THE two lads had been to Sydney before as holiday visitors, but to actually live there, to depend for their future on what the city might offer, was a new, and at first, delightful experience. Huey did not own to himself that he was following in Bertha’s footsteps. He satisfied his mind that he was only acting from the wise desire to better his prospects and enlarge his opportunities. As the time came that saw them at last alighting on Redfern platform, his ambition had soared into wild dreams of what the metropolis might hold out. Why should he not be sub-editor of one of the important dailies? Or editor, perhaps, of some minor paper? What the Professor had said about his capabilities was, no doubt, exaggerated; but he felt there was a substratum of truth. Once let him get his foot on the ladder, as high of course as possible to start with, and he felt all the power to climb to the top. Parliament and the Ministerial bench all shone before him in a dim vista of future greatness. He had perhaps too much common-sense to take those dreams quite seriously, yet there was pleasure in the nursing of them and Youth and Hope sat by to fool him.
Alec, in his own more stolid, matter-of-fact way, had his dreams too. A well-paid billet, with little to do but drive about in a buggy and have unlimited drinks at the wayside pubs, was nearly his ideal, if put in words. He was not brought to Sydney in a hope to renew the sight of Bertha; he did not know she had gone there; for Huey, with an instinctive jealousy, had not told him.
The sight of this girl had acted on him as a species of revelation that the good things of life were not confined to a timber-getter on Pitt Town Common. That in fact much that was desirable, this girl, for instance, was, for a firewood-getter, hopelessly cut off. So he had thrown down his tools, careless of his father’s displeasure, and taken the train with Huey.
To an arrival from the country George Street, Sydney, is an everlasting wonder and delight. The throng of passengers and vehicles all rushing along, the multitude of strange faces, and smartly dressed shop-windows, causes him to wander up and down, with mouth half open and staring eyes, devouring, as it were, the scene before him. Huey and Alec were not quite new chums to the city, and passed successfully the numerous door men on Brickfield Hill, who, perhaps attracted by their tanned faces, or the country clothes, or some other sign that their dog-like instinct finds in the Bushman, solicited their patronage on terms the most pressing.
It was only after their second day, when they had first made inquiries in the direction of their hopes, that those hopes became more shadowy and indistinct.
Huey found no possible opening for a sub-editor who was not qualified by previous experience in the same kind of work.
Alec, who had pitched on the occupation of brewer’s traveller as his ideal, at least to commence with, found on the most casual inquiry that not only experience, but influence, was required to secure the billet. He was, however, consoled for the loss, for a time, by a visit he paid casually to a horse sale-yard, where the heavy gold watch-chain and imposing air of the auctioneer took his fancy. He would be a horse salesman at all costs. He invited an habitué of the yard to take a drink, hoping to get some useful information.
He did.
“You understand horses—perhaps you know a good beast when you see one?”
“I should think I did; and a bad one, too.”
“That’s just it; you know the bad points about a horse. Now, an auctioneer doesn’t; he just sees in every animal ‘The finest beast that ever came into this yard!’ And you think, I suppose, he just has to stand there and take bids, and knock it down to the highest bidder?”
“Well, I should think so.”
“You are a soft one, and no mistake. Where did you come from? Damper must be cheap in your part. Why, you mug, the auctioneer just bids himself, and keeps her going if he sees a mug about, and then runs him as far as he thinks he will go before he knocks him down. Now, could you run a mug and not be caught ‘on the rocks’?”
Alec had to own to himself that at present that prospect was closed to him.
On the third day, ambition having cooled, they tried for more humble posts, Huey as reporter and Alec as ’bus driver, but here also they found the door closed on them.
By the end of the week their ardour had so cooled that Huey was hunting round job offices for a place as printer’s devil, and Alec found the dignity of driving a tip-dray one to be desired. But they found even in these humble walks those more qualified than themselves before them. So they spent a great part of the day walking about the Domain or sitting on the seats, resting after their tramps for work. They did not tell each other much of their experience after the first day or so. Their day’s fortune on a re-meeting was all summed up in the mutual ejaculation—
“No luck!”
“No luck!”
Taken up with their own cares, the two friends had, these last few days, paid little heed to those about them, yet more than once they had noticed a rather stout old gentleman, clean-shaved, white-haired, with a babyish, chubby face, like a cherubim gone to seed, with a pair of big blue eyes that looked wonderingly about. There was generally a cluster of children about him, whom he incited to foot races, long jumps, and other sports, he himself seeming more gay and childish than all the rest. One morning two of these small boys began fighting, and, to the surprise of the young men, the old gentleman, far from interfering, was urging them on, with eager instructions as to how to hold their fists and strike their blows. Huey went forward to interfere. Alec, for his part, thought the sport rather interesting than otherwise. But the old gentleman pulled Huey up by exclaiming—
“Let the young roosters have it out; it makes them game! Watch the little fellow—he is trying the La Blanche I taught him yesterday!”
The bigger boy now retreated, howling, with a bleeding nose, but the old gentleman sent a threepenny-piece after him by another boy, and in like manner rewarded the victor. The children then left in a bee-line for the main entrance gate, probably, as the old gentleman suggested, “To blue their swag.”
So it came about that they all fell talking together, and in course of conversation the old gentleman learned some of the young men’s experiences.
“So you have come to Sydney to make your fortunes, my boys? Nothing like it; I admire pluck. But how are you going about it? Making fortunes wants understanding, like everything else. You want to know the ropes, and if you don’t get on the right track soon, you waste all your time, and perhaps never find it at all.”
“Well, can you tell us the ropes?” interjected Alec.
“That is as it may be. I don’t give all my experience away to the first comer just for the asking. Let us hear what your ideas are of making a fortune first.”
“Well,” said Huey, “I believe in getting into some firm, the bigger the better, and by steady industry and making myself useful, working my way up to the highest position—early to bed, early to rise, a penny saved is a penny got, and all that sort of thing.”
“No good,” was the laconic comment of the old gentleman. “Those sentiments might have been all right a hundred years ago, but they are not up to date. Honest Integrity, when he has been in a firm long enough, say all the best years of his life, gets promoted by getting the sack, because his salary looks too big, and they can get a younger man to do his work for half the money. As for the ‘early to bed’ racket, I never knew any one but labourers and poor devils who could not help it that stuck to that game. And the ‘penny saved’ is no better; you have not got the value of that penny till you have eaten it, or spent it in some other pleasing fashion. A penny saved and put of course, in a bank that goes bung is a mug’s game. Why, all this kind of foolishness you are talking is the ruin of hundreds of promising lads; and it’s just unlearning it all and reading it the other way about that is called experience.”
“But you don’t mean to say,” urged Huey, “that honesty is not the best policy?”
“Oh, no,” said the old gentleman, “honesty is a good line, particularly for a cashier or a trustee. Be as honest as the day, you gain confidence; and then sooner or later you can clear to America with a good swag. Yes, honesty is a paying game, properly conducted.”
Hubert smiled aside to Alec. The old gentleman was either wrong in his head or was trying to take a rise out of them.
“I don’t suppose you know who I am,” continued the old gentleman. “I am called Soft Sam, or Old Sam, and I have put more successful men on the right track than any other man in Sydney. Men as green as you are, some of them; now owning houses there” (pointing to Macquarie Street) “and stores there” (pointing to Circular Quay).
“And do all the chaps you help do well?” inquired Alec.
“No, they don’t; and I’ll tell you why. After getting along all right with the start I give them they get so cocky, they think they are too clever to come to me again, and sooner or later they make a hash of it. There are several of them over there” (jerking his thumb towards Darlinghurst); “but it’s all their own foolishness, and thinking they could run before they could walk. But this is dry work talking; let us go and have a wet.”
They went towards the gate, the young men wondering what kind of a man this Soft Sam might be. Presently the old man spoke again—
“Bless me!” and he clapped his hands in both his pockets. “I have not got a copper on me!”
“Ah, now we are coming to it,” thought Huey; “he will want to borrow money.”
But Soft Sam did nothing of the kind.
“Come along, boys, it’s all right. I’ll meet one of my lads before we have gone far.”
Even as he spoke a flash sulky, with a fast-trotting pony, driven by a superfine young swell, was dashing past. Old Sam put up his hand, and the vehicle stopped. He stepped forward, and this is what the young men heard—
“Give us a quid, Johnny.”
“A fiver if you like, Sam.”
“No, a quid will do.”
A pocket-book was brought out, the paper handed over, and with a mutual nod the sulky disappeared round the corner.
“A friend of yours?” inquired Huey.
“One of my pupils.”
“Then you are a kind of professor?”
“Well, I never went in for any fine name like that. I just show the ropes to young fellows as I think will benefit, and when I want a pound I just ask the first one handy.”
“But I suppose you will have a lot of money of your own?”
“Not a penny in the world. What do I want money for? It is all very well for young fellows like you, but I would not be bothered with more than I can put in my waistcoat pocket. I tried it once, but mates were always borrowing it, or worrying me to give or lend it, so I got clear of the lot, and a good job too.”
Soft Sam was now accosted by a man who crossed the street to speak to him, and Alec heard him whisper—
“Lend us a quid, Sam; I’ve got a mug!”
As though it was a matter of course, the hand of the old man went to his pocket, and the note so recently put there changed hands once more. With this the stranger hurried away and joined another.
“Now you see what it is to have money,” said Old Sam. “Now, that Jackson is no better than a fool, and I will wager he is trying to work the confidence trick on that new chum he is with. I told him times enough it is not in his line, but he is one of the clever ones, thinks he knows everything.”
The party had turned into George Street. Soft Sam pulled up before a draper’s window, flaming with posters, announcing “A Great Fire Sale.”
“My idea,” he said, pointing to the placards. “A month ago, Smallway was nearly a broker. He came to me. I told him to make a fire in his back-yard, call out the Brigade, and give a reporter a fiver to make half a column of it. Since then he has been coining money.”
“How is that?” said Huey. “I don’t see where the profit comes in.”
“Damaged goods, of course. The public will pay fifty per cent. more for smoky, soiled calico than they will for new. Why, he has got one man and three boys dipping rolls of goods in dirty water in the back-yard all the time. It is a little gold-mine while it lasts. I may as well go in and get a quid off him as any one else.”
So saying, the old man stepped into the shop, which was crammed with eager buyers, and in a little time sallied forth with a note in his hand.
“Would not give me less than a fiver. Said he owed me a hundred times as much. Now, that’s the sort of man I like—a man who knows where his success comes from, and does not gammon it is all his own cleverness. Come along, lads, and I’ll show you the finest sight and the finest girl in Sydney. Here we are; they call it the Golden Bar.”