Chapter V: A Leading Barrister

While the rest of his family preferred the pleasures of a Melba concert, held in the Town Hall, old John chose to spend the evening with an old friend, who, with his family, resided far out in the suburbs, and who, like old John himself, possessed an overweaning predilection for draught playing. These two old fogies pored over the board until such a late hour that old John narrowly escaped missing the last tram back to town. And before half the sections had been traversed he was the one solitary occupant of the car, and the only passenger left to alight at the terminus. Prompted no doubt by the glad feeling of having at last finished for “the day,” the conductor called out a cheerful “good-night” as our quaint friend crept down off the footboard. Old John paused for a moment to study the lay of the town, then directed his footsteps for the hotel. The smellsome street was dark, and dull, and empty. Not a sound, save the echo of his own footsteps ringing out on the hard, hollow pavements, pervaded it. The crowds of jostling people had gone; all the theatre-goers had long since wended their way to their homes and lodging places; street singers, cheap jacks, and beggars had departed; the sin and vice of the city that was usually flaunting round in paint and powder and all the alluring colours of the rainbow had disappeared as completely as though swallowed by an earthquake. A light, drizzling rain was falling, and wretchedness and misery seemed to hang like a shroud over the dazzling city. A few lights still flickered afar out on the silent, ghostly waters of the dark and distant harbour. Mayhaps, in the absence of the great shop illuminations, the pallid gas-lamps holding sentry at the street corners burned brighter than they were wont to do.

A night-porter unbolted the large front door of the hotel with grating noise, and with a series of bows and succulent smiles admitted old John.

“Ah’m late, eh?” he said, apologetically.

The porter smiled some more.

“Not the latest, though, sir,” he answered, in a consoling tone of voice. “There’s any amount more to come after you.”

“What, to-naht?” and old John looked surprised.

“Oh, I don’t know about to-night, sir,” with a significant grin, “some of them generally turn up about morning.”

He bolted the door again, and old John peregrinated in the direction of the elevator. A light was burning in the hotel office. Two gentlemen were leaning on the bottom half of the double door that guarded it, conversing volubly. One had been to the theatre and still wore his dress suit, and a large diamond stud shone in the centre of his starched shirt like the morning star. The other wore a long top-coat, buttoned all the way down, beneath which a pair of carpet slippers protruded. A couple of empty glasses stood before them, resting on the door ledge.

The one in the long coat and carpet slippers greeted old John boisterously.

“Hello!” he cried, “this is a nice hour for a respectable married man to come in!”

Old John, who had made the gentleman’s acquaintance during the course of numerous quiet chats in the smoking-room, laughed, and said:

“Ah-h, but that be th’ pot calling th’ kettle black. Why ain’t _yow_ in bed?”

“Well, I was,” answered the other in extenuation, and throwing open his top-coat displayed a suit of gaudy pyjamas, “but my friend, here, dragged me out to come down and have a drink with him. Let me introduce you” (turning to his friend). “Mr. Dashwood, one of our wealthiest and most successful farmers. Mr. Portland, Mr. Dashwood; one of our country’s brightest barristers. In fact, I might say the brightest counsel in the Commonwealth. I suppose you’ve heard of him.”

Old John had heard of barrister Portland, and proceeded to make a great mouthful of the circumstance. He was overjoyed at making the acquaintance of such a noted person.

“Oh! Ah-h! Mah word!” he exclaimed, seizing hold of the great counsel’s extended hand, “Ah wer’ on th’ jury once, when yow were defenden th’ presoners.”

Barrister Portland’s eye began to sparkle with the glow of professional pride.

“Indeed,” he said; “when was that, Mr. Dashwood?”

Old John gave him the day and date, and the name of the presiding judge, and those of the prisoners, with a few remarks thrown in on the personal inconvenience he himself underwent during a busy harvest time to attend the assizes.

Mr. Portland remembered the sittings, and all its attendant circumstances and triumphs perfectly.

“Oh, by Jove, yes,” he observed, turning with enthusiasm to his long-coated companion. “I defended six prisoners that day, Murphy, five of them as d— scoundrels as ever looked a judge in the eye. The other was a harmless poor devil of a nigger, who seemed to regard his trial for murder as a sort of bora ceremony. In fact, I had an idea all the time that he thought we were marrying him to a nice little gin, and that I was there simply acting as best man, and old Judge Browser tying the knot.” (Here Murphy laughed heartily.) “Well the five d— scoundrels, I might tell you, that I reckoned on having a devil of a fight for, I got off without turning a hair. ‘Not guilty,’ said the jury” (here Mr. Portland laughed himself). “But to my utter astonishment your friend here” (smiling at old John) “and his brother jurymen put the rope round the poor unfortunate nigger’s neck without leaving the box.” Then, addressing old John: “I could never understand that verdict, Mr. Dashwood!”

“Ah, well, yow see,” answered old John, “we let five on ’em go, an’ it would a looked bad to let ’em all off!”

“Ah! and so you hanged the nigger for preference!” said Mr. Portland. “Well, that’s candid, and it shows that there are occasions in Australia when a nigger is chosen for a job before a white man.” Then turning to the night-porter, who stood behind the office door listening to the conversation with a broad smile on his clean-shaven, flinty face: “Fill those up again. What are you going to drink, Mr. Dashwood?”

Old John hesitated.

“Well,” he drawled, “Ah dersent drink but very little as a rule.”

“Well, you are going to break the rule this time,” insistently from the great barrister. “You see, Mr. Dashwood,” he added, “I don’t know when I might have you on one of my juries again.”

“Ah, well, a little port wine,” said old John to the porter.

The three glasses being filled, they drank to each other’s health, wealth and continued prosperity. Then the leading counsel of the Commonwealth, who had accounted for numerous drinks during the evening, talked with increased volubility, and grew reminiscent of his Bar experiences. With a profundity and fluency that was amazing he poured forth anecdote after anecdote, recounted stories of the various judges that would have made their Honours blush to hear, and related sensational instances of juries being bribed and intimidated. He mimicked the mannerisms and styles of speech that characterised his less successful brothers at the Bar, till his friend Murphy, the porter behind the “door,” and old John were forced to hold their sides in order to prevent internal dislocations.

To old John in particular the great barrister’s company was heaven upon earth. It was the first time in his long life that he had been privileged to share learned society. Besides, the port wine was of the best. And taking advantage of a lull, while Mr. Portland lit for himself a large superbly-flavoured cigar, he said, with enthusiasm, to the porter: “Just fill them yere glasses up again, my boy!”

The porter filled those glasses again; and old John, rummaging his pockets, discovered they were empty of silver.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter, sir,” said the porter accommodatingly. “I’ll mark them up, and you can pay for them in the morning.” Then, as if to emphasise his confidence in old John, he spilled one out for himself, which he also marked down to old John.

“Never worry about owing a few drinks here, Mr. Dashwood,” the famous barrister remarked off-handedly, “the hotel belongs to a wealthy temperance syndicate. A good harvest, Mr. Dashwood.” Down went the whisky in a gulp, then, smacking his lips a few times, Mr. Portland took a pull at the cigar, and plunged into a story about “a deaf and dumb fellow, a college chum of his who turned out to be one of the most capable and eloquent pleaders at the Bar in Mexico.”

Suddenly and solemnly the great city clock, a mile up the street, chimed out the hour as 1.30 o’clock. The great barrister stopped in the middle of his story, pricked his ears, and quoted a weird lump of Latin verse that had particular reference to graves, and the dead, and midnight.

As the melancholy echoes of the clock died away several solemn, dusty-looking hotel-hands, habitues of the scullery, appeared, shoving before them a lengthy four-wheeled trolly, upon which was stacked to an alarming height a magnificent pile of boots and shoes—males’, females’ and children’s—and the soles of which were numbered in chalk.

“Upon my honour, just look here,” exclaimed Mr. Portland, upon observing the cargo of shoe leather that had been “put out” by the lodgers to be cleaned while they themselves slumbered peaceably in their hired beds, “now isn’t that a sight worth sitting up to see—eh? Isn’t it?”

“An’ that ain’t all of ’em,” sorrowfully remarked one of the dusty boot-blacks, while his two companions stood beside the pile and grinned grins of irony.

“You don’t say so!” cried Mr. Portland enthusiastically, “and are you fellows going to polish that ship-load before morning?”

“Before mornin’?” grinned one. “It’s that now, sir!”

“Then before you start on your long and early journey round those number nines, gentlemen, you had better have a drink.”

The boot-blacks required no second invitation. And they didn’t wait to make enquiries as to the respectability of the person who desired them to drink with him. Boot-blacks all know the dangers of delays. Their feet didn’t hit the floor once before they arrived with a loud bang against the office door.

“Brandy, Billy,” they all said in the same breath.

Mr. Portland bowed interrogatively to old John. Old John said he’d “have port wine again.”

Mr. Portland himself and his friend Murphy remained true to whisky.

“Best respec’s, sir,” said the boot-blacks, up-ending their glasses.

“Your very best health, gentlemen; and a pleasant morning,” responded the noted barrister—“a pleasant morning.”

He emptied his glass and strode over to the heap of shoe leather and surveyed it. A huge, ugly male boot of great length caught his legal eye. He lifted it, and stared long and studiously at it. “Enough to give any man ten years!” he said scornfully, and dropped the boot back on the pile.

The boot-blacks grinned.

“That’s Judge Yorrick’s,” one of them said. “He’s here to-night!”

“Heavens!” cried Mr. Portland, lifting the long, ill-shaped boot again, “so it is! I should have known it by the utter look of imbecility it has about it; by the woeful lack of decision and direction that’s stamped all over it; and, above all, I most certainly should have recognised its distinguished owner in it by the almost entire absence of a sole! Poor old Yorrick! I know you too —— well,” and once more Mr. Portland dropped the boot on the pile. Looking further afield his eyes rested on a lady’s shoe with “21” chalked on the sole of it. He took it in his hand and turned it over and over tenderly. He pressed it to his starched bosom and said: “Ah, th’ dear, dainty little thing.” (Old John and Murphy laughed.) “Could that innocent, empty little shoe but speak!”

The chalked figures on the sole caught his eye, “Ah! and your owner is only 21. A tender age! The bloom and bud of life!”

“Twenty-one!” growled one of the boot-blacks. “Yer wouldn’t say so if yer see’d her upstairs, sir. A leather-necked ole hen, what’s nearer a century. ‘Twenty-one’ is only the number of her room!”

“What!” cried Mr. Portland sharply, “that’s—that’s _my wife’s_, then!”

Then all at once it seemed to come upon him from different directions that he had been basely insulted.

A burst of laughter greeted his ears.

“You d— ruffian!” he shouted and flung the shoe at the head of the offending boot-black, who promptly ducked and took refuge in the dark shades of the elevator encasement. The two remaining boot-blacks entered into the humour of the situation. Mr. Portland turned his wrath upon them.

“Scullery rats!” he cried. “Take that! and _that_!” aiming in quick succession at them Judge Yorrick’s large ill-tempered-looking boots. The shoe-blacks dodged this way and that. The leading counsel of the Commonwealth armed himself with a fresh supply of clog-hoppers, and pursued them with vengeance in his eye. The night-porter and Murphy and old John pursued Mr. Portland, calling upon him to “take no notice.” The affrighted shoe-blacks flew up several flights of the great stairs. Mr. Portland pelted them up on to the fourth landing. Here he was overtaken by the night-porter, his friend Murphy and old John. They beseeched him in the interests of the slumbering lodgers, and in the good name and reputation of the hotel, to desist.

Mr. Portland desisted.

“Well, call the scavengers back,” he said, starting to descend the stairs, “and we’ll have a doch-an-doris.”

The night-porter called them back. With grins on their faces the shoe-blacks returned cautiously to their pile of boots.

“A doch-an-doris, you sweeps,” called out the great barrister to them, “and I’ll file a _Nolle Prosequi_ against you, and let you off without a stain on your blackened characters.”

The three shoe-blacks came up to the office door again, smiling.

They all drank again.

“Well, we’ve had a very pleasant evening,” Mr. Portland said, addressing his friend Murphy, “taking it all in all. And Mr. Dashwood,” turning to old John, “I have to thank you for the pleasure of your company this evening, and I’m quite alive to the fact that your stay with us was prolonged at acute personal inconvenience and sacrifice to yourself. Porter,” to the night officer, as he pointed to the lift, “lead thou the way to that virtuous bug-roost for the joys of which I am paying four guineas a week!”

The porter led the way; and the merry trio ascended in the lift to disperse on different floors and seek their respective rooms.

* * * * *

Next morning, old John, with some silver in his hand and a look of repentance on his brow, sought the night-porter.

“What is it Ah owes yow for last naht,” he enquired, in a confidential whisper.

With a meaning smile the porter referred to the pages of a pocket book.

“I thought we were going to have some trouble, last night, sir?” he began. But old John wasn’t to be drawn. He had no inclination whatever to discuss the doings of “last night.”

“How mooch, lad?” he whispered again, glancing restlessly over his shoulder to see if Mrs. Dashwood was hovering near.

“Yours come to—let me see—one pound two and sixpence,” and the porter’s face never moved a muscle or disclosed the slightest suspicion of his feeling in any way the pangs of a guilty conscience.

Old John staggered visibly.

“Eh?” he said, “Ah only put down one lot o’ drinks, weren’t it?” and he glanced back over his shoulder again.

“I don’t suppose you remember, sir,” said the unblushing flunkey, in low, guarded tones that insinuated scandal and disgrace, “y’ know you were shouting right and left for all hands. Oh, you were _terrible_ bad last night, sir, terrible bad!”

Here old John observed Mrs. Dashwood making towards him from the breakfast room.

“One pahnd two an’ sex,” he murmured, dropping the coin into the porter’s hand.

“Right, sir, thank you, sir,” said that gentle, obliging rascal, and, with a heavy sinking feeling at his heart, old John turned away.