Part 4 (1/2)
”It ain't his name. He's called it for a lark because he was after a girl up in town named Dora Cowper. She serves in a hay and corn store at the corner. Things were gettin' on pretty strong, and he used to be taking her out all hours of the night and day. Some reckon she's better-lookin' than Dawn, and her mother put it around that Eweword would make a brilliant match for her, and that shooed him off at once.
I reckon if I was a girl and wanted to ketch a man I'd hold me mag about it, as I know two or three now has been turned off the same way.”
”Perhaps Dora Cowper didn't lose much.”
”Well, he has a bosker farm, you see. He keeps a power of pigs and fattens 'em. Then he went after one or two more girls, and now he comes here. Buying these pumpkins is only a dodge to get a chip in with Dawn. He has plenty lucerne for his pigs, but we have so many pumpkins rotting we are glad to get rid of them at two bob a load, and I suppose that is cheap to get a yarn with Dawn. He ain't preposed to Dawn yet, but I'm sure he's goin' to, because I asked him if he was goin' to marry Dora Cowper, an' he said no. Dawn is only pullin' his leg for him--she's got all the blokes on a string. You should see her with those that comes up in the summer. It's worth bein' alive in the summer. We had melons here in millions. We used to open a big Dixie or Cuban Queen and just only claw out the middle. We used to fill the water-cask with 'em to cool, an' every time Dawn came out to dive in her dipper, wouldn't she rouse! Me an' Uncle Jake used to race to see who could eat the most, but he beat. He's a sollicker to stuff when he gets anything he likes. It's a wonder we didn't bust. The oranges will soon be ripe, that's good luck: I can eat eighty a-day easy. Here comes old Bolliver!”
A huge figure as described by Dawn came out of the house in company with Miss Flipp, and I recognised Mr p.o.r.nsch, the heavy swell who had travelled in the 'bus with me on the day of my first arrival in Noonoon.
With repulsive clumsiness he climbed into the vehicle, and then said roughly, almost brutally, to his niece--
”Get in! get in!” and scarcely gave her time to be seated ere he hit the pony and nearly screwed its jaw off getting out of the yard.
”c.o.c.k-a-doodle-do! Ain't it nice to have a sweet temper,” loudly remarked Andrew, as he stood aside. ”He just is a purple plum. He's the kind of old cove I'd like to get real narked and then scoot.
Wouldn't he splutter and think himself Lord Muck, and that every one oughter be licking his boots!”
Dawn and ”Dora” Eweword were still hanging over a garden fence as Andrew went after his cows and I betook myself to the house. Uncle Jake was in conference with his sister, and gave evidence of fearing I should pursue him, so I mercifully betook myself to my own apartment.
Miss Flipp presently returned, and saying she had had tea up town with her uncle and would not want any more, shut herself in her room, from whence I soon detected the sound of impa.s.sioned sobbing. My first impulse was to ask her what was the matter, but my second, born of a wide experience of grief, led me to hold my tongue and tell no one what I had heard; but to escape from the sound of that pitiable weeping I went out in the garden, where I was joined by Mrs Clay.
”Did you see that young feller out there this afternoon? Fine stamp of a young man, don't you think?” remarked she.
”He should be able for a good day's work.”
”Yes; he's none of your tobacco-spitting, wizened-up little runts like you'll see hangin' on to the corner-posts in Noonoon.”
”Seems to admire your granddaughter?”
”An' he's not the first by a long way that has done that, though she was only nineteen this month.”
”I can quite believe it. She is a lovely girl.”
”An' more than that, a good one. I've never had one moment's uneasiness with Dawn; she took after me that way. I could let her go out in the world anywhere with no fear of her goin' astray. She's got a fine way with men, friendly and full of life, but let 'em attempt to come an inch farther than she wants, and then see! Sometimes I'm inclined to wish she's be a little more genteeler; but then I look around an' see some of them sleek things, an' it's always them as are no good, an' I'm glad then she's what she is. There's some girls here in town,”--the old lady grew choleric,--”you'd think b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in their mouths, an' they try to sit on Dawn. It's because they're jealous of her, that's what it is. I wouldn't own 'em! They'd run a man into debt and be a curse to him; but there's Dawn, the man that gets her, he'll have a woman that will be of use to him and not just a ornament.”
”He'll have an ornament too.”
”Perhaps so. I've spent a lot of money on her education. She's been taught painting and dancing. I had her down at the Ladies' College in Sydney for two years finis.h.i.+ng, an' she's had more chances of being a lady than most. Some of these things in town here turn up their noses at her an' say, 'She's only old Mrs Clay's granddaughter, who keeps a accommodation house,' but I pay me bills and ain't ashamed to walk up town an' look 'em all in the face.”
”But it's generally those who owe the most who have the most lordly mien.”
”You're right. I could point you out some of them up town as hasn't a s.h.i.+rt to their back, an' they look as they owned everythink--the brazenest things!” The old dame's indignation waxed startling in its intensity.
”But I was going to tell you about young Eweword. I've set me heart on him for Dawn. He's somethink worth lookin' at an' worth havin' too. He knows how to farm and make it pay, an' owns one of the best pieces of land about Noonoon--all his own. Dawn don't seem to take to him as she ought. He was after a girl here in town, a Dora Cowper, an' so she says she ain't goin' to take any leavin's; but he ain't any leavin's, she can be sure of that, for if he'd wanted Dora Cowper they'd have snapped him up, an' I think as long as a young feller don't go making too much of a fool of a girl, a little flirtation's only natural. This has been the mischief with Dawn. There's a lot of people here in the summer from the city, and they're all taken with her, and for everlasting telling her she's wasting her talents here, that she ought to be on the stage. It's a wonder people can't mind their own concerns!” (The old dame grew choleric again.) ”It makes her think what I can give her ain't good enough. It's all very fine in a good comfortable home of her own, with love and protection around her, to think people mean that sort of thing, an' that w'en she walked out in the world they would be anxious to wors.h.i.+p her. Just let her go out an' try, an' she'd find it all moons.h.i.+ne; but w'en I tell her, she only thinks I'm a old pig, an' only she's that stubborn I know she'd never come back. (I would be the same myself w'en young, so can't blame her.) I'd let her have a taste of hards.h.i.+p to bring her to her bearin's. But while I'm alive she'll never have my consent to be a actress. W'en I was young they was looked upon as the lowest hussies.
I'd like to hear what my mother would say if I had wanted to be one--paintin' meself up an' kickin' up me heels and showin' meself before men in the loudest manner!”
I concluded not to divulge my profession while at Clay's, and to boot, I held much the same point of view.
”She thinks she'd like to marry some fine feller and be a toff; an'
she's got this danger that's always the drawback of a girl bein'
pretty, so many fellers come after them at the start they get finnicky an' think they can marry any one, an' leave it too late, an' in the end they marry some rubbis.h.i.+ng feller an' don't came out half so well as the plain ones that was content with a fair thing w'en they had the chance of it. Just the same with a boy; it's a bad thing for them to be able to do everythink, they are so terribly smart they end up by doin' nothink, an' the ploddin' feller they grinned at for bein' a b.o.o.by, because he stuck to the one thing, comes out on top.”
”Just so; want of concentration plucks one every time.”
”That's wot I want to save Dawn from. It's all right while I live, an'
I don't want her to be chuckin' herself at the head of any Tom or d.i.c.k, but I won't live for ever, an' marriage is like everythink else, you want to have your eye on a good thing an' not humbug too much.
W'en I'm gone”--the austere old face softened--”I wouldn't like to think of her I've spent so much money on, an' rared with me own hand, as I did her an' her mother before her, growin' old an' sour an'
lonely, or bein' a slave to some worthless crawler.” The old voice grew perilously soft, and saved itself from a break by a swift crescendo.