“Dalzell does not make so bad a landlord as we expected, particularly as he has not much in his power. The proceeds of the sale are doing good to the sick and afflicted, while we are quite as comfortable without it.”
“I cannot think enough of the Providence that has made good come out of evil,” said Jane. “But with regard to the rappings, Mr. Dempster, the oracular sentences that all would be well in the end, and that Francis should be happy after a time, were of the vaguest description, while on positive matters they were decidedly misinformed.”
“It might have been a lying or mocking spirit,” said Mr. Dempster; “my faith in the truth of these manifestations is not to be shaken by what you say.”
“I wonder if your spirits could tell us if Grant is in for—–, and his majority? The election must have taken place, but no one in the room knows of it; that would be a crucial test, as Jane calls it,” said Brandon.
“In such a company of unbelievers,” said Mr. Dempster, “we could not get up a seance, and what is more, we have no medium.”
“It is well that Grant goes out of his own district,” said Brandon, “for he would not stand a chance there; and now he is promising to those strangers anything and everything. With all Grant’s aristocratic feelings, and his wife’s too, which are still stronger, their desire that he should have a seat in the Assembly, now that McIntyre is in, seems to drag him into as low depths as any one. I cannot see why they should be so anxious about it, unless it is that, since they cannot afford to go home, they want to take as good a position here as any of their neighbours. Grant’s affairs will suffer if he has to be so much in Melbourne, and at best he will make a very fourth-rate legislator.”
“I think he is naturally ‘indifferent honest,'” said Francis. “At least, he is disposed to be honest, but canvassing is very different work here as well as in Britain.”
“You should really get into our Assembly, Frank,” said Brandon, “to give the natives here the benefit of your experience. How great you would be on a point of order or a question of privilege!”
“I wish Francis had time to give to parliamentary duties,” said Jane. “I live in hopes that when Mr. —– returns, he may try his fortune in the political world here. If representative assemblies would limit themselves to what really concerns such bodies, it would not be so heavy a tax upon people in business to give their time to the public; but they will meddle with things that ought to be let alone, and endless floods of talk on such matters take up much valuable time.”
“Then Mr. Hogarth’s public spirit has not been gently smothered by a happy marriage and a fine family of children? That is the modern view of the case,” said Mr. Dempster. “Nothing great is done by married men, unless they are unhappily mated.”
“A most ignoble view of a wife’s duties,” said Jane.
“My wife would never smother any public spirit I may have,” said Francis. “She had too much to do with the birth of it, not to cherish it as fondly as any of her other babies; but I fear that, till my friend Mr. Hare’s scheme is carried, I could not get a majority in Victoria. We want the reform very much here, and in all the colonies; and as yet, it has been failure, failure, failure.”
“And if such men as you do not get in, Frank, it will never be carried. Grant is stupid–thoroughly stupid. I talked to him for four mortal hours on the subject, and made it plain to the meanest capacity, that though we wanted a representation of minorities, the minority in the House would faithfully represent the minority out of doors, and not be able to defeat the majorities, as he was convinced it would do. I put it down in black and white–proved it with figures. Elsie and I made fancy voting-papers, and I acted as returning officer, and showed the thing as clear as day; but though he drank a bottle and a half of sherry during the process, he was just as wise at the end as at the beginning. Now I don’t call myself at all clever, but when Frank explained the method of voting to me, I saw it all in a minute–and you, Tom–did not you, too? but then you are rather a genius.”
“It is as plain as a pikestaff,” said Tom Lowrie.
“Walter thinks, because he has not read very much, that we must think him stupid,” said Elsie, “when he really has the quickest apprehension of all sorts of things.”
“Dr. Grant will, perhaps, take up the meaning of Hare’s scheme when the newspapers have advocated it for years, and it has been familiar to all the people around him,” said Francis, “or he may vote for it without understanding it, when it becomes a popular cry.”
“But to have to stir such a dish of skimmed milk to honourable action!” said Brandon. “Frank, you really must stand for our district. I fancy McIntyre will go home by the time your partner comes back, so we will have a vacancy. I will canvass for you, and so will Edgar. It would be a credit to us to have a real British M.P. as our representative, and then you could push your grand idea, as you intended to have done in England, before love routed ambition. As you say, the result has hitherto been a failure in the colonies, but the contest should not be abandoned.”
“I hear that the movement makes slow progress in Britain,” said Francis, “but still it makes progress. It is too great a change there, and there are so many vested interests which consider such a reform would interfere with their prescriptive rights. On the Continent it makes more way; and, perhaps, as my French friends say, the discovery may be first carried into practice there; but I had hopes of its success in the colonies. There is so much less to disturb here that a change from exclusively local to general elections would not be difficult, if we could only make the idea familiar. All we see in America, all we see in political matters here, only show how much easier it is to reform before abuses go too far. I should very much like to try your district, Brandon, and will be very glad of your services when the time comes; and so I should feel that my work had been postponed, but not altogether given up.”
“If we could carry the measure by a COUP DE MAIN in any one of the colonies, and bring it into working, the whole world would be the better for it,” said Brandon.
“There can be no carrying it by a COUP DE MAIN,” said Francis. “Every inch of the ground must be fought here, as in Britain, but the extent of ground is shorter.”
“I have grown much more patriotic since I was married,” said Brandon. “The place where you have a real home–the birthplace of your children–and where you hope to see them grow up–becomes very dear to you. And here are the youngsters!”
Little Maggie Brandon (so called in compliment to Peggy) seemed to know by intuition that there was something for her in the pocket of the worthy woman, and went to her at once; and the others distributed themselves according to their several likings.
“Well,” said Peggy, “I’ve often thought to ask you before, Mrs. Hogarth, but how are you going to educate your lassies? What are you going to do with them? and you favour lassies in both families–two to one in each of them.”
“Very much as we were educated ourselves,” said Jane; “with more care taken for the cultivation of their natural tastes, but the groundwork will be the same.”
“That education has certainly turned out admirable wives,” said Francis.
“Speak for yourself, Frank,” said Brandon; “but my wife spoils me, and everybody in the house. There is a sad want of vinegar in her composition. She cannot scold her servants–the mildest approach to it that she ever makes is by saying, ‘Mr. Brandon does not like such a thing,’ or that ‘Mr. Brandon would be displeased if they do not attend to such another.’ The idea of making a bugbear of me is very ingenious, but I fear not very efficacious, for I know they see through it. As for me, a penitent recollection of a conversation in an English railway carriage has stopped her mouth for ever, and she never gives me a hard word, however I may deserve it; and for the children, the less we say of them the better.”
“But, Walter, I can keep my servants, and they really do very well; and the children are good enough, and so are you; so there is no need to scold.”
“That is where the dangerous part of this subtle flattery lies; it is so perfectly sincere. But I suppose we get along pretty well, considering, as Mrs. Grant would say; and I really think her household would be more comfortable if she took a leaf out of my wife’s book. Her servants will not stay three months with her, and she has three of the most spoiled, exacting children I ever saw–far worse than their cousins at Wiriwilta were in their worst days. The Phillipses had spirit, but the Grants have none, except perhaps the spirit of discontent. I think we might do worse, Peggy, than educate our girls to resemble their mothers.”
“But,” said Jane, “we must make some provision for them also, if we can. I suppose that I could have got on as well as you, Francis, if I had been a man.”
“Yes, there is nothing I have done that you could not have done as well. I have as much perseverance as you, but not so much energy. It is likely you would have made a better figure in the world than I have done.”
“But I could get nothing to do but to take a governess’s situation; and wonderfully lucky I was to get it. Mary Forrester is a much better governess for Mr. Phillips’s family than I was. Elsie could only maintain herself as a milliner or as a lady’s maid; and yet Elsie, placed as a clerk or bookkeeper in a bank or merchant’s office, would have filled the situation as satisfactorily as half the young men I know.”
“Then you have not quite given up your notions of woman’s rights?” said Mr. Dempster. “For my part, I think the best right a woman has is the right to a husband.”
“That is a right she cannot assert for herself,” said Jane, smiling. “One would think, to hear people talk on this subject, that the entreaties for work and independence come from those who in their youth disdained faithful lovers, and perversely and unnaturally refused to love, honour, and obey. I think, on the contrary, that the women of our century are only too easily won, and cannot be charged with any unnecessary cruelty to lovers. I do not think that you increase the number of happy marriages or lessen the number of mercenary unions by making the task for a single woman to maintain herself honestly and usefully such very uphill work.”