The New Arcadia

Front matter

THE NEW ARCADIA

AN AUSTRALIAN STORY

BY

Chapter I

THE NEW ARCADIA.

CHAPTER I.

STILLING THE TEMPEST.

"We sit on a cloud and sing ... And say the world runs smooth—while right below, Welters the black fermenting heap of life, On which our State is built."—The Saint's Tragedy.

2em

"Pull him down!" "Knock him off the seat!" "An aristocrat riding us down like dogs!" A smart fusillade of such epithets, portending hand-to-hand conflict, broke from the foremost of a straggling band of workmen; some reckless and uncanny in appearance, others listless and half-interested, but animated, for the moment, as dullest street crowds are, by occurrence of "an accident."

The dog-cart, apparently of a professional man, had run over a city waif hanging on the outskirts of a detachment of "the unemployed" on their course to the noontide rendezvous.

The leaders, welcoming a victim, were venting curses on the head of the luckless Jehu.

"A bright specimen of his class!" cried one.

"Blowed if it ain't Dr. Courtney of St. Clair. He'd ought to know better," chimed in another.

Curbing with difficulty his plunging steed, the individual referred to flung reins to his groom and leaped into the surging sea of scowling countenances about him. He made for the curb-stone, where, supported by a policeman and closed around by a gaping crowd— effectually excluding the air—the little sufferer lay.

As usual, it occurred to no one to render assistance, only to ask questions and pass comments. With a strong arm thrusting the loiterers aside to right and left, the unwitting cause of the disturbance bent anxiously over the little unfortunate. Passing a skilful hand about body and limbs, he said to himself, "A broken leg," and to the lad, "All right, my boy, we'll soon set you right again."

Not far off, of course, was a cabby, eager to bear away the child, glad to secure a "fare," though suffering or death placed it in his hands.

"They're all the same," remarked one in the crowd. "'It's an ill wind blows no one any good.' Doctor, parson, cabby, undertaker. Death of one's godsend t'others. All living one on another."

"What's the sense of standing and prating there, you big fool!" exclaimed the doctor.

Raising the child in his arms, he hustled the men with his elbow and made with his charge towards the cab. Laying the manly urchin, who had uttered no cry, and was contracting his face to restrain the tears, on the floor of the vehicle, "To the hospital," he cried, "as gently as you like," and was stepping in himself.

"You'll just stay here and answer to us," hissed a coarse voice in his ear as the cab moved forward. The doctor was dragged backward and fell on his knees. The crowd closed round. Cabby, ignorant that he was minus his full load, drove on.

In a second the doctor was on his feet again—the blood mantling his cheeks. "Who dare lay hand on me?" he demanded, defiantly, glaring round on the excited throng.

"Make way, or I'll find it. I'm in no mood to be trifled with." This to a well-bred, shabby-genteel leader who confronted him.

"Curses on you!" the man exclaimed, thrusting himself forward. "What do you mean by running over the little chap? You did it on purpose. You know you did." The speaker delivered no further harangue that day. Incensed at the indignity to which he was subjected, the doctor struck his man a blow that lifted him from his feet and hurled him into the arms of his comrades.

"None of that," a dozen voices cried. "Two can play at that game, you know."

"Move on," suggested a valiant constable in the background.

The men were hustled and urged towards a vacant piece of ground beside a half-finished edifice. Their stricken leader had disappeared.

They were impressed by the bearing of the doctor. His was a powerful face, a high intellectual brow, an eye that flashed as his fist clenched. Sorrow and anger contended in his breast; resentment on account of the treatment to which he was being subjected, coupled with evident sympathy for the men against whom he found himself by accident arrayed. If not actually in want, they were, he knew, anxious concerning a livelihood. Misguided on one hand, maligned on the other.

Finding a footing on some piles of lumber, he shook off the hand that was laid on his shoulder—swept his eye round the grizzled, not unkindly, faces about him, and said—

"Look here, my men, I am going to see that lad whom; unfortunately, I ran over. It was no fault of mine, as you know. The horse shied at that banner of yours the fellow was carrying, who is not here to speak for himself."

A smile rippled across the sea of good-natured faces.

"He's got a headache," suggested one.

"The little fellow," continued the doctor, "ran in front of the trap. I will see to him. Now as to you. That, I am more anxious about. Do not be fools. Do not be led astray by men who put a false construction on everything some of us may do, and who try to make you believe that every fellow who wears a black coat has a black heart. I'll take my jacket off to-morrow to work beside any honest man, as I have done before, if I can serve society better so, or to try to thrash the man who persists that I deliberately ran that youngster down, or want to over-ride any. Is that clear? Now, before I go, let me ask, why are you all hanging about the city, imploring Government and every one else to help you? Why not, for instance, seek the country, where a fair field and means of livelihood awaits you?"

"How can a man go and squat, what's got no tin?" growls one. "My children's had nothing to eat this blessed day." The speaker, who did not himself appear starved, was, like many of his companions, puffing clouds of smoke from an oft-replenished pipe.

"For my part," was the reply, "if my children were hungering I should deny myself a pipe. I'd like to see less incense and more sacrifice.'

"All very well for you to say, governor. Why should a poor beggar lose the one comfort he's got?"

"Right, my man," was the reply, "in this country, you should command luxuries as well as necessaries. But you will not find them in town. Here you have swarmed to manufacture for a population that does not exist. Go on to the lands and become producers, masters of your own destiny. With a prosperous people settled on the deserted plains and half-ringed forests, your workshops might furnish occupation; your warehouses cease to be clogged with unsalable goods, while folk are shivering. Your railways, extended by compliant politicians into every hungry corner of the land, might groan with freight, and the cry be for more labourers to harvest the golden store."

"All very well, old man, but how are we to get on the land?" asked one. "We haven't the price of an axe atween us."

"You want money, you rightly think. What, however, is capital, but pound placed beside pound, one day's labour upon another? Can't you put that together? Instead of this senseless parading about overgrown cities, might you not ascertain by practical experiment, whether a mode of settlement that has in other countries successfully identified millions with the soil might not be adopted? The occupation of our lands has been so far of a temporary nature. The squatter is the sojourner merely, that his name implies. God intended other use to be made of our richest lands than to be pastures for countless sheep. The selector, after destroying valuable timber, building a hut in an inaccessible corner of a ring-barked allotment, scratching a hundred acres of wheat into the sour soil and sitting down the rest of the year to see it grow,—the selector, I say, is not a permanent settler. From the Murray to the sea you may purchase the lands the Government virtually gave away. Is it not possible, in a social, national sort of way, to establish thousands of you on our virtually vacant lands? I think it is, and I know how. You'll have to learn another trade—most of you. Exchange plane for plough, house-decorating for vine-dressing. You'll have to work hard—not praying heaven in the morning not to send the job you seek all day; not flinging down your tools at five o'clock. You must be associated together too. Small holdings—all you can get as yet—are unprofitable without co-operation. That is the direction in which relief is coming to these countries, I believe. Now put that into your pipe and smoke it." So saying the speaker disappeared midst ringing cheers from the motley assemblage.

Chapter II

CHAPTER II.

FIVE POUNDS FOR FLESH AND BLOOD.

"A most acute juvenal, voluble, and free of grace."

Love's Labour's Lost.

"So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes."—Hudibras.

"There is now in England a mass, an ever-increasing mass, of unemployed labour, supplying victims for unprincipled and short-sighted capitalists, or filling our gaols and workhouses; try whether association will not gradually assimilate this mass, and render it the strength and not the poison, the blessing and not the curse of our country."—Letter of Charles Kingsley.

"It weren't none on your fault, master," the little man was saying. Dr. Courtenay was expressing regret for the mishap.

"I'm mighty glad to be here, I can tell you," the child ran on. "It's so clean and quiet, and them young ladies," pointing to a group of nurses, "is so kind. Don't let them take me away again."

"Why do you not want to go home?" inquired the doctor.

"Home?" the child exclaimed. "It's what they call hell at the Mission House. Mother she drinks, and grannie drinks, and they beat me if I doesn't bring enough home at night. I often sleeps out under the railway near the wharfs for fear of them. Then they whacks me more when I gets home for stopping away."

"And where's your father, my little man?" inquired the doctor.

"Ah, that's it!" the child replied with animation.

"Why does not he look after you?"

"He went away, long time ago, last year. He couldn't get no work, and used to come home to find mother and grannie drunk—when mother had had a bit of washing to do. One day I comed home, and father was sitting over the fire-place with no fire in it, and his head in his hands. 'Dad,' says I, 'what's up now?' and he turns his head away, but draws me to him and nigh squeezed me up, and I seed he was crying. I don't often blubber; I didn't to-day, sir, did I? But I howled when I seed father cry. I'll never forget him shakin' and rockin' hisself. Then he knocks away the tears as if he hated them and bit his lip hard. Did you ever see a man cry, sir? Children does; and women, but it's terrible, I thinks, to see a man blub."

"Was your father ill?" interjected the medical man.

"Tough as a tram-cable, sir, and brave as a bulldog. I seed him punch Fitzroy Tom's head when he'd made game of mother for being drunk. All the people in the lane said he was a brick and ought to set up a boxin' saloon."

"What did he cry for then?"

"'Cause of mother"—here the little one broke down and sobbed. "She used to be so good onst—and 'cause of no work. He used to say he wouldn't care what he done, if he could get a job. Then he kisses me and squeezes me up, like a crowd at the theatre door, and goes away.

"'Never you mind, sonny,' he calls out, 'I'll come back some day and make a man of you.'

"We never heard on him since, and mother's been worse nor ever. One day Tim Smith told me father was making a railway. I thought I'd go too. Perhaps I could sell papers to the chaps there. I saved up seven brownies and went to Spencer Street. I told the cove bobbing inside the window, like a jail-bird, to give me a ticket to where the railway was doing. He said they was making railways everywhere, and I might soon have one to the moon, if they got a member 'lected for there, or got the blind side of the commissioners.

"'None of your cheek,' says I, coz I knew he couldn't get through the window at me. 'Give us a ticket, a "holiday excursion" workman's ticket as far as your train will take me for them'—clapping down the brownies. He laughed and gave me one to Donnybreok. When I got there I could see no trains a-making. I just walked and walked. There was fine trees and birds singing in them, and flowers in the grass. But I could not see father. I asked a lot of chaps and they only said, 'Who're you? What are you a'ter here?' I'd never seen the country before. I didn't wonder father ran away there, only I thought he might'er taken me.

"'I'll stop here always,' says I, 'till I finds dad.'

"But I only found the bobby. He's everywhere! I hanged out in a stable, and a fat man comed in the morning and says I'd been stealing. I'd like to have punched his head. Then he got a bobby, with tights and boots on, looking mighty mashery as though he done no work, and he asked and asked like everybody else. When I told him about my father and mother, he said, 'You're a little runaway, you beggar. I'll send you back to town.' Then he shook me till I seed double. 'We want none of you larrikins here,' he calls out, very brave-like.

"'Surely there's room for me and mother and all in our lane out here, 'stead of starvin' in town.'

"'Don't you be cheeky, young man,' he says, and hits me on the head. 'We don't want no town varmin out here.'

"'But there's plenty o' room,' says I, 'and I does like the birds and the flowers so, and I could help the fat man dig.'

"'Dig! you little fool,' says he; 'he grows sheep, and has miles of this 'ere country, and two or three on 'em has all the rest of it.'

"'And isn't there no corner for me?' I puts in, and begins to cry when I thinks of the dirty streets and men with nothing to do but fight."

"What was the end of it?" suggested the doctor, looking at his watch.

"He sends me back next day with a bobby who were takin' a cove to town who'd been copped, and they fetched me to mother and grannie, and didn't I get it."

At that moment there was a disturbance at the entrance to the ward; a shrill voice was declaiming to a nurse who stopped the way.

"Let me go to my darling; I heard he was run over. He's the only joy of my heart."

"Don't let her come, she'll take me away," cried, the child, covering his head with the bedclothes.

The doctor went to the woman. For half-an-hour he talked to her.

"Then you'll give me five pounds for him, my little cherrub?"

"Yes, if you sign this document giving him over entirely to my charge. I'll do the best I can for him. From your own showing and his, you have cared little for him. I shall pay the money to the clergyman whose name you mention, and get him to give you five shillings a week for your rent for three months."

"So I'm to sell my own flesh and blood for a five-pound note?" the woman replied.

"Not unless you like. Come to my house this evening. I will get the clergyman to be there, and we'll settle it up at nine o'clock."

That night a woman emerged from the doctor's dispensary exclaiming, as she hurried along—

"Five pounds for my own flesh and blood! That's what Melbourne and drink's brought me to! And we was happy enough before we came to town."

Chapter IV

CHAPTER III.

DICK SHOWN THE BACK-DOOR.

"But far more numerous was the herd of such Who think too little and who talk too much."—Dryden.

"Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools."—Pope.

"So you have another scheme for reforming the world, father? What a pity you are not the Premier, or rather President of the Trades' Hall! We could all live without working then."

"You're just like your mother, Gwyneth. Never appreciating me and my plans, and you're too plain spoke too! I'll not be treated like this no longer!" laying down his knife and fork.

"Dear father, do not become excited," rejoined the girl, slipping from her seat and imprinting a soft kiss on the knitted brows. "Now tell me all about it. There! I'll sit and sew, and say nothing."

The speaker was a tall girl, with bright hazel eyes and wavy brown hair, straight Grecian nose, firm mouth and chin—one of Nature's queens of common sense and good looks.

Her father, a widower, whose only child she was, had been a soldier in his time, and now lived on the shilling a day his country allowed him—plus another shilling or two his daughter's deft needle won.

"Too clever by half." "Talks more nor he thinks." "Showy, but won't wash!" were the epithets with which his comrades summed up valiant John Elms. He knew something of everything—building, farming, and scheming—was a "bush lawyer," spoke much of "Political Economy," and the "Rights of Man." The anarchists he denounced, and claimed himself to be a Christian Socialist. A son of Erin, he could talk by the hour, like most of his countrymen, with that facility that comes of iteration of the same truths, with varied thumpings of table or tub to drive each platitude home.

The little house in Richmond, thanks to Gwyneth's skill and care, was a model poor man's home. The Sergeant, as Elms liked to be called, was apt at domestic carpentery, as his daughter was with respect to plain upholstery. The parlour, where the Sergeant's meal was laid—he came in at all hours from "meetings"—boasted a small cabinet-organ, a sewing-machine, and a faded drawing-room suite, rendered ever fresh and clean by immaculate holland coverings with red pipings. Rural and military pictures, from the illustrated papers, framed in wood or leather work by father and daughter, decked the walls.

"If there was a prize for the cosiest little home," Dick Malduke, Gwyneth's secret admirer, used to say, "you'd get it, and 'honorary' mention into the bargain."

"I'm full of a new scheme," remarked the father as he drank his tea.

"That's nothing wonderful," responded the undemonstrative daughter, "since you propound (isn't that what you call it?) a fresh theory every day."

"Oh, but I have some one behind me, I feel, now. Some one I can work upon, to put some of my glorious principles into practice."

"And who may be your latest tool, father?" inquired the girl.

"No tool, by Jove!" was the rejoinder. "A reg'lar big-wig of pluck and spirit, I can tell you. You should have seen him send your Dick sprawling," he added, chuckling.

"He's more to you than to me," replied the girl with emphasis on the pronouns. "I admire him as I do the rest of the talkers who don't work! But what happened to your friend, father? This is really quite interesting."

"It was this way," the Sergeant continued; "we were going with about two hundred of the poor fellows, for whom my heart bleeds, to our place of meeting. Dick was carrying the colours, when a smartish trap came dashing up. The horse shied at the red flag, and ran over a little boy that was following. We surrounded the dog-cart, and the chaps began to hoot at the gent, though it was no fault of his. He didn't care a straw. Just went and looked after the little man and put him into a cab. As he was getting up, Dick and some of the others pulled him down, and the cab went on. My man—he's a real game 'un—glared at them like a lion with his tail trod on. Dick—who's always too much to say and must be first, excuse my remarking it——"

"You can say anything, dear father," interjected his daughter, with an arch smile, "to show what a set of simpletons your followers are, and that Dick's the greatest."

"Dick," continued the Sergeant, with a smile, "told the gentleman he ran over the child on purpose. He said nothing more. The doctor clean lifted him from his feet with one from the shoulder. And we saw no more of Mr. Malduke."

"Valiant Dick!" exclaimed the maiden.

At that moment there was a knock at the door that opened directly on the street.

"Good-evening, Miss Elms," said a round, thick-set young man as he entered.

"Why, it's Dick himself," exclaimed the girl. "We were just speaking of you, Mr. Malduke. Talk of the angels and you see their wings."

The visitor seemed in no mood for badinage.

"What have you that bandage across your eye for?" asked the girl, not very sympathetically. "You've been fighting, I do declare."

"Blowed if I have," replied the man moodily; "it's only a cowardly blow that I'll be avenged for yet."

"Why didn't you up and give it him back then and there?" suggested the Sergeant, with a laugh. "Never mind, old boy, he was too big for you. 'He that fights and runs away'—you know the rest. You have to fight another day, you know. Come and have some supper any way, now."

Midst light banter, that the young man only half appreciated, another plate was set, and the events of the day discussed.

"I walked with the doctor towards the hospital," said the elder man, "and he told me—seeing, I suppose, that I knew a thing or two—that he and his friends had a scheme for mending matters. Strange we should have set upon him! He's had a practice up country, and seems to know all about the life, and a lot about the social question, too, though of course I could teach him a lot."

The daughter looked up amused, but said nothing.

"I'm to see him again, and promised to co-operate with him, much to his delight."

"It's all rubbish!" commented Dick, tilting back his chair, "this jabber of co-operation and profit-sharing and their 'new systems.' All a device of the capitalist to make men slaves under another name. I see a lot of 'sweatin in it, Mr. Elms. Of course he'll own the land and get all the profit in the end. You see!"

"There you're wrong," replied the Sergeant, "as you raving anarchists always are. You know your game would be up if capital and labour joined hands."

"Don't hit him too hard, father," interjected the maiden, who was stitching on, amused. "He has been punished once already."

Dick looked daggers at the girl, whose head was bent over her work, then he continued—

"I don't believe in half-measures. You'll do no good till every blessed thing's burst up and the State takes control, and all's divided fair."

"Every Saturday night?" naïvely suggested the girl; "it'll be necessary I fear."

"Now look here, Dick," said the Sergeant, "don't be a fool; we have the brains. Let us use these fellows. You just fall into line with us. We'll soon get the concern, if it's started, into our own hands and twist things round as we like."

To much sentiment of this character expression was given. At length the girl, who had kept silence for some time, rose from her seat, and with mingled shame and scorn drawing herself to her full height, her dark eyes flashing, said—

"I'm not going to sit here and listen to such unmanly utterances. God knows, I sorrow for those who are hungry and homeless, but they, for the most part, are honest. They will not lend themselves to stinging the hand that would help them. You throughout are thinking of yourselves, not of them." So saying, she swept with dignity into the little kitchen adjoining, shutting the door with something very like a bang.

Dick looked abashed. The father, with a thump on the table, and a somewhat proud though subdued expression on his face, exclaimed—

"Just her mother all over. She was a lady, you know. Ran away with me. I was good-looking in those days, and could always make an impression.

"What Gwyneth thinks, she must say. And she will always think for herself, as no woman should, to my thinking. I used to try to tame her. Now I give her head, for her mother's sake, and a bit for my own."

"She's a thund'rin' fine girl all the same," added Dick. "Didn't her eyes flash! I'm sorry we vexed her. I'll go and apologize," and the rash youth entered the kitchen and closed the door.

"Always too much talk. Master Dick," soliloquized the father; "you are putting your head into the lioness's mouth. You'll get more than you bargained for, I'm thinking, and you'll never win my daughter."

Gwyneth, her dress tucked about her, was vigorously "washing up" the supper things. She did not raise her head as the young man entered.

"Miss Elms," he began, "I'm really sorry I vexed you, but you know I must be thorough-going."

"In your own interest," she remarked quietly. "What do you care about the poor you talk so much about? I hate shams."

"I am devoted, you must admit, Miss Elms, to the cause of Labour."

"Then why do you not undertake more of it?" she remarked shortly.

"I work with my brains, Miss Elms, with tongue and heart, for the Great Cause of the People."

"All with capital letters," she sneered. "Why do you not sometimes go and do an honest day's work instead of indulging in tall talk?" she added with contempt.

"I would for you, Miss Elms. I'd break stones if only you would encourage me. Gwyneth," the young man proceeded, laying his hand on the dish-cloth, which she relinquished to him, "why do you always spurn me? Do you not know that I adore the ground you walk on?"

"You should not do that," was the quick reply, "the kitchen's not been scrubbed this week. Now, Dick, don't talk rubbish," the girl continued in her quiet, matter-of-fact manner. "Go home like a good man and take care of your eye. And remember this, if you want to come here any more, don't you dare urge my father, who means well, to play the hypocrite and sneak. Now, good-night. I can let you out at this door. Oh, I'll bid farewell to father for you, you need not go back for that." And the dignified maiden bowed the abashed Agitator out at the back entrance into the narrow right-of-way.

Chapter IV

CHAPTER IV.

A TRIANGULAR DUEL.

"For why? Because the good old rule Sufficeth them, the simple plan, That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can."—Wordsworth.

To knit in loving knowledge rich and poor."

The Saint's Tragedy.

"A huge aggregate of little systems, each of which again is a small anarchy, the members of which do not work together, but scramble against each other."—Thos. Carlyle.

"The simplest and clearest definition of economy, whether public or private, means the wise management of labour; and it means this mainly in three senses: first, in applying your labour rationally; secondly, preserving its produce carefully; lastly, in distributing it's, produce seasonably."—Ruskin.

"Excuse me, old fellow, but with all your socialistic tendencies you manage to make yourself deuced comfortable. This is the jolliest den of a smoking-room I know."

The speaker was a bright, plump little man, satisfied, to judge by the smile that always lurked about his mouth, with himself and his condition; one who, in a good-natured sort of way, took life easy, and supposed that all others might do the same if they would. Why should he bother? He possessed ample means to live upon; not enough to cause him anxiety. He was influenced by no desire to add to his belongings or to enlarge his life. The world was made for him to walk about in, with his hands in his pockets, and he liked his part well!

A school-fellow of Dr. Courtenay, he, to escape the English winter, had come on a few months' visit to his friend.

"I see no objection to a man enjoying the due reward of his toil," replied the doctor. "I've earned all I have, and most I possess is contained within the walls of this abode."

It certainly was a room to add relish to a good cigar. The dado was of leather-work, the walls above covered with a fine Indian matting. Upon the ledge that ran round the walls stood photographs, articles of vertu, and bric-à-brac, that told of European and Eastern travel. On the walls, between dark oak cabinets and brackets, were hung whips, pipes, fencing-sticks, with a few good studies in oils.

The doctor was stretched at length in a lounge that having done duty on shipboard was now lined with red cushions. His companion was coiled up "like a happy little dog," as the doctor termed it, on another lounge, pulling at a cherry-wood pipe almost as long as himself.

Seated opposite these, straddle-legs on a chair, with elbows resting on the back, his dark eyes watching the pair in an amused, half-attentive manner, was a young cleric in short undress coat. His high forehead was surmounted by thick black hair, the close-shaven face revealing a decided mouth, and the set, solid features of a Manning.