SIXTEEN.

ADVANCE, AUSTRALIA!

In the career of a prodigy there invariably comes a time when it is compelled to relinquish being very clever for a child, and has to enter the business of life in compet.i.tion with adults.

This crisis had arrived in the career of the prodigy Australia.

It is at the time of electing new or re-electing old representatives of the people to the legislature that the state of a country's affairs is more prominently before the public than at any other, and preceding the State election in which Grandma Clay was to exercise the rights of full citizenship for the first time, it was a lugubrious statement.

That the country had gone to the dogs was averred by each candidate for the three hundred a-year given ordinary State members, and each described himself as the instrument by which it could be restored to a state of paradisaical prosperity.

This is an old bogey, unfailingly revived at elections. The Ministerialists invariably roar how they have improved the public finances, while the Opposition as blatantly tries to drown them by bellowing that the retiring government has d.a.m.ned the country, and that the Opposition has the only recipe of satisfactory reconstruction, but in spite of this threadbare election scare the Commonwealth remained the freest and one of the wealthiest abiding-places in the world.

Just then its business affairs were undoubtedly badly managed, and mismanagement, if continued, inevitably leads to bankruptcy. Undeniably there was an unwholesome percentage of unemployed--inexcusable when there abounded vast areas of fertile territory quite unpeopled, mines as rich as any known to history all untouched; the sugar, grape, timber, and other industries crying aloud for further development, and countless resources on every hand requiring nothing but that these and men should meet on healthy and enterprising business terms. The population, instead of gaining in numbers, was foolishly leaving the country, like over-indulged, spoiled children, imagining themselves ill-treated, while others hesitated to come in because the Australian trumpet was not blown loudly enough nor in the right key.

The administration, like a young housewife tossed into an overflowing storehouse, had spent lavishly, but the bank of a multi-millionaire will come to an end in time, and so with the play-days of Australia.

The hour had arrived for her to be up and doing, to marshal her forces, advertise her wares, and take her place as a worker among the nations.

There are always old bush lawyers and city know-alls beside whom Chamberlain and Roberts are but small tomahawks as empire-builders, and these now were predicting that to make a nation of her Australia needed war and many other disasters to harden her people from the amus.e.m.e.nt-loving, sunny-eyed folk they were; but this was an extremist's outlook. She was in greater need of a land law that would sensibly and practically put the right people on the soil, and entice population of desirable cla.s.s--independent producers--so that the development of the industries would follow in natural sequence. In short, Australia was languishing for a few patriotic sons with strong, clear, business heads to apply the science of statecraft, as distinguished from the self-seeking artifices of the mere job politician at present sapping her vitals, and all the elements for success were within her gates.

I had long had an eye open for the discernment of such an embryo statesman, and looked forward with interest to the study of the present crop of political candidates.

As soon as Leslie Walker--Ernest Breslaw's step-brother--had been elected as the Opposition candidate for Noonoon, canva.s.sing, "spouting," war-whooping, and all manner of "barracking" began with such intense enthusiasm that fortunately Miss Flipp's sad fate was speedily driven out of our thoughts.

Dawn and Mrs Bray were on Walker's committee, and nearly every night there was an advocate of one party or the other gasconading in Citizens' Hall.

To Noonoon residents it became what the theatre is to city patrons of the drama, and more, for this was invested with the dignity of a certain amount of reality. To women being in the fray many attributed the unusual interest distinguishing this campaign, but the real cause was that public affairs had come to such a deadlock that legislature, as the medium through which they might be moved, had become a vital question to the veriest numskull, and all were mustering to ascertain who put forth the most favourable policy.

With politics and her newly started singing lessons, Dawn was too thoroughly engrossed for thought of any knight to pierce her armour of indifference, which was the outcome of full mental occupation. I invested in a nice little piano, that was carried upstairs to our big room, and had undertaken to superintend her practising, but she was a more enthusiastic politician than a vocal student, as I pointed out to her grandmother's satisfaction. These happenings had eventuated during the first fortnight of May, and in the third week of this month Leslie Walker imported a couple of experienced ranters to renew the attack and denounce the villainy of the present government in loud and bl.u.s.tering vote-catching war-whoops.

In the town itself, nearly every third person was employed on the railway, and their only care in casting their vote was to secure a representative who would not in any way reduce the expenditure of the railways. Thus a parliamentary candidate in Noonoon had to trim his sails to catch this large vote or be defeated. It was the same with other factions: any man with a common-sense platform, impartially for the good of the State at large, might as well have sat down at home and have saved himself the labour of stumping an electorate and bellowing himself hoa.r.s.e for all the chance he had of being returned.

We turned out _en ma.s.se_ from Clay's to hear the second speech of young Walker, a.s.sisted by two M.P.'s belonging to his party. Grandma and I drove in the sulky, while the girls and Andrew walked ahead, the latter under strict orders to behave with reason, and not make "a fool of hisself with the larrakins."

It was well we arrived early, as there was not sitting room for half the audience, though more than half the hall being reserved for the ladies, we got a front seat, and long before the time for the speakers to appear every corner was packed, and women as well as men were standing in rows fronting the stage. A great buzz of conversation at the front, and stampeding and cat-calling among the youths at the back, was terminated by the arrival of the three speakers of the evening, who were received amid deafening c.o.c.k-a-doodling, cheering, stamping, and clapping. An old warrior of the cla.s.s dressed _up_ to the position of M.P. sat to one side, and next him was the barrister type so prolific in parliament, who had himself dressed _down_ to the vulgar crowd, while third sat Leslie Walker.

Surely not the first Leslie Walker who had appeared a week or two previously! His bright, restless eye, though too sensitive for that of an old campaigner, now took in the crowd with complete a.s.surance, and there was no hint of hesitation discernible. Having once smelt powder he was ready for the fray.

"By Jove! hasn't Les. bucked up!" whispered Ernest, who sat on one side of me, where he had landed after an ineffectual attempt to sit beside Dawn.

"Yes; if he can only roar and blow and wave his arms sufficiently he may have a chance."

"But he's still nervous," said the observant Andrew from the rear.

"You watch him go for that flea in the leg of his pants!"

Sitting in full view of a "chyacking" audience is a severe ordeal to an inexperienced campaigner with a sensitive temperament, and this action, indeed peculiarly like an attempt to detain an annoying insect in a fold of his lower garment, was one of those little mannerisms adopted to give an appearance of ease.

Behind the speakers came, as chairman, one of the swell cla.s.s almost extinct in this region, and he, too, had rather an effete att.i.tude and physique, as he took up his position behind the spindley table weighted by the smeared tumblers and water-bottle. He rose with the intention of flattering the speakers and audience in the orthodox way, but the electors, among whom a spirit of overflowing hilarity was at large, took his duties out of his mouth.

"Don't smoodge, old c.o.c.kroach, let the other blokes blaze away, as we (the taxpayers) are paying dear for this spouting."

The barrister man M.P. burst upon them first with the latest trumpet blare with which speeches were being opened. Having been primed as to the magnitude of the railway vote in Noonoon, first move was to throw a bone to it, and, metaphorically speaking, he got down on his knees to this section of the electors, and howled and squealed that all civil servants' wages would be left as they were.

He took another canter to flatter the ladies regarding the remarkably intelligent vote they had cast in the Federal elections, and a.s.serted his belief that they would do likewise in the present crisis, and introduce a n.o.bler element into political life.

Creatures, a few months previously ranked lower than an almost imbecile man, and with no more voice in the laws they lived under than had lunatics or horses--it was miraculous what a power they had suddenly grown! The man at the back saw the point--

"Blow it all, don't smoodge so. It ain't long since you was all rared up on yer hind legs showin' how things would go to fury if wimmen had the vote."

Having got past this prelude, he proceeded with a vigorous volley of abuse against the sitting government, and showed how Walker, the Opposition candidate, was the only man to vote for. He shook his fists, stamped and raved, and ill.u.s.trated how much a voice could endure without cracking, the back people carefully waiting till he had to pull up to take a drink out of one of the gla.s.ses on the spindley table, when they got in with--

"You're mad! Keep cool! You'll bust a blood-vessel! When are you going to give Tomato Jimmy a show to blow his horn?" This being a reference to the calling of the other speaker, who was a middleman in the vegetable and fruit-market. The first speaker, however, was not nearly exhausted yet--he had to thump his fists on the unfortunate spindley table, and work off several other oratorical poses and a deal of elocutionary voice-play, ere he was finished. I fairly rolled with enjoyment of the wonderful wit and humour of the crowd at the back, which, unless it be put down as the critical faculty, is an inexplicable phenomenon. Not one of the interrupters, if drafted on to the hustings, could have given a lucid or intelligent statement of his views, or indication that he was furnished with any, and yet not one slip on the part of a candidate, one inconsistent point, personal mannerism or peccadillo, but was remarked in an astonishingly humorous and satirical style.

The barrister man having finished "spouting," the common-sense individual, who always sits half-way down the hall, and who, when he asks a question, has to face the double ordeal of the crowd and the candidate, said--

"The speaker has shown us all the things the other fellows _can't do_, we'd like another speech now stating what _he can_ do." The chairman rose to say this was out of order, but his voice was lost in the din.

"You sit down, old chap, we can manage this meetin' ourselves."

"But out of respect to the ladies present!"

"We'll look after the ladies too," was the good-humoured rejoinder.

"Why, they're enjoyin' it as much as we are. They've got a vote now, you know, and are going to use it in an intelligent manner."

"Did you know Queen Anne was dead?" said another.

"The ladies won't be harmed. Any one that disrespects the ladies will be chucked out."

The ladies had to laugh at this, and the meeting went right merrily, and more merrily in that half the "blowing" from the stage was drowned by the interjectory din from the rear of the building, where lads and men stood chock-a-block, the former, and the latter too, making right royal use of their licence to be rowdy; but such a good-natured crowd could not often be seen. There were no altercations, only laughter and the crude repartee of such a gathering.

The first speaker having returned to his seat and sanity, the second took his place.

"Hullo, Tomatoes! What's the price of onions and spuds?"

"Now begin and tell the ladies how intelligent they are, so you'll get their vote."

"Tomatoes" did b.u.t.ter the ladies, next yelled that the civil servants would not be retrenched, and then upheld the virulent attack on the government. Keeping in time with the utterances of "Tomato Jimmy," the boys at the back grew so boisterous that at one time it appeared inevitable that the meeting must break up in disorder. The chairman, the candidates, the ladies, the whole house rose, and one man towards the front made himself heard amid the babel to the effect that the ladies ought to walk out to show their resentment of the insults that had been offered their presence by this disorderly behaviour.

"Ladies, don't go. _Dear_ ladies, don't go," called some wags. "We're only educatin' you in politics,--learning you how to be like your superiors--men."

This evoked a round of laughter, and order was restored.

"That's right, ladies, don't go; if you was to turn dawg on us now, we'd be so crestfallen we couldn't think about politics and save the country at all."

Once more "Tomatoes" belched forth the infamy of the government, and louder and louder he yelled, till one marvelled at his endurance.