Читать книгу Collected Prose - Paterson Andrew Barton - Страница 14

Table of Contents

The firm of Sloper and Dodge, book publishers and printers, was in great distress. These two enterprising individuals had worked up an enormous business in time payment books, which they sold all over Australia by means of canvassers. They had put a lot of money into the business--all they had, in fact. And now, just as everything was in thorough working order, the public had revolted against them. Their canvassers were ill-treated and molested by the country folk in all sorts of strange bush ways. One man was made drunk, and then a two-horse harrow was run over him; another was decoyed out into the desolate ranges on pretence of being shown a gold mine, and then his guide galloped away and left him to freeze all night in the bush. In mining localities, on the appearance of a canvasser, the inhabitants were called together by beating a camp oven lid with a pick, and the canvasser was given ten minutes to leave the town alive. If he disregarded the hint he would as likely as not fall accidentally down a disused shaft. The people of one district applied to their member of Parliament to have canvassers brought under the Noxious Animals Act and demanded that a reward should be offered for their scalps. Reports were constantly published in the country press about strange, gigantic birds that appeared at remote free selections, and frightened the inhabitants to death--these were Sloper and Dodge's sober and reliable agents, wearing the neat, close-fitting suits of tar and feathers with which their enthusiastic yokel admirers had presented them. In fact, it was too hot altogether for the canvassers, and they came in from north and west and south, crippled and disheartened, and handed in their resignations. To make matters worse, Sloper and Dodge had just got out a map of Australasia on a great scale, and if they couldn't sell it, ruin stared them in the face; and how could they sell it without canvassers!

The two members of the firm sat in their private office. Sloper was a long, sanctimonious individual, very religious and very bald--"beastly, awfully bald". Dodge was a little, fat American, with bristly black hair and beard, and quick, beady eyes. He was eternally smoking a reeking black pipe, and swallowing the smoke, and then puffing it out through his nose in great whiffs, like a locomotive on a steep grade. Anybody walking into one of those whiffs incautiously was likely to get paralysed, the tobacco was so strong.

As the firm waited, Dodge puffed nervously at his pipe and filled the office with noxious fumes. The two partners were in a very anxious and expectant condition. Just as things were at their very blackest, an event had happened which promised to relieve all their difficulties. An inventor, a genius, had come forward, who offered to supply the firm with a patent cast-iron canvasser, a figure which he said when wound up would walk about, talk by means of a phonograph, collect orders, and stand any amount of ill usage and wear and tear. If this could indeed be done, then they were saved. They had made an appointment with the genius to inspect his figure, but he was half an hour late, and the partners were steeped in gloom.

Just as they despaired of his appearing at all, a cab rattled up to the door, and Sloper and Dodge rushed unanimously to the window. A young man, very badly dressed, stepped out of the cab, holding over his shoulder what looked like the upper half of a man's body. In his disengaged hand he held a pair of human legs with boots and trousers on. Thus equipped he turned to the cabman to ask his fare, but the man with a yell of terror whipped up his horse, and disappeared at a hand gallop, and a woman who happened to be going by went howling down the street, saying that "Jack the Ripper" had come to town. The man bolted in at the door, and toiled up the dark stairs, tramping heavily under his hideous load, the legs and feet which he dragged after him making an unearthly clatter. He came in and put his burden down on the sofa.

"There you are, gents," he said. "There's your canvasser."

Sloper and Dodge recoiled in horror. The upper part of the man had a waxy face, dull, fishy eyes, and dark hair; he lounged on the sofa like a corpse at ease, while his legs and feet stood by, leaning stiffly against the wall. The partners looked at him for a while in silence, and felt like two men haunted by a cast-iron ghost.

"Fix him together, for God's sake," said Dodge. "Don't leave him like that--he looks awful."

The genius grinned, and soon fixed the legs on.

"Now he looks better," said Dodge, poking about the figure. "Looks as much like life as most--ah, would you, you brute!" he exclaimed, springing back in alarm, for the figure had made a violent La Blanche swing at him.

"That's all right," said the genius, "that's a notion of my own. It's no good having his face knocked about, you know--lot of trouble to make that face. His head and body are all full of concealed springs, and if anybody hits him in the countenance, or in the pit of the stomach --favourite place to hit canvassers, the pit of the stomach--it sets a strong spring in motion, and he fetches his right hand round with a swipe that'll knock them into the middle of next week. It's an awful hit. Griffo couldn't dodge it, and Slavin couldn't stand against it. No fear of any man hitting him twice. And he's dog-proof too. His legs are padded with tar and oakum, and if a dog bites a bit out of him, it will take that dog the rest of his life to pick his teeth clean. Never bite anybody again, that dog won't. And he'll talk, talk, talk, like a pious confer-ence gone mad; his phonograph can be charged for 100,000 times, and all you've got to do is to speak into it what you want him to say, and he'll say it. He'll go on saying it till he talks his man silly, or gets an order. He has an order form in his hand, and as soon as anyone signs it and gives it back to him, that sets another spring in motion, and he puts the order in his pocket, turns round, and walks away. Grand idea isn't he? Lor' bless you, I fairly love him."

Evidently he did, for as he spoke the genius grinned affectionately at his monster.

"What about stairs?" said Dodge.

"No stairs in the bush," said the inventor blowing a speck of dust off his apparition; "all ground floor houses. Anyhow, if there were stairs we could carry him up and let him fall down afterwards, or get flung down like any other canvasser."

"Ha! Let's see him walk," said Dodge.

The figure walked all right, stiff and erect.

"Now let's hear him yabber," was the next order.

Immediately the genius touched a spring, and a queer, tin-whistly voice issued from the creature's lips, and he began to sing, "Little Annie Rooney."

"Good!" said Dodge, "he'll do. We'll give you your price. Leave him here tonight, and come in tomorrow, and we'll start you off to some place in the back country with him. Have a cigar."

And Mr Dodge, much elated, sucked at his pipe, and blew out through his nose a cloud of nearly solid smoke, which hung and floated about the door, and into which the genius walked as he sidled off. It fairly staggered him, and they could hear him sneezing and choking all the way downstairs. Then they locked up the office, and made for home, leaving the figure in readiness for his travels on the ensuing day.

Ninemile was a quiet little place, sleepy beyond description. When the mosquitoes in that town settled on anyone, they usually went to sleep, and forgot to bite him. The climate was so hot that the very grasshoppers used to crawl into the hotel parlours out of the sun. There they would climb up the window curtains and go to sleep, and if anybody disturbed them they would fly into his eye with a great whizz, and drive the eye clean out at the back of his head. There was no likelihood of a public riot at Ninemile. The only thing that could rouse the inhabitants out of their lethargy was the prospect of a drink at somebody else's expense. And for those reasons it was decided to start the canvasser in this forgotten region; and then move him on to more populous and active localities if he proved a success. They sent up the genius, and a companion who knew the district well. The genius was to manage the automaton, and the other was to lay out the campaign, choose the victims, and collect the money, if they got any, geniuses being notoriously unreliable and loose in their cash. They got through a good deal of whisky on the way up, and when they arrived at Ninemile, they were in a cheerful mood, and disposed to take risks.

"Who'll we begin on?" said the genius.

"Oh, d--- it," said the other, "let's start on Macpherson."

Macpherson was the big bug of the place. He was a gigantic Scotchman, six feet four in his socks, freckled all over with freckles as big as half-crowns. His eyebrows would have made decent-sized moustaches even for a cavalryman, and his moustaches looked like horns. He was a fighter, from the ground up, and, moreover, he had a desperate "down" on canvassers generally and on Sloper and Dodge's canvassers in particular. This eminent firm had once published a book called Remarkable Colonials, and Macpherson had written out his own biography for it. He was intensely proud of his pedigree, and his grand relations, and in his narrative made out that he was descended from the original Pherson or Fhairshon who swam round Noah's Ark with his title deeds in his teeth. He showed how his people had fought under Alexander the Great and Timour, and had come over to England some centuries before the Conqueror. He also proved that he was related in a general way to one emperor, fifteen kings, twenty-five dukes, and earls and lords and viscounts innumerable. He dilated on the splendour of the family estates in Scotland, and the vast wealth of his relatives and progenitors. And then, after all, Sloper and Dodge managed to mix him up with some other fellow, some low-bred Irish ruffian who drove a corporation cart! Macpherson's biography gave it forth to the astonished town that he was born in Dublin of poor but honest parents, that his father when a youth had lived by selling matches, until one day he chanced to pick up a cigar end, and, emboldened by the possession of so much capital, had got married, and the product was Macpherson.

It was a terrible outrage. Macpherson at once became president for the whole of the western districts of the Remarkable Colonials Defence League, the same being a fierce and homicidal association got up to resist, legally and otherwise, paying for the books. Also, he has sworn by all he held sacred that every canvasser who came to harry him in future should die, and he had put up a notice on his office door, "Canvassers come in here at their own risk". He had a dog which he called a dog of the "hold 'em" breed, and this dog could tell a canvasser by his walk, and would go for him on sight. The reader will understand, therefore, that when the genius and his mate proposed to start on Macpherson, they were laying out a capacious contract for the cast-iron canvasser, and were taking a step which could only have been inspired by a morbid craving for excitement, aided by the influence of backblock whisky.

The genius wound the figure up in the back parlour of the pub. There were a frightful lot of screws to tighten before the thing would work, but at last he said it was ready, and they shambled off down the street, the figure marching stiffly between them. It had a book stuck under its arm and an order form in its hand. When they arrived opposite Macpherson's office (he was a land agent and had a ground-floor room) the genius started the phonograph working, pointed the figure straight at Macpherson's door and set it going, and then the two conspirators waited like Guy Fawkes in his cellar.

The figure marched across the road and in at the open door, talking to itself loudly in a hoarse, unnatural voice.

Macpherson was writing at his table and looked up.

The figure walked bang through a small collection of flower-pots, sent a chair flying, tramped heavily in the spittoon, and then brought up against the table with a loud crash and stood still. It was talking all the time.

"I have here," it said, "a most valuable work, a map and geography of Australia, which I desire to submit to your notice. The large and increasing demand of bush residents for time payment works has induced the publishers of this--"

"My God!" said Macpherson, "it's a canvasser. Here, Tom Sayers, Tom Sayers!" and he whistled and called for the dog. "Now," he said, "will you go out of this office quietly, or will you be thrown out? It's for yourself to decide, but you've only got while a duck wags his tail to decide in. Which'll it be?"

--"works of modern ages," said the canvasser. "Every person subscribing to this invaluable work will receive, in addition, a flat-iron, a railway pass for a year, and a pocket compass. If you will please sign this order--"

Just here Tom Sayers, the bulldog, came tearing through the office, and, without waiting for orders, hitched straight onto the calf of the canvasser's leg. To Macpherson's intense amazement the piece came clear away, and Tom Sayers rolled about the floor with his mouth full of some sticky substance which seemed to surprise him badly.

The long Scotchman paused awhile before this mystery, but at last he fancied he had got the solution. "Got a cork leg, have you?" said he.--"Well, let's see if your ribs are cork, too," and he struck the canvasser a terrific blow on the fith button of the waistcoat.

Quicker than the lightning's flash came that terrific right-handed cross-counter. It was so quick that Macpherson never even knew what happened to him. He remembered striking his blow, and afterwards all was a blank. As a matter of fact, the canvasser's right hand, which had been adjusted by the genius for a high blow, landed just on the butt of Macpherson's ear and dropped him like a fowl. The gasping and terrified bulldog fled from the scene, and the canvasser stood over his fallen foe and droned on about the virtues of his publication, stating that he had come there merely as a friend, and to give the inhabitants of Ninemile a chance to buy a book which had already earned the approval of Dan O'Connor and the Earl of Jersey.

The genius and his mate watched this extraordinary drama through the window. They had kept up their courage with whisky and other stimulants, and now looked upon the whole affair as a wildly hilarious joke.

"By Gad! he's done him," said the genius as Macpherson went down, "done him in one hit. If he don't pay as a canvasser I'll take him to town and back him to fight Joe Goddard. Look out for yourself; don't you handle him!" he continued as the other approached the figure. "Leave him to me. As like as not, if you get fooling about him, he'll give you a smack in the snout that'll paralyse you."

So saying, he guided the automaton out of the office and into the street, and walked straight into--a policeman.

By a common impulse the genius and his mate at once ran rapidly away in different directions, and left the figure alone with the officer.

He was a fully ordained sergeant, by name Aloysius O'Grady; a squat, rosy little Irishman. He hated violent arrests and all that sort of thing, and had a faculty of persuading drunks and disorderlies and other fractious persons to "go quietly along with him", that was little short of marvellous. Excitable revellers, who were being carried along by their mates, struggling violently, would break away from their companions, and prance gaily along to the lock-up with the sergeant, whom, as likely as not, they would try to kiss on the way. Obstinate drunks who would do nothing but lie on the ground and kick their feet in the air, would get up like birds, serpent-charmed, and go with him to durance vile. As soon as he saw the canvasser, and noted his fixed, unearthly stare, and listened to his hoarse, unnatural voice, he knew what was the matter--it was a man in the horrors, a common enough spectacle at Ninemile. The sergeant resolved to decoy him into the lock-up, and accosted him in a friendly and free-and-easy way.

"Good day rye," he said.

"--Most magnificent volume ever published, jewelled in fourteen holes, working on a ruby roller, and in a glass case," said the book canvasser. "The likenesses of the historical person-ages are so natural that the book must not be left open on the table, or the mosquitoes will ruin it by stinging the faces of the portraits."

It then dawned on the sergeant that he was dealing with a book canvasser.

"Ah, sure," he said, "what's the use of tryin' to sell books at all, at all, folks does be peltin' them out into the street, and the nanny-goats lives on them these times. I sent the childher out to pick 'em up, and we have 'em at my place now--barrowloads of 'em. Come along wid me now, and I'll make you nice and comfortable for the night," and he laid his hand on the outstretched palm of the figure.

It was a fatal mistake. By so doing he set in motion the machinery which operated the figure's left arm, and it moved that limb in towards its body, and hugged the sergeant to its breast, with a vice-like grip. Then it started in a faltering, and uneven, but dogged way to walk towards the steep bank of the river, carrying the sergeant along with it.

"Immortal Saints!" gasped the sergeant, "he's squazin' the livin' breath out of me. Lave go now loike a dacent sowl, lave go. And oh, for the love of God, don't be shpakin' into my ear that way"; for the figure's mouth was pressed tight against the sergeant's ear, and its awful voice went through and through the little man's head, as it held forth about the volume. The sergeant struggled violently, and by so doing set some more springs in motion, and the figure's right arm made terrific swipes in the air. A following of boys and loafers had collected by this time. "Bly me, how he does lash out!" was the admiring remark they made. But they didn't altogether like interfering, notwithstanding the sergeant's frantic appeals, and things would have gone hard with him had his subordinate Constable Dooley not appeared on the scene.

Dooley, better known to the town boys as the "Wombat", from his sleepy disposition, was a man of great strength. He had originally been quartered at Redfern, Sydney, and had fought many bitter battles with the Bondi Push, the Black Red Push, and the Surry Hills Push. After this the duty at Ninemile was child's play, and he never ran in less than two drunks at a time; it was beneath his dignity to be seen capturing a solitary inebriate. If they wouldn't come any other way, he would take them by the ankles and drag them after him. The townsfolk would have cheerfully backed him to arrest John L. Sullivan if necessary; and when he saw the sergeant in the grasp of an inebriate he bore down on the fray full of fight.

"I'll soon make him lave ye go, sergeant," he said, and he tried to catch hold of the figure's right arm, to put on the "police twist". Unfortunately at that exact moment the sergeant's struggles touched one of the springs in the creature's breast with more than usual force. With the suddenness and severity of a horse kick, it lashed out with its right hand, catching the redoubtable Dooley a regular thud on the jaw, and sending him to grass, as if he had been shot. For a few minutes he "lay as only dead men lie". Then he got up bit by bit, and wandered off home to the police barracks, and mentioned casually to his wife that John L. Sullivan had come to town, and had taken the sergeant away to drown him. After which, having given orders that if anybody called that visitor was to be told he had gone out of town fifteen miles to serve a summons on a man for not registering a dog, he locked himself into a cell for the rest of the day.

Meanwhile, the canvasser, still holding the sergeant tightly clutched to its breast, was marching straight towards the river. Something had disorganised the voice arrangements, and it was now positively shrieking at the sergeant's ear, and, as it yelled, the little man yelled louder, "I don't want yer accursed book. Lave go of me, I say!" He beat with his fists on its face, and kicked at its shins without the slightest avail. A short, staggering rush, a wild shriek from the officer, and the two of them toppled over the steep bank and went souse into the bottomless depths of the Ninemile Creek.

That was the end of the whole matter. The genius and his mate returned to town hurriedly, and lay low, expecting to be indicted for murder. Constable Dooley drew up a report for the Chief of Police, which contained so many strange and unlikely statements that the department concluded the sergeant must have got drunk and drowned himself, and that Dooley saw him do it, but was too drunk to pull him out. Anyone unacquainted with Ninemile would have expected that a report of the occurrence would have reached the Sydney papers. As a matter of fact the storekeeper did think about writing a report, but decided that it was too much trouble. There was some idea of asking the Government to fish the two bodies out of the river, but about that time an agitation was started in Ninemile to have the Federal capital located there, and the other thing was forgotten. The genius drank himself to death; the "Wombat" became Sub-Inspector of Police; and a vague tradition about "a bloke who came up here in the horrors, and drownded poor old O'Grady", is the only memory that remains of that wonderful creation, the cast-iron canvasser.

As for the canvasser himself there is a rusted mass far down in the waters of the creek, and in its arms it holds a skeleton dressed in the rags of what was once a police uniform. And on calm nights the passers-by sometimes imagine they can hear, rising out of the green and solemn depths, a husky, slushy voice, like that of an iron man with mud and weeds and dishcloths in his throat, and that voice is still urging the skeleton to buy a book in monthly parts. But the canvasser's utterance is becoming weak and used up in these days, and it is only when the waters are low and the air is profoundly still that he can be heard at all.

The Bulletin, 19 December 1891