"I've offered three times to-day to work for my board," said the lad, not tremulously but in the matter-of-fact voice of one who had looked after himself for years.
"Where was that?" asked Ned, wide-awake at last, alarmed for the bushmen rapidly turning over in his mind the effect of strong young men being ready to work for their board.
"One place was down near the foot of Market Street, a produce merchant. He told me he couldn't, that it was as much as he could do to provide for his own family. Another place was at a wood and coal yard and the boss said I'd leave in a week at that price so it wasn't any good talking. The other was a drayman who has a couple of drays and he said he'd never pay under the going wage to anybody and gave me sixpence. He said it was all he could afford because times were so bad."
"Are you stumped then?" asked Ned.
"I haven't a copper."
Just then the broken-down swell woke up from his doze and demanded his flask. After some search it was found underneath him. Then, heedless of his interruptions, Ned continued the conversation.
"Do they take you here on tick?" he enquired.
"Tick! There's no tick here. That old man downstairs is as hard as nails. Why, if it hadn't been for this gentleman I'd have had to walk about all night or sleep in the Domain."
"Fair dues, my boy, fair dues?" put in the broken-down swell, "Never refer to private matters like that. You make me feel ashamed, my boy. I should never have mentioned that little accommodation. You understand me?"
"I understand you," replied the lad. "I understand you perfectly."
"That's all right," said Ned, suddenly feeling a respect for this grizzled drunkard. "We must all help one another. How was it?"
"Well," said the lad. "I met a friend of mine and he gave me sixpence and this box of cigarettes. It was all he had. I've often slept here and so I came and asked the old man to trust me the other half. He wouldn't listen to it. I was going away when this gentleman came along. He only had threepence more than his own bed-money but he persuaded the old man to knock off threepence and he'd pay threepence. I thought I'd have had to go to the Domain."
"But that's nothing," said Ned. "I'd just as soon sleep out as sleep in."
"I've never come down to sleeping out yet," returned the lad, simply. "Perhaps your being a native makes a difference." Ned was confronted again with the fact that the bushman and the townsman view the same thing from opposite sides. To this lad, struggling to keep his head up, to lie down nightly in the Domain meant the surrender of all self-respecting decency.
"I shouldn't have brought up the subject. You understand me?" said the drunkard. "But now it's mentioned I'll ask if you noticed how I talked over that old scoundrel downstairs. You understand me? Where's that flask? My God! I am feeling bad," he continued, sitting up on the bed.
"You're drinking too much," remarked Ned.
The man did not reply, but, with a groan, pushed the lad aside, sprang from the bed, and began to retch prodigiously into the wash basin, after which he announced himself better, lay down and took another drink. Meanwhile the man in the far corner tossed and groaned as if he were dying.
"You're friend's still worse," said the lad.
"He's just out of the hospital. I told him he shouldn't mix his drinks so soon but he would have his own way. He'll be all right when he's slept it off. A man's a fool who gets drunk. You understand me?"
"I understand you," said the lad. "I never want to get drunk. All I want is work."
"Why don't you go up to Queensland?" asked the man, to Ned's hardly suppressed indignation. "The pastoralists would be glad to get a smart-looking lad like you. Good pay, all expenses paid, and a six months' agreement! I believe that's the terms. You understand me?"
"I understand you," said the English lad. "I understand you perfectly. But that's blacklegging and I'd sooner starve than blackleg. I ain't so hard up yet that I'll do either."
"Put it there, mate," cried Ned, stretching his hand out. "You're a square little chap." His heart rose again at this proof that the union spirit was spreading.
"You're a good boy," said the drunkard, slapping his shoulder. "I'm not a unionist and I'm against the unions. You understand me? I am a gentleman —poor drunken broken-down swell-and a gentleman must stick to his own Order just as you stick to your Order. I'd like to see the working classes kept in their places, but I despise a traitor, my boy. You understand me?"
"I understand you perfectly," said the lad.
"Yet you'd work for your board?" said Ned, enquiringly.
"I suppose I shouldn't," said the lad. "But one must live. I wouldn't cut a man out of a job by going under him when he was sticking up for what's right but where nobody's sticking up what's the use of one kicking. That's how I look at it. Of course, a lot don't."
"They'll get a lot to go then?"
"I think they'll get a lot. Some fellows are so low down they'll do anything and a lot more don't understand. I didn't use to understand."
"Would you go up with them for the union?" asked Ned, after a pause.
"You mean to come out again?"
"Yes, and to get as many to come out as you can by explaining things. It may mean three months' gaol so you want to make up your mind well."
"I wouldn't mind going to gaol for a thing like that. It's not being in gaol but what you're in for that counts, isn't it?"
So they talked while the two drunkards groaned and tossed, the stench of this travellers' bedroom growing every moment more unbearable. Finally the waiter returned.
"Not gone to bed yet," he exclaimed. "Phew! This is a beauty to-night, a pair of beauties. Ain't it a wonder their insides don't poison 'em?"
"I thought I'd never get to bed," he went on, coming to light his pipe at the candle and then returning to the bed he had taken Ned's sheets from. "First one joker in, then another, and the old man 'ud stay open all night for a tanner. Past two! Jolly nice hour for a chap that's to be up at six, ain't it?"
He pulled off his boots and vest and threw himself down on the bare mattress in his trousers. "Ain't you fellows going to bed to-night?" he enquired.
"It's about a fair thing," said Ned, feeling nervous and exhausted with lack of sleep. So the young fellow blew the candle out and went over to the bed a adjoining Jack's. As he lay down Jack picked up a boot and tapped the wall alongside him gently. "I think I hear her," he remarked. In a few moments there was an answering tap.
"Who's that?" asked Ned.
"The slavey next door," answered Jack, upon which an interchange of experience took place between Jack and the young fellow in which gable windows and park seats and various other stage-settings had prominent parts.
At last they all slept but Ned. Drowsy as he was he could not sleep. It was not that he thought much of Nellie, at least he did not feel that he was thinking of her. He only wanted to sleep and forget and he could not sleep. The moonshine came through the curtainless window and lit up the room with a strange mysterious light. The snoring breathing that filled the room mingled with other snoring sounds that seemed to come up the stairway and through the walls. The stench of the room stifled him. The drunkards who tossed there, groaning; this unemployed lad who lay with his white limbs kicked free and bathed in the moonlight; the tired waiter who lay motionless, still dressed; were there with him. The clock-bells struck the quarters, then the hour.
Three o'clock.
He had never felt so uncomfortable, he thought, so uneasy. He twisted and squirmed and rubbed himself. Suddenly a thought struck him. He leaned up on his elbow for a moment, peering with his eyes in the scanty light, feeling about with his hand, then leaped clean out of the bed. It swarmed with vermin.
Like most bushmen, Ned, who was sublimely tolerant of ants, lizards and the pests of the wilds generally, shivered at the very thought of the parasites of the towns. To strip himself was the work of an instant, to carefully re-dress by the candle-end he lighted took longer; then he stepped to the English lad's side and woke him.
"Hello?" said the lad, rubbing his eyes in sleepy astonishment.
"What's the matter?"
"I can't sleep with bugs crawling over me," said Ned. "I'm going to camp out in the park. Here's a 'note' to help you along and here's the address to go to if you conclude to go up to Queensland for the union. I'll see about it first thing in the morning so he'll expect you. The 'note's' yours whether you go or not."
"I'm ever so much obliged," said the lad, taking the money and the slip of paper. "I'll go and I'll be square. You needn't be afraid of me and I'll pay it back, too, some day. Do you know the way out?"
"I'll find it all right," replied Ned.
"Oh! I'll go down with you or you'd never find it. It's through the back at night." So the good-hearted young fellow pulled on his trousers and conducted Ned down the creaking, stairway, through the kitchen and the narrow back yard to the bolted door that led to the alley behind.
"Shall I see you again?" asked the lad. Somehow everybody who met Ned wanted to see more of him.
"My name's Hawkins," replied Ned. "Ned Hawkins. Ask anybody in the
Queensland bush about me, if you get there."
"I suppose you're one of the bushmen," remarked the lad, pausing. "If they're all as big as you it ought to be bad for the blacklegs."
"Why, I'm a small man up on the Diamantina," said Ned laughing. "Which is the way to the park?"
"Turn to your right at the end of the alley, then turn to the left. It's only five minutes' walk."
"Thanks. Good-bye!" said Ned.
"It's thank you. Good-bye!" said the lad.
They shook hands and parted. In a few minutes Ned was in the park. He stepped over a low railing, found a branching tree and decided to camp under it. He pulled his boots off and his coat, loosened his belt, put boots and coat under his head for a pillow, stretched out full length on the earth and in ten seconds was in a deep slumber.
He was roused a moment after, it seemed to him; in reality it was nearly six hours after—by kicks on the ribs. He turned over and opened his eyes. As he did so another kick made him stagger to his feet gasping with pain. A gorilla-faced constable greeted him with a savage grin.
"Phwat d'ye mane, ye blayguard, indaycently exposing yersilf in this parrt av th' doomane? Oi've as good a moind as iver a man had in the wurrld to run yez in. Can't ye find anither place to unthdress yersilf in, ye low vaygrant?"
Ned did not answer. He buttoned up the neck of his shirt, which had opened in the night, tightened his belt again, drew on his boots and thrust his arms into his coat. While he did so the constable continued his abuse, proud to show his authority in the presence of the crowd that passed in a continuous stream along the pathway that cut through the carefully tended flower-bedded lawn-like park. It was one of Ned's strong points that he could control his passionate temper. Much as he longed to thrash this insolent brute he restrained himself. He desired most of all to get back to Queensland and knew that as no magistrate would take his word against a "constable's" as to provocation received, to retaliate now would keep him in Sydney for a month at least, perhaps six. But his patience almost gave way when the constable followed as he walked away, still abusing him.
"You'd better not go too far," warned Ned, turning round.
It suddenly dawned upon the constable that this was not the ordinary "drunk" and that it was as well to be satisfied with the exhibition of authority already made. Ned walked off unmolested, chewing the cud of his thoughts.
This sentence of Geisner's rang in his ears:
"The slaves who 'move on' at the bidding of a policeman."
CHAPTER VII.
"THE WORLD WANTS MASTERS."
"It can't do any good. We have made up our minds that the matter might just as well be fought out now, no matter what it costs. We've made all our arrangements. There is nothing to discuss. We are simply going to do business in our own way."
"It can't do any harm. There is always something to be said on the other side and I always find workingmen fairly reasonable if they're met fairly. At any rate, you might as well see how they look at it. The labour agitation itself can't be stifled. The great point, as I regard it, is to make the immediate relations of Capital and Labour as peaceable as possible. The two parties don't see enough of each other."
"I think we see a great deal too much of them. It's a pretty condition of things when we can't go on with our businesses without being interfered with by mobs of ignorant fools incited by loud-tongued agitators. The fools have got to be taught a lesson some day and we might as well teach it to them now."
"You know I'm no advocate of Communism or Socialism or any such nonsense. I look at the matter solely from a business standpoint. I am a loser by disturbances in trade, so I try to prevent disturbances. I've always been able to prevent them in my own business and I think they can always be prevented."
"Well, Melsom, you may be right when it's a question of wages, but this is a question of principle. We're willing to confer if they'll admit 'freedom of contract.' That's all there is to say about it."
"But what is 'freedom of contract?' Besides, if it is questioned, there can't be much harm in understanding why. For my part, I find it an interminable point of discussion when it is raised and one of the questions that settles itself easily when it isn't."
"It is the key of the whole position. If we haven't a right to employ whoever we like at any terms we may make with any individual we employ what rights have we?" "Hear what they think of it, Strong! It can surely do no harm to find out what makes them fight so."
And so on for half an hour.
"Well, I don't mind having a chat with one of them," conceded Strong at last. "It's only because you persist so, Melsom. I suppose this man you've been told is in town is an oily, ignorant fellow, who'll split words and wrangle up a cloud of dust until nobody can tell what we're talking about. I've heard these fellows."
Thus it was that Ned, calling at the Trades Hall, after having washed and breakfasted at his hotel and seen to various items of union business about town, was greeted with the information that Mr. Melsom was looking for him.
"Who's Melsom?"
"Oh! A sort of four-leaved clover, a reasonable employer," answered his genial informant. "He's in a large way of business, interested in a good many concerns, and whenever he's got a finger in anything we can always get on with it. He's a great man for arbitration and conciliation and has managed to settle two or three disputes that I never thought would be arranged peaceably. He's a thoroughly decent fellow, I can assure you."
"What does he want with me, I wonder?"
"He wants you to see Strong, just to talk matters over and let Strong know how you Queenslanders look at things."
"Who's Strong?"
"Don't you know? He's managing director of the Great Southern Mortgage Agency. He's the man who's running the whole show on the other side and a clever man, too, don't you forget it."
Ned recollected the man he had seen at the restaurant and what Nellie had said of him, two years ago.
"But I can't see him without instructions. I must wire up to know what they say about it," said Ned.
"That's just what you mustn't do, old man. Strong won't consent to any formal interview, but told Melsom, that he'd be glad to see anybody who knew how the other side saw things, to chat the matter over as between one man and another. I told Melsom yesterday that you were in town till to-night and he came this morning to get you to see Strong at eleven. He'll be back before then. I told him I thought it would be all right."
"I don't see how I can do that without instructions," repeated Ned.
"If it were formal there could be only one possible instruction, surely," urged the other. "As it is absolutely informal and as all that Melsom hopes is that it may lead to a formal conference, I think you should go. You'd talk to anybody, wouldn't you? Besides, Melsom has his heart set on this. I don't believe it will lead to anything, mind you, but it will oblige him and he often does a good turn for us."
"That settles it," said Ned. "Only I'll have to say I'm only giving my own opinion and I'll have to talk straight whether he likes it or not."
"Of course. By the way, here are some wires that'll interest you, and I want to arrange about sending money up in case they proclaim the unions illegal. Heaven knows what they can't do now-a-days! Have you heard what they did here during the maritime strike?"
* * * * *
Shortly before eleven, Strong was closeted in his private office with a burly man of unmistakably bush appearance, modified both in voice and dress by considerable contact with the towns. Of sandy complexion, broad features and light-coloured eyes that did not look one full in the face, the man was of the type that attracts upon casual acquaintance but about which there is an indefinable something which, without actually repelling, effectually prevents any implicit confidence.
"You have been an officer of the shearers' union, you say?" enquired
Strong, coldly.
"I've been an honorary officer, never a paid one," answered the man, who held his hat on his knee.
"There's a man in Sydney now, named Hawkins. Do you know him?"
"Yes. I've shorn with him out at the—"
"What sort of a man is he?" interrupted Strong.
"He's a young fellow. There's not much in him. He talks wild."
"Has he got much influence?"
"Only with his own set. Most of the men only want a start to break away from fellows like Hawkins. I'm confident the new anion I was talking of, admitting 'freedom of contract,' would break the other up and that Hawkins and the rest of them couldn't stop it."
"It seems feasible," said Strong, sharply. "At any rate, there's nothing lost by trying it. This is what we will do. We will pay you all expenses and six pounds a week from to-day to go up to Queensland, publicly denounce the union, support 'freedom of contract' and try to start another union against the present one; generally to act as an agent of ours. Payment will be made after you come out. Until then you must pay your own expenses."
"I think I should have expenses advanced," said the man.
"We know nothing of you. You represent yourself as so-and-so and if you are genuine there is no injustice done by our offer. You must take or leave it."
"I'll take it," said the man, after a slight hesitation.
"There's another matter. Do you know the union officials in Brisbane?"
"I know all of them, intimately."
"Then you may be able to do something with them. We are informed that they are implicated in all that's going on, the instigators of it. Bring us evidence criminally implicating them and we will pay well."
"This is business," said the man, a little shamefacedly. "What will you pay?"
Strong jotted some figures on a slip of paper. "If you are a friend of these men," he said, passing the slip over, "you will know their value apiece to you." A sneer he could not quite conceal peeped from under his business tone.
"That concludes our business, I think," he continued, tearing the slip up, having received it back. "I will instruct our secretary and you can call on him this afternoon."
He touched an electric bell-button on his desk. A clerk appeared at the door instantly.
"Show this man out by the back way," ordered Strong, glancing at the clock. "Good-day!"
The summarily dismissed visitor had hardly gone when another clerk announced Mr. Melsom.
"Anybody with him?"
"Yes, sir. A tall, bush-looking man."
"Show them both in."
"What sneaking brutes these fellows are!" Strong thought, contemptuously, jotting instructions on some letters he was glancing through, working away as one accustomed to making the most of spare minutes.
* * * * *
Mr. Melsom had left Ned and Strong together, having to attend to his own business which had already been sufficiently interfered with by his exertions on behalf of his pet theory of "getting things talked over." Ned had felt inwardly agitated as he walked under the great archway and up the broad iron stairway that led to the inner offices of this great fortress-like building, the centre of the southern money-power. He had noted the massive walls of hewn stone, the massive gates and the enormous bolts, chains and bars. In the outer office he had glanced a little nervously around the lofty, stuccoed, hall-like room, of which the wood-work was as massive in its way as were the stone walls without and of which the very glass of the partitions looked put in to stay, while the counters and desks, with their polished brass-work and great leathern-bound ledgers, seemed as solid as the floor itself; he wondered curiously what all these clerks did who leaned engrossed over their desks or flitted noiselessly here and there on the matting-covered flagstones of the flooring. Why he should be nervous he could not have explained. But he was cool enough when, after a minute's delay, a clerk led Melsom and himself through a smaller archway opening from this great office hall and up a carpetted stone stairway loading between two great bare walls and along a long lofty passage, wherein footfalls echoed softly on the carpetted stone floor. Finally they reached a polished, pannelled door which being opened showed Strong writing busily at a cabinet desk placed in the centre of the handsomely furnished office-room. The great financier greeted Melsom cordially, nodded civilly enough to Ned and agreed with the latter's immediate statement that he came, as a private individual solely, to see a private individual, at the request of Mr. Melsom.
"Now, where do we differ?" Strong asked, when Melsom had gone.
"We are you and me, of course," said Ned, putting his hat on the floor.
Strong nodded.
"Well, you have sat down at your desk here and drawn up a statement as to how I shall work without asking me. I object. I say that, as I'm concerned, you and I together should sit down and arrange how I shall work for you since I must work for you."
"In our agreement, that you refer to, we have tried to do what is fair," replied Strong, looking sharply at Ned.
"Do you want me to talk straight?" asked Ned. "Because, if you object to that, it's better for me to go now than waste words talking round the subject."
"Certainly," answered Strong. "Straight talk never offends me."
"Then how do I know you have tried to do fairly?" enquired Ned. "Our experience with the pastoralists leads us to think the opposite."
"There have been rabid pastoralists," admitted Strong, after a moment's thought, "just as there have been rabid men on the other side. I'll tell you this, that we have had great difficulty in getting some of the pastoralists to accept this agreement. We had to put considerable pressure on them before they would moderate their position to what we consider fair."
Ned did not reply. He stowed Strong's statement away for future use.
"Besides," remarked Strong, after a pause, during which he arranged the letters before him. "There is no compulsion to accept the agreement. If you don't like it don't work under it, but let those who want to accept it."
"I fancy that's more how it stands than by being fair," commented Ned, bitterly.
"Well! Isn't that fair?" asked Strong, leaning back in his office chair.
"Is it fair?" returned Ned.
"Well! Why not?"
"How can it be fair? We have nothing and you have everything. All the leases and all the sheep and all the cattle and all the improvements belong to you. We've got to work to live and we can't work except for you. What's the sense of your saying that if we don't like the agreement we needn't take it? We must either break the agreement or take it. That's how we stand."
"Well, what do you object to in it?"
"I don't know what the others object to in it. I know what I object to."
"That's what I want to know."
"Well, for one thing, when I've earned money it's mine. The minute I've shorn a sheep the price of shearing it belongs to me and not to the squatter. It's convenient to agree only to draw pay at certain times, but it's barefaced to deliberately withhold my money weeks after I've earned it, and it's thieving to forfeit wages in case a squatter and I differ as to whether the agreement's been broken or not."
"There ought to be some security that a pastoralist won't be put to loss by his men leaving him at a moment's notice," asserted Strong.
"You've got the law on your side," answered Ned. "You can send a man to prison, like a thief, if he has a row with a squatter after signing an agreement, but we can't send the squatter to prison if he's in fault. The Masters and Servants Act is all wrong and we'll alter it when we get a chance, I can assure you, but you're not content with the Masters and Servants Act. You want a private law all in your own hand."
"We've had a very serious difficulty to meet," said the other. "Men go on strike on frivolous pretext and we must protect our interests. We've not cut down wages and we don't intend to."
"You have cut down wages, labourers' wages," retorted Ned.
"That has been charged," replied Strong, lifting his eyebrows. "But I can show you the list of wages paid on our stations during the last five years and you will see that the wages we now offer are fully up to the average."
"That may be," said Ned. "But they are less than they were last year. I'm speaking now of what I know."
"Oh! There may be a few instances in which the unions forced up wages unduly which have been rectified," said Mr. Strong. "But the general rate has not been touched."
"The pastoralists wouldn't dare arbitrate on that," answered Ned. "In
January, 1890, they tried to force down wages and we levelled them up.
Now, they are forcing them down again. At least it seems that way to me."
"That matter might be settled, I think," said Strong, dismissing it.
"What other objections have you to the agreement?"
"As an agreement I object to the whole thing, the way it's being worked. If it were a proposal I should want to know how about the Eight Hours and the Chinese."
"We don't wish to alter existing hours," answered Strong.
"Then why not put it down?"
"And we don't wish to encourage aliens."
"A good many pastoralists do and we are determined to try to stop them.
It looks queer to us that nothing is said about it."
"Some certainly did urge that Chinese should be allowed in tropical Queensland but our influence is against that and we hope to restrain the more impetuous and thus prevent friction."
Ned shrugged his shoulders without answering.
"We hope—" began Strong. Then he broke off, saying instead: "I do not see why the men should regard the pastoralists as necessarily inimical and as not desirous of doing what is fair."
"Look here, Mr. Strong," said Ned leaning forward, as was his habit when in earnest. "We are beginning to understand things. We know that you people are after profits and nothing else, that to you we are like so many horses or sheep, only not so valuable because we're harder to break in and our carcasses aren't worth anything. We know that you don't care a curse whether we live or die and that you'd fill the bush with Chinese to-morrow if you could see your way to making an extra one per cent. by it."
"You haven't much confidence in us, at any rate," returned Strong, coolly. "But if we look carefully after profits you must recollect that a great deal of capital is trust funds. The widow and the orphan invest their little fortunes in our hands. Surely you wouldn't injure them?"
"I thought we were talking straight to one another," said Ned. "You will excuse me, Mr. Strong, for thinking that to talk 'widow and orphan' isn't worthy of a man like you unless you've got a very small opinion of me. When you think about our widows and orphans we'll think about your widows and orphans. That's only clap-trap. It doesn't alter the hard fact that you're only after profit and don't care what happens to us so long as you get it."
The financier bit his lips, flushing. He took up a letter and glanced over it before replying.
"Do you care what happens to us?"
"As things are, no. How can we? The worst that could happen to one of you would leave you as well off as the most fortunate of us. There is war between us, only I think it possible to be a little civilised and not to fight each other like savages as we are doing."
"I am glad you admit that some of your methods are savage."
"Of course I admit it," answered Ned. "That is my opinion of the way both sides fight now. Instead of conferring and arbitrating on immediate questions and leaving future questions to be talked over and understood and thoroughly threshed out in free discussion, we strike, you lockout, you victimise wholesale and, naturally, we retaliate in our own ways."
"You prefer to be left uninterrupted to preach this new socialistic nonsense?"
"Why not, if it is sound? And if it isn't sound, why not? Surely your side isn't afraid of discussion if it knows it's right."
"Do you really think that we should leave our individual rights to be decided upon by an ignorant mob?"
"My individual rights are at the mercy of ignorant individuals at present," said Ned. "I am not allowed to work if I happen to have given offence to a handful of squatters."
"I think you exaggerate," answered Strong. "I know that some pastoralists are very vindictive but I regard most of them as honorable men incapable of a contemptible action."
"Of course they are," said Ned. "The only thing is what do they call contemptible? You and I are very friendly, just now, Mr. Strong. You're not small enough to feel any hatred just because I talk a bit straight but you know very well that you'd regard it as quite square to freeze me out because I do talk straight."
The two men looked into each other's eyes. Strong began to respect this outspoken bushman.
"I think that one of the most fundamental of all rights in any civilised society is the right of a man to employ whom he likes at any terms and under any conditions that he can get men to enter his employment. It seems to me that without this right the very right to private property itself is disputed for in civilisation private property does not mean only a hoard, stored up for future use, but savings accumulated to carry on the industrial operations of civilisation. These savings have been prompted by the assurance that society will protect the man who saves in making, with the man who has not saved, the contracts necessary to carry on industry, unhampered by the interference of outsiders. That seems to me, I repeat, a fundamental right essential to the very existence of society. The man who disputes it seems to me an enemy of society. Whether he is right or wrong, or whether society itself is right or wrong, is another question with which, as it is a mere theory, practical men have nothing to do." Strong had only been fencing in his talk before. Now that he was ready he stated his position, quite coolly, with a quiet emphasis that made his line of argument clear as day.
"Then why confer at all, under any conditions, oven if unionists admitted all this?" asked Ned.
"Simply for convenience. Some of our members object to any conference but the general opinion is that it does not involve a sacrifice of principle to discuss details provided principles are admitted. In the same way, some favoured the employment of men at any wage arranged between the individual man and hie employer, but the general opinion was that it is advisable and convenient for pastoralists in the same district to pay the same wages."
"Then the pastoralists may combine but the bushmen mayn't."
"We don't object to the bushmen forming unions. We claim the right to employ men without asking whether they are unionist or non-unionist."
"Which means," said Ned, "the right to victimise unionists."
"How is that?" asked Strong.
"We know how. Do you suppose for a moment, Mr. Strong, that ideas spring up with nothing behind them? All those who are acquainted with the history of unionism know that 'close unionism,' the refusal to work with non-unionists, arose from the persistent preference given by employers to non-unionists, which was a victimising of unionists."
"That may have been once, but things are different now," answered Strong.
"They are not different now. Wherever employers have an opportunity they have a tendency to weed out unionists. I could give you scores of instances of it being done. The black list is bad enough now. It would be a regular terrorism if there was nothing to restrain the employer. Then down would come wages, up would go hours and in would come the Chinese. If it is a principle with you, it is existence itself with us."
"I think the pastoralists would agree not to victimise, as you call it," said Strong, after thinking a minute.
"Who is to say? How are we to know?" answered Ned. "Supposing, Mr. Strong, you and I had a dispute in which we both believed ourselves right would you regard it as a fair settlement to submit the whole thing, without any exception, to an arbiter whom we both chose and both believed to be fair?"
"Certainly I should," said Strong.
"The whole dispute, no matter what it was? You'd think it fair to leave it all to the arbiter?"
"Certainly."
"Then why not leave 'freedom of contract' to arbitration?" demanded Ned. "You say you are right. We say we are right. We have offered to go to arbitration on the whole dispute, keeping nothing back. We have pledged ourselves to stand by the arbitration. Isn't that honest and fair? What could be fairer? It may be that we have taken a wrong method against victimising in close unionism. But it cannot be that we should not have some defence against victimising, and close unionism is the only defence we have as yet, that any union has had, anywhere, except in Sheffield and I don't suppose you want rattening to start here. Why not arbitrate?"
"It is a question of principle," answered Strong, looking Ned in the face.
"That means you'll fight it out," commented Ned, rising and picking up his hat. Then he put his foot on his chair and, leaning on his knee, thus expressed his inward thoughts: "You can fight if you like but when it's all over you'll remember what I say and know it's the straight wire. You've been swallowing the fairy tales about ours being a union of pressed men but you will see your mistake, believe me. You may whip us; you've got the Government and the police and the P.M.'s and the money and the military but how much nearer the end will you be when you have whipped us? You'll know by then that the chaps up North, like men everywhere else, will go down fighting and will come up smiling to fight again when you begin to take it out of them because they're down. And in the end you'll arbitrate. You'll have no way out of it. Its fair and because it's fair and because we all know it's fair we'll win that or— " Ned paused.
"I'm sorry you look at the matter so," said Strong, arranging his papers.
"How else should we look at it? If we pretend to give in as you want us to do, it'll only be as a trick to gain time, as a ruse to put you off until we're readier. We won't do that. For my part, and for the part of the men I know, the union is a thing which mustn't get a bad name. We may lie individually but the union's word must be as good as gold no matter what it says. If the union says the sheep are wet, they're wet, and if it says they're dry, they are dry—if the water's dripping off 'em," added Ned, with a twinkle in his eye. "I mean, Mr. Strong, that we're trying to be better men in our rough way and the union is what's making us better and some of us would die for it. But we'd sooner see it die than see it do what's cowardly."
"I am sorry that men like you are so deceived as to what is right," said
Strong.
"Perhaps we're all deceived. Perhaps you're deceived. Perhaps the whole of life is a humbug." So Ned said, with careless fatalism. "Only, if your mates were in trouble you'd be a cur if you didn't stand by them, wouldn't you? That's the difference between you and me, Mr. Strong. You don't believe that we're all mates or that the crowd has any particular troubles and I do. And as long as one believes it, well, it doesn't matter to him whether he's deceived or not, I think. I won't detain you any longer. Its no use our talking, I can see."
Strong got up and walked towards the door.
"I think not," he said. "But I am glad to have met you, Mr. Hawkins, and I can't help feeling that you're throwing great abilities away. You'll get no thanks and do no good and you'll live to regret it. It's all very well to talk lightly of the outlook in Queensland but when you have become implicated in lawlessness and are suffering for it the whole affair will look different. Don't misunderstand me! You are a young man, capable, earnest. There is no position you might not aspire to. Be warned in time. Let me help you. I shall be only too glad. You will never repent it for I ask nothing dishonourable."
"I don't quite understand," said Ned, sternly, his brow knitting.
"I'm not offering a bribe," continued Strong, meeting Ned's gaze unflinchingly. "That's not necessary. You know very well that you will hang yourself with very little more rope. I am talking as between one man and another. I meet only too few manly men to let one go to destruction without trying to save him. The world doesn't need saviours; it needs masters. You can be one of them. Think well of it: Not one in a million has the chance."
"You mean that you'll help me to get rich?"
"Rich!" sneered Strong. "What is rich? It is Power that is worth having and to have power one must control capital. In your wildest ranting of the power of the capitalist you have hardly touched the fringe of the power he has. Only there are very few who are able to use it. I offer you the opportunity to become one of the few. I never make a mistake in men. If you try you can be. There is the offer, take it or leave it."
For an instant Ned dreamed of accepting it, of throwing over everything to become a great capitalist, as Strong said so confidently he could be, and then, after long years, to pour his wealth into the treasuries of the movement, now often checked for lack of funds. Then he thought of Nellie and of Geisner, what they would say, still hesitating. Then he thought of his mates expecting him, waiting for him, and he decided.
"I was thinking," he said, straightforwardly, "whether I wouldn't like to make a pile so as to give it to the movement. But, you see, Mr. Strong, the chaps are expecting me and that settles it. I am much obliged but it would be dishonourable in me."
"You know what is in front?" asked Strong, calmly, making a last effort.
"I think so. I'm told I'm one of those to be locked up. What does that matter? That won't lose me any friends."
"A stubborn man will have his way," remarked Strong. Adding, at a venture: "Particularly when there is a woman in it."
"There is a woman in it," answered Ned, flushing a little; "a woman who won't have me."
Strong opened the door. "I've done my best for you," he said. "Don't blame me whatever happens. You, at least, had your choice of peace or war, of more than peace."
"I understand. Personally, I shan't blame you," said Ned. "I choose war, more than war," and he set his mouth doggedly.
"War, at any rate," answered Strong, holding out his hand, his face as grave as Ned's. The two men gripped hands tightly, like duellists crossing swords. Without another word they shook hands heartily and separated.
Strong closed the door and walked up and down his room, hurriedly, deep in thought, pulling his lip. He sat down at his desk, took up his pen, got up and paced the room again. He went to the window and looked out into the well that admitted light to the centre of the great fortress-building. Then walked back to his desk and wrote.
"He is a dangerous man," he murmured, as if excusing himself. "He is a most dangerous man."
A youth answered a touch of the button. Strong sent for his confidential clerk.
"Send this at once to Queensland in cipher," he instructed, in a business tone, when the man appeared; "this" being:
Prominent bush unionist named Hawkins leaves Sydney to-night by train for Central Queensland via Brisbane. Have him arrested immediately. Most important.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE REPUBLICAN KISS.
"I've never felt so before," said Ned. "For about ten minutes I wanted to go back and kill him."
"Why?"
"Because he is like a wall of iron in front of one. If he were a fat hulking brute, as some of them are, I wouldn't have minded. I could have pitied him and felt that he wasn't a fair specimen of Humanity. But this man is a fair specimen in a way. He looks like a man and he talks like a man and you feel him a man, only he's absolutely unable to understand that the crowd are the same flesh and blood as he is and you know that he'd wipe us down like ninepins if he could see he'd gain by it. He's all brains and any heart he's got is only for his own friends. He is Capitalism personified. He made me feel sick at heart at the hopelessness of fighting such men in the old ways. I felt for a little while that the only thing to do was to clear them out of the way as they'd clear us if they were in our shoes."
"You've got over it soon."
"Of course," admitted Ned, with a laugh. "He can live for ever, for me, now. It was a fool's thought. It's the system we're fighting, not the products of it, and he's only a product just like the fat beasts we abuse and the ignorant drunken bushmen he despises. I was worrying, as you call it, or I shouldn't have even thought of it."
Ned was talking to Connie. After having had dinner at a restaurant with his Trades Hall friend, to whom he related part of his morning's interview, he had found himself with two or three hours on his hands. So he had turned his steps towards the Strattons, longing for sympathy and comfort, being strangely depressed and miserable without being able to think out just how he felt.
He found Mrs. Stratton writing in her snug parlour. The rooms had the same general appearance that they had two years before. The house, seen by daylight for the first time, was embowered in trees and fringed back and front with pretty flower beds and miniature lawns. Connie herself was fair and fresh as ever and wore a loose robe of daintily flowered stuff; the years had passed lightly over her, adding to rather than detracting from the charms of her presence. She welcomed him warmly and with her inimitable tact, seeing his trouble, told him how they all were, including that Josie had married and had a beautiful baby, adding with a flush that she herself had set Josie a bad example and bringing in the example for Ned to admire. The other children were boating with George and Josie, she explained, George not having yet escaped from that horrible night-work. Harry was well and would be home after a while. He was painting a series of scenes from city life, the sketches of which she showed him. Arty was married to a very nice girl, who knew all his poetry, every line, by heart. Ford was well, only more bitter than ever. When Ned asked after Geisner, she said he had not been back since and she had only heard once, indirectly, that he was well. Thus she led him to talk and he told her partly what took place between Strong and himself. Strong's offer he could not tell to anyone.
"You didn't get on with Nellie last night?" she asked, alluding to his "worrying." Having taken the baby out she had sat down on the stool by the open piano.
Ned looked up. "How do you know? Has she been here?"
"No. She hasn't been here, but I can tell. You men always carry your hearts on your sleeve, when you think you aren't. You asked her to marry you, I suppose, and she said 'No.' Isn't that it?"
"I can't tell you all about it, Mrs. Stratton," answered Ned, frankly. "That's about it. But she did quite right. She thought she shouldn't and when Nellie thinks anything she tries to do it. That's what should be."
Mrs. Stratton strummed a few notes. "I'll show you something," she said, finally, getting up. "It passes the time to show old curiosities."
She left the room, returning in a few minutes with a quaint box of dark wood, bound with chased iron work and inlaid with some semi-transparent substance in the pattern of a coat-of-arms. She opened it with a little key that hung on her watch chain. Inside were a number of compartments, covered with little lids. She lifted them all, together, exposing under the tray a deeper recess. From this she took a miniature case.
"Look at it!" she said, smiling. "I ought to charge you sixpence but I won't."
Ned pressed the spring, the lid of the case flew up, and there, in water-colour, was the head and bust of a girl. The face was a delicate oval, the mouth soft and sweet, the eyes bright with youth and health, the whole appearance telling of winning grace and cultured beauty. The fullness of the brows betrayed the artist instinct. The hair was drawn to the top of the head in a strange foreign fashion. The softly curving lines of face and figure showed womanhood begun.
"She is very beautiful," commented Ned. Then, looking at it more closely:
"Do you know that somehow, although it's not like her, this reminds me of
Nellie?"
"I knew you'd say that," remarked Connie, swinging round on the music stool so as to reach the keys again and striking a note or two softly. "It has got Nellie's presentment, whatever you call it. I noticed it the first time I saw Nellie. That was how we happened to speak first. Harry noticed it, too, without my having said a word to him. They might be sisters, only Nellie's naturally more self-reliant and determined and has had a hard life of it, while she"—nodding at the miniature—"had been nursed in rose-leaves up to the time it was taken."
"I don't see just where the likeness comes in," said Ned, trying to analyse the portrait.
"It's about the eyes and the mouth particularly, as well as a general similitude," explained Connie.
"As I tell Nellie, she's got a vicious way of setting her lips, so," and Mrs. Stratton, mimicking, drew the corners of her mouth down in Nellie's style. "Then she draws her brows down till altogether she looks as though the burden of the whole world was on her. But underneath she has the same gentle mouth and open eyes and artist forehead as the picture and one feels it. It's very strange, don't you know, that Geisner never seemed to notice it and yet he generally notices everything. After all, I don't know that it is so strange. It's human nature."
"Geisner?" said Ned, clumsily, having nothing particular to say. "Has he seen it?"
"Once or twice," observed Connie. "It belongs to him. He leaves it with me. That's how Harry's seen it and you. It's the only thing he values so he takes care of it by never having it about him, you know," she added, in the flippant way that hid her feelings.
"I suppose it is—that it's—it's the girl he—" stumbled Ned, beginning to understand suddenly.
"That's her," said Connie, strumming some louder notes. "She died. They had been married a few days. She was taken ill, very ill. He left her, when her life was despaired of. She would have him go, too. She got better a little but losing him killed her."
Ned gazed at the portrait, speechless. What were his troubles, his grief, his sorrows, beside those of the man who had loved and lost so! Nellie at least lived. At least he had still the hope that in the years to come he and she might mate together. His thoughts flew back to Geisner's talk on Love on the garden terrace, in the bright afternoon sunshine. Truly Geisner's had been the Love that elevated not the Lust that pulled down. The example nerved him like fresh air. The pain that had dumbed his thoughts of Nellie passed from him.
"He is a man!" cried Ned.
"That wasn't all," went on Connie, taking the case from his hands and officiously dusting it with her handkerchief. "When she was pining for him, dying of grief, because she had lost her strength in her illness, they offered him his liberty if he would deny the Cause, if he would recant, if he would say he had been fooled and misled and desired to redeem his position. They let him hear all about her and then they tempted him. They wanted to disgust the people with their leaders. But it wasn't right to do that. It was shameful. It makes me wild to think of it yet. The way it was done! To torture a man so through his love! Oh, the wretches! The miserable dogs! I'd——" Connie broke off suddenly to put the handkerchief to her indignant eyes. The thunderstorm of her anger burst in rain. She was a thorough woman. "I suppose they didn't know any better, as he always says of everybody that's mean. It's some consolation to think that they overshot the mark, though," she concluded, tearfully.
"How?"
"How! Why if they had let Geisner go and everybody else, there'd be no martyrs to keep the Cause going. Even Geisner, if his wife had lived, poor girl, and if children had grown up, could hardly be quite the same, don't you know. As it is he only lives for the Cause. He has nothing else to live for. They crushed his weakness out of him and fitted him to turn round and crush them."
"It's time he began," remarked Ned, thoughtfully.
"He has begun."
"Where?"
"Everywhere. In you, in me, in Nellie, in men like Ford and George and Harry, in places you never dream of, in ways nobody knows but himself. He is moulding the world as a potter moulds clay. It frightens me, sometimes. I open a new book and there are Geisner's very ideas. I see a picture, an illustrated paper, and there is Geisner's hand passed to another. I was at a new opera the other night and I could hardly believe my ears; it seemed as though Geisner was playing. From some out of the way corner of the earth comes news of a great strike; then, on top of it, from another corner, the bubbling of a gathering rising; and I can feel that Geisner is guiding countless millions to some unseen goal, safe in his work because none know him. He is a man! He seeks no reward, despises fame, instils no evil, claims no leadership. Only he burns his thoughts into men's hearts, the god-like thoughts that in his misery have come to him, and every true man who hears him from that moment has no way but Geisner's way. A word from him and the whole world would rock with Revolution. Only he does not say it. He thinks of the to-morrow. We all suffer, and he has passed through such suffering that he is branded with it, body and soul. But he has faced it and conquered it and he understands that we all must face it and conquer it before those who follow after us can be freed from it. 'We must first show that Socialism is possible,' he said to me two years ago. And I think he hoped, Ned, that some day you would show it."
"You talk like Geisner," said Ned, watching her animated face. He had come to her for comfort and upon his sad heart her words were like balm. Afterwards, they strengthened the life purpose that came to him.
"Of course. So do you when you think of him. So does everybody. His wonderful power all lies in his impressing his ideas on everybody he meets. Strong is a baby beside him when you consider the difference in their means."
"I wish Strong was on our side, just the same."
"Why? The Strongs find the flint on which the Geisners strike the steel. Do you think for a single moment that the average rich man has courage enough or brains enough to drive the people to despair as this Strong will do?"
"Yes, monopoly will either kill or cure."
"It will cure. This Strong is annihilating the squatters as fast as he's trying to annihilate the unions. I hear them talking sometimes, or their wives, which is the same thing. They fairly hate him. He's doing more than any man to kill the old employer and to turn the owners of capital into mere idle butterflies, or, if you like it better, into swine wallowing in luxury, living on dividends. Not that they hate that," went on Connie, contemptuously. "They're an idle, vicious set, taken all round, at the best. But he's ruining a lot of the old landocrats and naturally they don't like it. Of course, very few of them like his style or his wife's."
"Too quiet? Nellie was telling me something of him once."
"Yes. He's very quiet at home. So is his wife. He reads considerably. She is musical. They have their own set, quite a pleasant one. And fashionable society can rave and splutter but is kept carefully outside their door. They don't razzle-dazzle, at any rate."
"Don't what?" asked Ned, puzzled.
"Don't razzle-dazzle!" repeated Connie, laughing. "Don't dance on champagne, like many of the society gems?"
"The men, you mean."
"The men! My dear Ned, you ought to know a little more about high life and then you'd appreciate the Strongs. I've seen a dozen fashionable women, young and old, perfectly intoxicated at a single fashionable ball. As for the men, most of them haven't any higher idea of happiness than a drunken debauch. While as for fashionable morality the less you say about it the better. And the worst of the lot are among the canting ones. The Strongs and their set at least are decent people. Wealth and poverty both seem to degrade most of us."
"Ah, well, it can't last so very much longer," remarked Ned.
"It could if it weren't for the way both sides are being driven," answered Connie. "These fat wine-soaked capitalists would give in whenever the workmen showed a bold front if cast-iron capitalists like Strong didn't force them into the fight and keep them fighting. And you know yourself that while workmen get a little what they want they never dream of objecting to greater injustices. And if it weren't for the new ideas workmen would go on soaking themselves with drink and vice and become as unable to make a change as the depraved wealthy are to resist a change. Everything helps to make up the movement."
"I know I'm inconsistent," she went on. "I talk angrily myself often but it's not right to feel hard against anybody. These other people can't help it, any more than a thief can help it or a poor girl on the streets. They're not happy as they might be, either. And if they were, I think it's better to suffer for the Cause than to have an easy time by opposing it. I'd sooner be Geisner than Strong."
"What a comparison!" cried Ned.
"Of one thing I'm sure," continued Connie, "that it is noble to go to prison in resisting injustice, that suffering itself becomes a glory if one bears it bravely for others. For I have heard Geisner say, often, that when penalties cease to intimidate and when men generally rise superior to unjust laws those special injustices are as good as overthrown. We must all do our best to prevent anything being done which is unmanly in itself. If we try to do that prison is no disgrace and death itself isn't very terrible."
"I know you mean this for me," said Ned, smiling. "I didn't mind much, you know, before. I was ready for the medicine. But, somehow, since I've been here, I've got to feel quite eager to be locked up. I shall be disappointed if it doesn't come off." He laughed cheerfully.
"Well, you might as well take it that way," laughed Connie. "I can't bear people who take everything seriously."
"There was one thing I wanted you to do," said Ned, after a while. "Nellie promised me years ago to tell me if ever she was hard up. I've got a few pounds ahead and what my horses are worth. If anything happens can I have it sent down to you so that you can give it to her if she needs it?"
Connie thought for a moment, "You'd better not," she answered. "We'll see that Nellie's all right. I think she'd starve rather than touch what you'll need afterwards."
"Perhaps so," said Ned. "You know best about that. I must go now," rising.
"Can't you wait for dinner?" asked Connie. "Harry will be here then and you'd have time to catch the train."
"I've a little business to do before," said Ned. "I promised one of our fellows to see his brother, who lives near the station."
"Oh! You must have something to eat first," insisted Connie. "You'll miss your dinner probably. That won't do." So he waited.
They had finished the hurriedly prepared meal, which she ate with him so that he might feel at home, when Stratton came in.
"He's always just in time," explained Connie, when the greetings were over. "He gives me the cold shivers whenever we're going to catch a train. Say 'good-bye' to Ned now, and don't delay him! I'll tell you all he said, all but the secrets. He's going to Queensland to-night and hasn't a minute to spare."
"I'm sorry you can't stay overnight," said Harry, heartily. "I'd like to have a long talk but I suppose my fine society lady here hasn't wasted time."
"I've talked enough for two, you may depend upon it," announced Connie, as they went to the front door together, chatting.
"Well, good-bye, if you must go," said Harry, holding Ned by both hands. "And remember, whatever happens, you've got good friends here, not fair-weather friends either."
"He must go, Harry," cried Connie. "I've kept him just to see you. You'll make him miss the next boat. Come, Ned! Good-bye!"
Ned turned to her, holding out his hand.
"Bend down!" she said, suddenly, her lips smiling, her eyes filling.
"You're so tall."
He bent to her mechanically, not understanding. She took his head between her hands and kissed him on both cheeks.
"The republican kiss!" she cried, trying to laugh, offering her own cheek to him as he stood flushed and confused. Something choked him as he stooped to her again, touching the fair face with his lips, reverentially.
"Good-bye!" she exclaimed, her mouth working, grasping his hands. "Our hearts are with you all up there, but, oh, don't let your good heart destroy you for no use!" Then she burst into tears and, turning to her husband, flung herself into the loving arms that opened for her. "It's beginning again, Harry. It's beginning again. Will it never end, I wonder? And it's always the best it takes from us, Harry, the bravest and the best." And she sobbed in his arms, quietly, resignedly, as she had sobbed, Ned recollected, when Geisner thundered forth that triumphant Marseillaise.
Her vivid imagination showed her friends and husband and sons going to prison and to death as friends and father and brother had gone to prison and to death in the days gone by. She knew the Cause so well—had it not suckled her and reared her?—with all the depth of the nature that her lightness of manner only veiled as the frothy spray of the flooded Barron veils the swell of the cataract beneath, with all the capacity for understanding that made her easily the equal of brilliant men. It was a Moloch, a Juggernaut, a Kronos that devoured its own children, a madness driving men to fill with their hopes and lives the chasm that lies between what is and what should be. It had lulled a little around her of late years, the fight that can only end one way because generation after generation carries it on, civilisation after civilisation, age after age. Now its bugle notes were swelling again and those she cared for would be called, sooner or later, one by one. Husband and children and friends, all must go as this bushman was going, going with his noble thoughts and pure instincts and generous manhood and eager brain. At least, it seemed to her that they must. And so she bewailed them, as women will even when their hearts are brave and when their devotion is untarnished and undimmed. She yearned for the dawning of the Day of Peace, of the Reign of Love, but her courage did not falter. Still amid her tears she clung to the idea that those whom the Cause calls must obey.
"Ned'll be late, Harry," she whispered. "He must go." So Ned went, having grasped Harry's hand again, silently, a great lump in his throat and a dimness in his eyes but, nevertheless, strangely comforted.
He was just stepping on board the ferry steamer when Harry raced down, a little roll of paper in his hand. "Connie forgot to give you this," was all he had time to say. "It's the only one she has."
Ned opened the little roll to find it a pot-shot photograph of Nellie, taken in profile as she stood, with her hands clasped, gazing intently before her, her face sad and stern and beautiful, her figure full of womanly strength and grace. He lovered it, overjoyed, until the boat reached the Circular Quay. He kept taking it out and stealing sly peeps at it as the bus rolled up George-street, Redfern way.