CHAPTER XV
THE PARRAMATTA RIVER
RUBY and Florence, of the Golden Bar, were as pleased as a dog who has found a bone when they overheard Bertha promise a middle-aged, benevolent-looking gentleman, who was a casual frequenter of the house, to go out with him the next day in a boat on the Parramatta River. The next day was Bertha’s day off.
“Well, I never! As though she could not find some one better than that to spark her about! She has got a funny taste, certainly! Some of the boys will be surprised to hear of it!” said Ruby.
“Why, I believe he is only a poor devil of a phrenologist; keeps an office in a back street near George Street—a sort of crank, that has not got a pound to bless himself with!” added Florrie.
“Is that what he is? I thought he was not up to much. Always a small English beer, and never shouts for a soul. What Bertha can see in him I can’t tell. Now you mark my words, with all her cleverness and airs and graces, she will go and make a fool of herself with some poor wretch who has to work for his living!”
And so the two went on, licking this little bone of scandal from all possible points.
On the next day a small rowing boat was well off Cockatoo Island before the lug-sail that had so far been hoisted was taken down, and Professor Norris took up the sculls, Bertha, the old companion of his travels, steering in the stern.
“And how is your book getting on, Pro—the book that was to do so much?”
“I had to send it to London; there is not demand enough out here, they told me, for that kind of work, to make its publication profitable. I dare say they are right, so I sent it on to London; but that takes time, and I have had no answer yet.”
“I’m afraid you will never be a rich man, Pro.”
“I’m not afraid, I’m sure of it, unless an unforeseen accident should put it in my way. I will not pay the price. And he who will not pay cannot expect to have.”
“What price do you mean?”
“I will not sell my soul for the wealth of this life. Hard work will not get it, industry will not get it—nothing but the subjection of the whole mind and intelligence to money-grubbing, to besting your competitors, to out-lying your fellow-liars, to taking every advantage that the credulity or ignorance of your fellow-creatures may give you, and a remorseless selfishness—that is the price for the lottery ticket of life, which even then has more blanks than prizes.”
“And do you always mean to be poor, then?” said Bertha, not much surprised at the Professor’s statement, for she had heard him in the same strain before.
“Yes, poverty in cash will be mine, and I am coming day by day to think more and more that it is better so. The truth is not to be learned or kept in a mind from which the howling wolf of necessity is not present to sound for ever the cry of anguish, pain, and affliction. Not from a spring mattress but the hard ground man rises with his eyes widely opened to the true realities of life. But it is not about myself I wish to speak, but you, Bertha. You have had your wish. You are in Sydney, surrounded day after day by a crowd of admirers. Is it what your fancy painted it?”
“No, Pro, I can’t say it is. I am getting sick of it, in spite of the fine dresses and the fine place. I always feel ashamed of myself when you come in the bar. Other men are not like you. Oh, how I wish I was rich!”
“And what then, Bertha?”
“Why the Golden Bar might take care of itself. I would travel to Europe and see London and Paris—above all, Paris! It’s all very well for you, a man who has seen all you care to see, to not mind being poor, but with a woman it is different. A new suit does not trouble you. If you look an old fright nobody notices it; and even if you live in a pokey little house you do not have to clean it, cook the meals in it, and do your own washing in the dirty little back yard. The world is full of beautiful things, nice things, and I want to have my share. What is the good of being so virtuous in a hurry? Why be too good, and better than other people? It makes you look peculiar and odd, and they don’t like it. If the world’s all wrong, then I will be wrong too; at any rate, I shall have plenty of company. Of course there’s a medium in all things. I don’t say it’s right to do what is wicked to get money. Still money will do so much, smooth so much, that it seems to me just foolishness to say I don’t want it.”
The boat glided on over the rippling water, past the low shores of Drummoyne, past the terraced hills of Hunter’s Hill, with its houses half hidden by creepers, its lawns overshadowed by the green foliaged garden trees, on, till the wide stretch of water came that led to The Brothers.
An Italian sky overhead, a warm lusciousness in the air, and with it all only the splash of the green water against the rocky banks, and the measured beat of the sculls in the rowlocks, as they kept a gentle time.
The Professor spoke again—
“I know I cannot make you see as I see, my dear. Perhaps it is best. We have all to learn the use of our own eyes, and no strange spectacles will help us. Yet there are things which I think you can see, and one is the degradation of a great number of the frequenters of the Golden Bar. I have not been often, or stopped long, for the sight and sound of most of these men was repulsive to me. Hear what they say, what they talk about, think about. Is it not betting? or perhaps sharping, for what other name will describe the effort to obtain what you have not earned? And their faces, in spite of their fine clothes, show their lives—the puffy cheek of wrong living, the thick, drooping eyelids of sensuality and cunning, the projecting faces that look out from their shirt collars like an animal waiting to spring on its prey.
“All these and fifty other signs are stamped on the crowd. And it is not as if they were always so. They were, no doubt, as other men till they associated themselves together to hunt with the devil. I noticed particularly that young fellow, Gosper, we first saw in Windsor, and I had a talk with him yesterday. A few months only have changed the man. There is a talent fit for the highest work cast in the mud. With no aim now but self-interest, self-gratification, to get money, to circumvent fools—that is, his fellow-creatures-to outsharp the sharper. He could not understand, as I wish you to do, that Innocence itself cannot mix with muck and remain unspotted.
“We are, and more particularly a woman, largely formed by those about us. Every low word and brutal jest in that place makes its record on you, even though it only dulls your sense of decency. You learn to respect yourself less. Is it not so, Bertha?”
Bertha had tears in her eyes.
“You are right, Pro, you are always right. I will leave the horrid place at once, or at least very shortly, for I have to give three months’ notice. I have felt what you said lots of times, though I never thought out just what it was. They are a low lot, and that’s the truth—the men that come to the bar. They say things there before me they would not dare to say to their sisters, and that shows what they really think of me in spite of all their compliments. Yes, Pro, I’ll give notice to-night, and if the worst comes to the worst we can go on the road again.”