Читать книгу Sailor and beachcomber - A. Safroni-Middleton - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Stranded in Brisbane—I look for a Shop—Meet typical House Agent—The Vanity of Youth—I stock my Shop—Alone in the Bush—House Agent calls for Agreement Money and the Rent—I do a Moonlight Flit

As I have previously told you, all I am writing is the truth, so I must tell you that I never saw the Captain’s daughter again, but in my chest of old letters and unaccepted manuscripts I still keep her little notes, dropped near me on the deck of the ship that took me to Australia.

The atmosphere of a new world sparkled in my head as I stood in the old colonial town of Brisbane. It was a sweltering hot night, and as I stood by the river and gazed up the gas-lamp-lit streets, watching the passing Australian girls in many-coloured attires and the colonial “corn-stalks” in big hats slouching about, I felt a tremendous loneliness come over me, a strange homesick longing crept and crept, and from my heart to my eyes a mist arose. I have had many homesick breakdowns in my time, but never one as deep and sincere as I experienced standing there alone in that strange country. I was not yet fifteen years of age, and the thought of my being absolutely dependent on my own exertions was naturally a big oppression to a boy of my inexperience. I was tall for my age and looked two or three years older than I was. A good comrade by my side at that moment would have been untold wealth to me. Under a lamp-post I counted my money. I had just three pounds ten shillings! That night I slept in a little low lodging-house by North Quay. With daylight and a good breakfast my courage returned and I sat up in bed and played several old operatic airs on my violin. A week after I pawned it for three pounds.

I had made no friends. My money was going. I knew that I must get a job or meet disaster. The idea of starting work was most distasteful to me, and yet what was I to do? Walking along Queen Street one night I stood by a tea shop. I gazed at the window. My old school-chum’s father was a tea merchant and I had helped them to blend the teas in England, and as I stood there thinking, the thought suddenly occurred to me that I would start a shop and be a tea merchant.

The next day I tramped my legs off looking for a likely shop. I found the rents too high and moreover I had no references and the agents gazed suspiciously at my cheese-cutter hat. I at once bought a large big-rimmed straw hat in a second-hand shop, and on the advice of a more sympathetic agent than the rest I made for the outskirts of Brisbane. Here and there on the scrub-covered slopes were scattered wooden houses raised on posts. Upon a post board just off the main track I saw written “Jonathan Bayly, House Agent.” Taking my handkerchief out I carefully dusted my boots, wiped the sweat from my sunburnt face, walked into the little office room, and there came face to face with the gentleman whose name appeared on the board outside. I did not like the look of him at all. He had a long goat-like face and grew pointed whiskers on the chin only.

“Are you the House and Shop Agent?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said as he eyed me attentively.

“Oh,” I said, “I am looking out for a small shop which would be suitable for a tea shop.”

I had observed business men in London put on important voices and cough in an affluent way, and as he once more eyed me I made a bold effort, placed my hand in an affected way to my mouth and coughed in two little important jerks, swayed slightly on one leg and gazed round his office.

In a moment his manner changed. I had impressed him with the sense of my own assumed importance, and to clinch the coming deal, I dropped my remaining three sovereigns on the floor, picking them up carelessly as though they were buttons.

I have travelled the world over since, made deals with moneyed men, bought gold claims worth thousands of pounds, which I sold for a dollar—and glad to get it!—and done many more strange and unfortunate things in my time, but never since did I so completely gull a human being as I did that old colonial house agent—but nevertheless he did me also.

Taking down his big white helmet hat from a solitary peg, he placed it carefully over the three remaining hairs of his cranium, and bowed me out of the door to view the proposed shop. Walking off the main track he led me across the bush, and after walking for about one hour, he apologised for the distance and the solitary bush surroundings, telling me that the shop I was about to view was in an excellent position, inasmuch as it was in the centre of a proposed Township, and indeed when at last I stood by its little shanty-like front door I inwardly realised that it needed a good deal of apology on its behalf. A small broken-down shanty was the only other habitation in view for miles! The description of this shop’s position would sound like a silly attempt to be humorous. I only wish it were, for I took that shop! I listened to that old Agent’s palaver; I was only a boy and I had some dim idea in my head that gold-miners and bushrangers passed by it at regular intervals, and when he waved his arms about and pointed out the proposed spot for the Church, the Bank and the main streets, I choked down my misgivings and clinched the bargain. I took the place on a “seven years’ agreement with the option of a renewal of fourteen more years at the expiration of the aforesaid term.” Of course, all this long lease was proposed by the old Agent. I knew no more about agreements and expirations of leases than a baby, but as I signed the long important-looking document in his office that same afternoon, I carefully read it through and through as though I were taking my ninety-fifth shop, and did not intend to be taken in as I had been taken in before! Well, I signed it.

Next day I obtained the key and went into Brisbane, bought a pair of scales, some paper bags, a bottle of ink, a pen and one chest of cheap tea—I think it was fourpence a pound by the thirty-six-pound chest. I also got the manager of the wholesale department to send me ninety-five empty chests for show purposes. I was full of business. I kept thinking of my old father’s advice to my elder brothers when he said, “My sons, do not go in for professions, nothing succeeds like business; sell and trade in something that the world must have. Who wants poets, musicians and authors?—with their men and women made of moonrise!” And well was he able to speak on the subject, since he had reared a large family up by his pen, which is in no wise mightier than the sword in many cases, excepting when you sit concocting letters to your immediate creditors for kind consideration and more time before you pay up!

Well, I will proceed and tell you all about that shop, and you must remember that it is only a very minor detail in the story of my experiences to follow, as I slowly but deliberately unfold my travels and troubles, my love affairs and losses in Australia and the South Sea Islands.

Oh, the vanity and pride of youth! As I turned the key of my shop door and entered beyond the portals, placing carefully on the floor my parcel, which contained a cup and saucer, a small oil lamp and the few absolutely necessary things to sustain a decent domestic life, a thrill of extreme pride went through me. I gazed around the spacious room, my hands were itching to get hold of the ninety-five empty tea-chests and place them in commercial rows in the two large shop windows that gazed at the sunset like two mammoth glass eyes of melancholy and fate-like loneliness across the silent Australian Bush. Behind lay my back garden which also extended to the skyline!

I took a stroll around, and you can imagine my delight as I stumbled across some foundations already half dug out, which no doubt were for the future homesteads of the coming Township! They looked pretty old and I noticed that a young gum-tree had grown to a considerable height in one of them, but I did not stop to criticise; time, growth of gums and Townships were outside my experiences of life. I simply lent my imagination to the future scenery and saw myself a prosperous tea merchant; around me rose in the dreamy rays of the dying sunset the grey terraces of splendid villas; I heard the hum of human voices, the laughter of the bush children romping on the streets-to-be of that Unbuilt Township. Like a grey old pioneer of the desert, uncharted on the map of civilisation, stood my shop, and I the proud landlord, stroking the first sprout of down on my upper lip, gazed innocently around, and wondered what my kind old father would think of my first business move up the steps into the portals of the grim commercial world. I felt considerably bucked up at the splendid outlook, I even felt a tenderness springing up in my heart for that old Agent. He had patted me on the shoulder too, and told me that I was a plucky young chap with real business ability in my head!

Next morning, standing under my piazza, I spied a large carrier van rapidly moving across the thin track that divided the immense grey slopes of the outstretching country. It was my ninety-five empty tea-chests and one full one approaching me! The old colonial carrier grinned from ear to ear as he dumped the lot in my shop, smelt my sixpence twice, and placing it in his pocket, drove away leaving me once more alone in the vast solitudes.

Profiting by my memories of a tea shop in the Old Kent Road, I at once set to work and wrote on white cards, “Genuine Pekoe Ceylon Tea, 2/ per pound,” and underneath, in very bold letters, “The cup that cheers but does not inebriate.” Of course, in those days I knew nothing whatever of the Australian Bushman’s temperament; had I done so I should, of course, have written, “The cup that inebriates and cheers!”

Ah, how I remember my pride as I stood on the slope and gazed at my solitary shop window. Sunset was once more sinking into its saffron sea out westward, and sent over the hills a dying beam that touched as though with tenderness those words, written in big chalk letters over the doorway of my shop, “Middleton & Co., Tea Merchants.” As I gazed up at it I climbed once more on the old tub and added this after-thought, “late of London,” and the sunbeam died away as my eyes instinctively turned westward. I knew that that same sun was stealing round the world and those beams would steal likewise over the lattice windows of my sleeping parents, my brothers and my sisters, all dreaming and snoring in velvet comfort, and I wondered if they dreamed of me, and whether their wildest dreams could picture my shop and my heroic ignorance as the shadow of the Australian night crept over me and the parrots stirred in the leafy gums, and the innumerable frogs and locusts in the swamps hard by chanted a fit accompaniment to my retrospective dreams.

I tell you, I felt pretty lonely in that old place. I would stand at the shop door and watch the fleets of parrots and magpies sail away into the sunset, day after day. And oh, the lonely nights! I often would climb up to the extreme tip of a hill near by and stare across the scrub to catch the last gleam of the old Agent’s house; its slim brows far off would twinkle with good comradeship and cheered me up wonderfully.

Well, I think it was just about three weeks after my first opening of the shop that I was standing one evening at the door feeling pretty downcast; the sun was setting over the blue hills and the thickening shadows made the landscape look for all the world like a dried-up primeval ocean bed, and the weird scattered gums like the masts of old sunken wrecks, that through some strange freak of nature had burst into leaf. Suddenly on the distant range I saw a moving speck; my astonished eyes gazed steadily and then brightened with enthusiasm; it was a lonely horseman! Surely he would not pass by my shop without buying a pound of tea, thought I. What on earth could I do to attract him? A happy thought struck me. I rushed to my old sea-chest, out came my old bugle-horn, and placing it to my lips, I stood at that lonely shop door and gave three tremendous blasts, then watched. To my huge delight, as the echoes reverberating faded away over the silent steppes, the horseman altered his course; he was coming towards me!

He was a burly, brick-coloured, dusty-looking fellow, and as he sat astride by my shop door gazing first at me, then at my shop, and then again on the surrounding country, he coughed twice and spat over his shoulder. I felt extremely riled by his manner. Then he said, “How’s biz?” With good business forethought I replied, “Pretty good the last two days!” Then suddenly making a bold effort I asked, “Would you like to try a pound of my Pekoe?”

With a kindly look in his grey eyes he said, “Good tea I ’spose?” “Nothing to beat it,” I answered quickly.

Looking quietly across the country he remarked, “No complaints about its quality round these parts I bet.” Without another word he gave me two shillings, took the tea and galloped away.

I think it was about four days after selling that pound of tea that I spotted the Agent coming down the hill-side track right opposite my shop. The month was up, and the rent due!

“Well,” he said as I stood at the door and boldly faced him, “I’ve called for the rent.”

For a moment I fumbled in my pocket. I knew, to be an honourable citizen, I should pay my way and let all earthly considerations of sustaining existence and thoughts of the future go to the winds, but I had only fifteen shillings in the world, and the month’s rent was four pounds, and the cost of the agreement two pounds ten shillings. Pulling myself together I said, “Can you give me another month?”

“Not a day,” he answered hotly, and then looking up quickly asked, “Where’s the agreement money?”

Then I saw that my first boyish instincts were to be relied upon—the man was a hard-hearted scoundrel. I answered quickly, “Where’s the Township you spoke of?” At this he almost spat with rage, and thrusting his pointed whiskered chin in my face said, “Do you expect me to supply you with a Town as well as with a shop?”

I pretended to see some fine logic in that remark, quieted myself down, and then said, “Parrots, magpies, ’possums and mosquitoes do not buy tea, so how can I pay the rent?”

His temper now got the upper hand of him. “You’ve taken the shop,” he snarled; “where the hell’s your capital?”

On hearing him say this, the sudden inspiration that has stood me in such good stead in the sorrows and joys which I am going to tell you of, flashed in my brain, and I quickly answered, “You cannot supply a Town, and yet you expect me to supply capital. Put your Township here and I’ll soon show you the capital.” And then I trembled and forced a smile to my lips. He looked so dangerous that I did not know what might occur to me in those lonely parts. But he was only a bully after all. For a moment he looked me up and down with interest, and then said, “Can you pay me to-morrow?”

Pointing my trembling hand to my rows of empty tea-chests, I said, “Look here, I’ll go to Brisbane to-morrow, sell that tea at cost price, and you shall have your rent and the agreement money.” At this he turned and went away. That night I hastened off to Brisbane, hired a van, got my sea-chest out of that wretched shop and was never seen in any shop in those parts or anywhere else on earth again.