XVI. The Boarding House

“His years were young, but his experience old.”

Shakespeare.

What a strange world in miniature a boarding house presents!

A world where dissimilar beings lacking the ties of friendship, education and intellect are united by circumstances in the trammels of a common existence. How utterly antipathetic is such a life to our French nature, to the intense reserve hidden under our frank and cordial manners which guard sacredly and invulnerably the “Famille Française,” modern novels and plays to the contrary. If we have not the actual word “home” in our vocabulary—a favourite gibe of our foreign friends—we have a more intimate term still, “le Foyer,” the hearth, which suggests the primitive cult, the fire worship of our ancestors—the foyer, which no one outside the family might touch.

Maybe that is the cause of our secret irritation and impatience when an acquaintance takes it upon himself to poke our fire. To us it seems presumption, an abuse of hospitality, to say nothing of the ingrained belief that no one but ourselves can make it blaze.

But this is a digression.

Let us return to the boarding house, our poor third-rate boarding house, with its inmates in respectfully appropriate keeping.

First, there are the permanent boarders, among whom I have no specially delirious desire to be counted. A commercial traveller in a softgoods firm, who affects “genteel” manners. (What a horrid expression, genteel!) In other respects, a decent enough young man whose attentions don’t annoy me too much. Already he has reposed certain sweet confidences in my ear, so that I shall not indulge in any false hopes as to his intentions, I presume.

He has been engaged for eight years!—eight years!—to a shop assistant, and they wait patiently and persistently until they have put by enough money to purchase a country store.

Every Saturday afternoon off they start for a township on a tour of inspection. Saturday succeeds Saturday; the years come and go in this life of long-deferred hopes.

Then there is, alas! a school mistress, no longer in the first bloom of her youth. Shall I ever, in the years to come, grow like her? Every morning she trudges to her little school. For years her life has been passed in teaching the rudiments of arithmetic and grammar. Apparently she possesses neither relatives nor intimate friends. All her energies, apart from her teaching, are directed towards religion and divers reforms. She belongs to several Guilds—the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Women’s League, the Social Purity and Temperance Leagues, etc., etc. Withal she is a kind-hearted, good woman, despite her many perfections of character, and does not utterly wither me when I decline to accompany her to “Meeting” on Sunday. All her spare time is taken up with committee work for the regeneration of feminine humanity. She doesn’t concern herself with the strong sex. That may sink into the perdition it so richly merits. She has, of course, no time for a simple unit like me.

Another inmate is an old German employé in a lighting establishment, whether gas or electricity I know not. He appears at meals only on Sundays.

There are casual visitors, too, racing people mostly, but we scarcely see anything of them. The house is full, to the supreme exultation of Mrs. Johnson, the sour-visaged virago whose stony glare fixes us if we dare take more than our wee modicum of butter or sugar.

The sole ambition of her life is to get money. For what? Good heavens! Not for her dress, which is austere beyond description. Not for the benefit of her poor little son, whose life is a daily martyrdom. To save and pinch and scrape, she does all the work of the house herself, with the assistance of a little girl of fourteen, who waits at table. Her son cleans the boots and runs errands.

Rising before daybreak, she does the dining-room and the parlor, a horrid, stuffy room decorated with a horsehair suite, a round table surmounted by a monstrosity having the temerity to style itself wax flowers, glaring, shiny surfaced “chromos” on the walls, and a yellowish carpet on the floor. But the crowning horror is reached in the woollen and cotton crochet antimacassars—a name as horrible as the articles themselves.

Billy Johnson is a small boy of twelve or thirteen. Ugly!—oh, so ugly—one is irresistibly reminded of the Simian theory. A veritable monkey, with elongated face, piercing, crafty eyes set close together, large ears, a flat nose and facial muscles never still for a moment. For the rest, a mischievous, inquisitive, ’cute young rascal, who knows everybody and everything. As soon as a newcomer is installed, the “little monkey,” an apt nickname bestowed by the boarders, does not rest until he has ferreted out all there is to know. Up to the present I have succeeded in baffling him. But he is not at all discouraged. My only fear is that he may rummage my trunks and read my letters. Well, let him! there is no mystery in my simple life, though I should not like it bared to the gaze of the indifferent.

Billy, it seems, has taken a great liking to me, firstly because of the pity in my eyes when his mother ill-treats him, and secondly because I am French.

Not, indeed, that he loves the French. To him all foreigners are inferior beings whom it behoves a little Australian to despise, but because being French I must share his detestation of all “Deutschers.” The German boarder is his “bête noire,” the only being in the world who inspires him with terror. The German Invasion is the bugbear which causes him sleepless nights.

What tricks he plays on the inoffensive old man, who cannot be other than a “Prussian spy!” He confides his dire suspicions to my ears and the means whereby his plots may be circumvented.

My evenings are dull, so I am giving him lessons in French. He is very elated at his progress.

This morning everything is quiet in the house, the inmates are presumably at Church. Mrs. Johnson is in the kitchen preparing the Sunday dinner, the only meal at which we are allowed to satisfy our hunger.

I open my trunks to get some books and photographs to make my room look less forlorn. The casket containing the necklace is among my treasures. I have never worn it since the night of my betrothal. It recalls too many painful and passionate memories. I love their pure milky beauty even while I fear the strange influence of the pearls. As I touch them caressingly, the door half-opens and Bill’s touzled head frames itself in the aperture. There is no sanctuary from Bill, no spot sacred from his inquisitiveness. Catching sight of my open trunk, he enters, regardless of my remonstrances, pulling such a droll grimace that I have not the heart to put him outside.

“Oh, what boshter pearls, my word! They look like the real thing!”

“They are real pearls,” I reply, thoughtlessly, without reflecting on the anomaly of such a necklace being in the possession of one of his mother’s boarders.

“My word! Real pearls, eh!” exclaims Bill, putting unimaginable expression into his favourite exclamation, varying intonations of which depict faithfully the state of his mind.

“Yes, it’s the real thing, and no mistake.”

The “Little Monkey” is fancying himself a connoisseur in pearls as in everything else.

“Hide it well, miss; if mum sees it she’d twist your neck to get hold of it.”

“Oh, Bill! How can you speak like that of your mother?”

“It’s the truth, Miss,” nodding his head sapiently. “’Taint her fault, poor mum; she loves money like some loves drink. She’d risk her life (he says ‘loife’) for the money she’d get for them pearls. As for yours, she wouldn’t think twice about it.” Bill is right. I have surprised glints of almost criminal covetousness in her eyes when a boarder has worn a bit of jewellery.

However, on principle, I continue to scold Bill, who looks cautiously around, opens the door, winks in a knowing fashion, and placing his finger on his lips, murmurs dramatically,

“Hist! Hide the treasure! Silence and secrecy!”

The idea is worth acting upon. It would be safer to wear the necklace under my dress than leave it in my trunk.

I have had a troubled night, dream chasing dream through my restless brain, leaving only a chaotic jumble of impressions. Am I to ascribe it to the thoughts of yesterday, or to the influence of the pearls around my neck?

Allan Russell seemed to dominate them all, sometimes as he appeared the night of the ball, sometimes as the Rajah of India, and yet again assuming a personality of times more remote. Only one of these visions detached itself clearly. Two men, rough and ferocious in aspect, were fighting savagely. In the heat of the struggle the red hair tied on the top of their heads was tossed back mane-like on their shoulders. They hurled imprecations at each other in a sort of wild chant. I heard the clashing of their short swords. I seemed to contemplate the scene with a dull, apathetic gaze. Finally one was killed. The victor, advancing, cut the thongs which bound me and bore me off in his brawny arms.

The blue eyes plunged into mine were those of Allan Russell, the colouring was changed, that is all. The features were those of a Gael instead of the Rajah or the Australian squatter, but the same soul animated all three, the violent and passionate soul of the man who in my dreams pursues me with a love which one life could not quench.

I have just received a letter from old Meg, full of particulars about my Gwylata friends. Daisy’s father is retained as manager, the new proprietor wishing to profit by his experience.

Meg and Mac have left the station.

“I could not stand,” writes Meg, “seeing a silly little thing like her (it is thus she sums up the wife of the new squatter) flaunting about in my dear mistress’s home. We are living at Wellington. Mac has bought a boat with part of the money you gave us, and Bahloo has become a fine fisherman.”

Atavism, I suppose; all the Blacks love the water; not to the extent, though, of desiring to wash in it. Bahloo used to say, with a certain amount of reason, that it is only dirty people who want to wash; the others, being clean, need not.

Meg, however, was quite deaf to the ingenious line of reasoning, and the little man, despite his tearful protests, was scrubbed daily from head to foot.

“I’m not going to give anyone the chance of calling you ‘a dirty little nigger,’” Meg used to say. It was the only bone of contention between them.

“Mac lets his boat on hire every Saturday,” the letter continues. “Dick and Daisy, now married, often go for a row.”

I let the letter fall. My thoughts revert to that day we spent on the river, the two lovers and myself. They, all in all to each other, I glad and sorry to have avoided Allan Russell. Where is he now? In Europe? Perhaps he is here in Melbourne, where Mrs. Clarke told me he has a house. I live such an isolated life, reading no newspaper, knowing nothing of the whirl of society life, except through the echoes which reach me at the house of Mrs. Forest, who herself lives on its frontiers, as well defined here as in the West End of London or the Old Faubourg St. Germain. The standard is different, rather lower, but the threshold is equally difficult to cross. Mrs. Forest is a “Climber,” one who will arrive at the top by dint of much toadying, but the set to which she belongs has only the vices of the “Smart Set.” The women composing it are always in a whirl, running from a luncheon to a bridge party, from a matinée to a sale, where their frivolous minds exhaust all their energy.

My little pupils, Sylvia and Gladys, are not bad children now, but will they grow up empty headed like their elders, gauging life only by its opportunities for wearing pretty dresses, having a good time, and spending the money their husbands get by every means—even honest ones.

The sovereign power of Mammon is already inculcated in these mites of five and seven years. They ask the price of everything given to them. The other day, Sylvia, who had just received a gold thimble as a reward for her first hem, proceeded immediately to weigh it on the letter balance in order to find out its exact value. What will become of these children 15 or 20 years hence, with hearts as dry and withered as that of their mother, who under her elegant exterior, hides a Shylockian soul ever demanding its pound of flesh?

“Show me your grands airs,” demands Sylvia, one morning.

“What do you mean, Chérie?”

“Oh, Mamma said for all your ‘grands airs’ she didn’t pay you half as much as Bessy the cook. I would so like to see them.”

I kiss the innocent, telling her that the “grands airs” are the protection of those who wish to keep their dignity. This leads to a long discussion on the word “dignity.” The children adore long words. Their precocious Australian intelligence grasps the meaning of words without difficulty. If I could only take them away from this “milieu” of parade and appraisement where the meaner instincts of their little souls could not be further excited! The evil is not great yet, but a few hours daily is not sufficient to neutralise it.

I take up Meg’s letter again. My thoughts have wandered sadly.

She finishes by telling me how comfortably they are able to live with the proceeds from the fishing, the boat and the little orchard around the cottage. She invites me diffidently, but I know how sincerely, to stay with them a little while. “You will really be in your own house, Miss Joan; we know quite well it was your money that bought it and that the lawyer advised you to keep it yourself.” Mac sends his respects to Miss Mam’selle in a postscript. How it brings back the past! Mac has taken the pledge, and has joined the Temperance Society. Bahloo would like to send me the big fish he caught before Meg sat down to write, and is quite unhappy when he is told that it won’t stand the journey. So he has to content himself with making a superb drawing of it on the margin of the letter. Kind souls! Let them enjoy the few hundreds I gave them. It means abundance for them, the security of their old age. If things come to the worst, if I can no longer support the awful monotony of my life, I have my aunt’s pearls—the black one I will keep always. Is it not an heirloom? And then—then—does it not open to me the ivory gate—the gate of beautiful dreams?