would serve the purpose quite as well as the other man, and to publish their sentiments more fully, determined to tender Leslie Walker a complimentary entertainment of some kind, and present him with a piece of plate, not as the other side had it, in token of his defeat, but owing to the fact that he was actually the representative of Noonoon town, having in that place polled higher than his opponent. The presentation took the shape of a silver epergne. This to a man who probably did not know what to do with those he already possessed, a wealthy stranger who had contested the electorate for his own glory! Had he been a struggling townsman, who, at a loss to his business, had put up in hopes of benefiting his country, to have paid his expenses might have shown a commendable spirit, but this was such a pure and simple example of greasing the fatted sow, that even those who had supported him openly rebelled, Grandma Clay among them.

"Well, that's the way women crawl to a man because he's got a smooth tongue and a little polish," sneered Uncle Jake.

"And some of the men hadn't gumption to get the proper right to vote for their man who flew the publican's flag and truckled to the tag-rag," chuckled grandma, who was delighted to prove that this ill.u.s.tration of crawl had originated with the men.

Nevertheless it was decided to present the epergne at a select concert or musical evening, with Mr and Mrs Leslie Walker sitting on the platform, where the audience could gloat upon them. Dawn was asked to contribute to the programme, and relieved her feelings to me forthwith.

"The silly, crawling, ignorant fools!" she exclaimed. "The first item on the programme is a solo by Miss Clay!!!" says the chairman, "and I'll come forward and squark. 'Next item, a recitation by Mrs Thing-amebob.' Can't you just imagine it?" she said in inimitable and exasperated caricature from the folds of her silk kimono. "Good heavens! to give a man like that an amateur concert like ours! Do you know, they say he is the best amateur tenor in Australia, and his wife was a comic opera singer before she married--so a girl was telling me where I get my singing lessons. You'd think even the galoots of Noonoon wouldn't be so leather-headed but they'd know their length well enough not to make fools of themselves in this way! _I_ know; why can't they know too? They like these things themselves, and think others ought to like them too. What do they want to be licking Walker's boots at all for? We all voted and worked for him; that was enough! It will just show you the way people will crawl to a bit of money! Oh dear, how Walker must be grinning in his sleeve! I _won't_ sing for them!"

But she was not to escape so easily. A member of the committee asked grandma "Would she allow her granddaughter to contribute a solo?"

"Of course!" said the old lady. "Ain't I getting her singing lessons to that end?" and down went the girl's name on the programme, and there was war in the Clay household on that account.

"I can't sing yet," protested Dawn. "I can't sing in the old style, and can't manage the new style yet."

"Rubbish!" said grandma, who could not be got to grasp the intricacies of voice production. "What am I payin' good money away for? It's near three months now, and nothing to show for it yet. If you can't sing now, you ought to give it best at once; and if you can't sing a song for Mr Walker, and show him you've got a better voice than some, I think it common-sense to stop your lessons at the end of the quarter."

"My teacher wouldn't let me sing."

"And who's the most to do with you, your teacher or me, pray? Who's _he_ to say when you shan't sing or the other thing?" and thus she decided the point; but Dawn each night dwelt upon the trouble, while I sought to comfort her.

"It is best to sing to the people who know all about singing. They will see you have a good voice and appreciate it far more than could the ignorant."

A fortnight had to elapse before the date of the concert, and during that time Carry's successor arrived in the form of a stout "general,"

as Dawn averred she had sufficient companion in me, and that a kitchen woman was preferable to a lady help.

The pruning of a portion of the vineyard, which had been delayed by electioneering matters till now, also took place during this time, and Andrew and Uncle Jake, when working in the far corner, made the extraordinary discovery of an odontologic gold plate of the best quality and in perfect order. The find created quite a sensation.

As grandma said, it bore evidence that some one had been stealing grapes during the season, for any person legitimately in the vineyard would have inst.i.tuted a search for such a valuable piece of property, and for a person who could afford such a first-cla.s.s gold plate to steal grapes, showed what _some people_ were. It did indeed, for this person had been wont to clandestinely enter her premises to perpetrate a far lower grade of crime than pilfering her grapes or destroying her vineyard. The incident trickled into the columns of 'The Noonoon Advertiser,' in conjunction with the facetious remark that the invader would have had to take a lot of grapes to compensate him for what he had lost; and it was further stated that the article being useless except to him--its size bespoke it a man's--for whom it had been modelled, he could have it upon giving satisfactory proof that he was the owner.

Needless to say, Mr p.o.r.nsch did not claim his property, and this souvenir was the last we heard of him. Andrew took it to Mr S. Messre, dentist, the man who had seemed to consider it unprofessional that to fill my teeth should take time, and with him the lad bargained that in return for the plate he was to tinker up those teeth whose aching I had allayed with the carbolic acid prescribed for me by the other dentist.

Dawn and I chuckled in secret, sent a copy of 'The Noonoon Advertiser'

to Carry, and remarked that it was an ill wind that blew no one any good.

During the fortnight preceding the concert, Ernest Breslaw called at Clay's several times to see me, and saw me unattended by any extras in the form of a beautiful young girl, for Dawn blushingly avoided him.

He had to fall back on such outside skirmishing as rowing me on the river, and though there was no longer an impending election to furnish him with excuse for loitering in Noonoon, he did not speak of deserting it in a hurry. He had reached that degree of amorous collapse when he could manage to shadow the haunts of his desired young lady regardless of circ.u.mstances, and grandma began to suspect that his attentions had a little more staying power than those of the week-end admirer.

Seeing that the "red-headed mug" had reappeared, in the hope of permanently extirpating him "Dora" Eweword was anxious to announce his engagement, but with threats of immediate extermination if he should so much as give a hint of it, Dawn kept him in abeyance, and altogether behaved so erratically that Andrew candidly published his belief that she had gone "ratty."

Ernest proffered himself as our escort to the Walker presentation, but Eweword having previously secured Dawn, Breslaw had to be satisfied with my company. I had already presented Andrew with a ticket, and as I could not now discard him, I resolved to ignore the injunctions to be found in etiquette books, and accept attentions from two gentlemen at once. Thus it happened that I, at the despised grey-haired stage, sat in state with a most attentive cavalier on either hand, while handsome young ladies sat all alone.

We had entered September, and the early flowers had lifted their heads on every hand in this valley, where they grew in profusion, and that evening were in evidence at women's throats, in men's coats, and in young girls' hair. The stage was a bower of heavenly scented bloom, and many among the audience held bouquets the size of a broccoli in readiness for presentation to the guests of the evening.

Ernest was holding the pony, which was restive, while Andrew buckled her to the sulky, when Dawn came upon the scene after the concert and presented me with a huge bunch of flowers, and Eweword also got his nag ready for home-going. Dawn had not met Ernest since the night in the street, and even now affected not to notice him, so thinking it time to take the situation by the horns, I said--

"Here is Mr Ernest; you didn't see him because he was standing in the shade."

Thus encouraged, he came forward and st.u.r.dily put out his hand, and Dawn could not very well fail to observe that, as it was of substantial build and held where the light shone full on it, so she was constrained to meet it with her own, and received, as she afterwards confessed, a lingering and affectionate pressure.

It was not of Ernest, however, but of Mrs Walker that she talked that night as we prepared for rest, with our washhand basins full of violets that had been crowded out of the quant.i.ty given to the defeated candidate's wife.

"Fancy being lovely like she is! After looking at her I've given up all hope. I suppose all I'm fit for is Mrs Eweword--Mrs 'Dora'

Eweword; do my housework in the morning and take one of these sulkies full of youngsters for a drive in the afternoon like all the other humdrum, tame-hen, _respectable_ married women! It's a sweet prospect, isn't it?" she said vexedly, throwing herself on the bed.

"Don't be absolutely absurd! Look in the gla.s.s and you will see a far more beautiful face, and one possessed of other qualities that make for success."

"Oh, nonsense, you only say that to put me in a good humour. But how do women find such good matches as Leslie Walker?--that's what I want to know," she continued.

"Either by being beautiful or using strategic ability in the great lottery. Mrs Walker probably used both these accomplishments. You can achieve similar results by means of the first without the necessity of developing the second. Silly girl, marry Leslie Walker's step-brother, Ernest Breslaw, and if you do not live happily ever after it will not be because you have not been furnished with a better opportunity than most people."

She did not remark the relationship I thus divulged, showing that Ernest's confidences must have included it.

"A girl can't _make_ a man marry her," was all she said. "I don't know how to use strategy, and wouldn't crawl to do such a thing if I could."

"Neither would I, but if I loved a man and saw that he loved me, I'd secretly hoist a little flag of encouragement in some place where he could see it," I made reply.

TWENTY-FIVE.

"LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM."

Next morning was gloriously spring-like; the violets raised their heads in thick mats of blue and white in every available cranny of the garden and other enclosures where they were allowed to a.s.sert themselves, while other plants were opening their garlands to replace them, and the air breathed such a note of balminess that Ernest came to invite me to a boat-ride.

To the practised eye there were certain indications that he hoped for Dawn's company too, but this was out of the question, as under ordinary circ.u.mstances it is rarely that girls in Dawn's walk of life can go pleasuring in the forenoon without previous warning, or what would become of the half-cooked midday dinner? So we set out by ourselves, and as the boat shot out to the middle of the stream between the peach orchards, just giving a hint of their coming glory, and past the erstwhile naked grape-canes, not cut away and replaced by a vivid green, the rower made a studiedly casual remark, "Your friend Miss Dawn spoke to me again at last. I wonder why on earth she threw that dish of water on me; did she ever say that she had anything against me?"

"No. If you could be a girl for half an hour you'd know that the man to whom she shows most favour is frequently the one she most despises, while he whom she ignores or ill-treats is the one she most warmly regards."