The other guests were not a whit less respectable. Each of them, in his own particular person, represented wealth or position. Could it for a single moment be imagined that the guests of Mr. Zachariah Blemish were selected for the purpose of throwing a halo of respectability round the person of their host, and that they were one and all administering to and serving his interest? If so, the guests were unconscious of it; but it might not have been less a fact that he made them all return, in one shape or another, good interest for the hospitality he so freely lavished upon them. This evening he was giving a dinner party to his male friends; and later in the night Mrs. Zachariah Blemish would receive her guests and entertain them.
The gentlemen are over their wine, and are conversing freely. Politics, scandal, the state of the colony, and many other subjects, are discussed with animation. Just now, politics is the theme. The member of the Lower House and the member of the Upper House are the principal speakers here. But, occasionally, others say a word or two, which utterings are regarded by the two members as unwarrantable interruptions. The member of the Government says very little on politics, and generally maintains a cautious reticence.
"I should like to have been in the House last night," said one of the conversational interlopers; "that was a smart thing Ritchie said."
"What was it?" asked another.
"Speaking of Beazley, who is awfully rich you know, and an incorrigible miser, he said, 'He congratulated himself upon not belonging to a party which had, for its principal supporter, a man whose office was his church, whose desk was his pulpit, whose ledger was his Bible, and whose money was his god.'"
"Very clever, but very savage," remarked one of the guests. "I do not believe in such unbridled licence of debate."
"I met Beazley the other day, and he complained that the times were dreadfully dull. He did not know what things were coming to. He had seventy thousand pounds lying idle, he said, and he could not get more than five per cent. for it. He shook his head and said, 'The golden days of the colony are gone!'"
"And so they are," said the member of the Lower House, whose proclivities were republican, "and they will not return until we have Separation and Confederation. That's what we want to set us going-separation from the home country, and a confederation of the South Sea colonies. We don't want our most important matters settled for us in the red-tape office over the water. We don't want our Governors appointed for us; we want to select them ourselves from the men who have grown up with us, and whose careers render them worthy and prove them fit for the distinction. If we were in any serious trouble we should have to extricate ourselves as best we could, and if we did have help from the home country, shouldn't we have to pay the piper? That's the point-shouldn't we have to pay the piper?"
"Nay, nay," expostulated Mr. Zachariah Blemish. "Consider for a moment, I beg-we are all loyal subjects, I hope-"
"I maintain," said the member of the Lower House, excited by his theme, "that, notwithstanding our loyalty to the reigning Sovereign, the day must come when we shall not be dependent upon the caprices of a colonial office fourteen thousand miles distant, which very often does not understand the nature of the difficulty it has to legislate upon. I maintain that the day must come-"
"Gentlemen," called Mr. Zachariah Blemish, horrified at the utterance of such sentiments over his dinner table, "gentlemen, I give you The Queen! God bless her!"
"The Queen! God bless her!" responded all the guests, rising to their feet, and drinking the toast enthusiastically. And then the conversation took another turn. Presently, all ears were turned to the leading physician, who was relating a circumstance to the leading lawyer.
"It is a curious story," he said. "The man I speak of was always reported to be very wealthy. No one knows more of his early career than that, when the gold-diggings were first discovered, he was a Cheap-Jack, as they call them, trading at all the new gold-fields. He bought tents, picks, shovels, tubs, anything, from the diggers, who were madly running from one place to another. He bought them for a song, for the diggers could not carry those things about with them, and they were glad to get rid of them at any price. When he sold them he made enormous profits, and by these means he was supposed to have amassed a great fortune. Then he speculated largely in sheep and cattle, and grew to be looked upon as a sort of banker. Many men deposited their savings with him, and, as he did not pay any interest for the money, and traded with it, there is no doubt as to the profitable nature of his operations. The great peculiarity about him was that his face from beneath his eyes, was completely hidden in bushy, brown, curly hair, He had been heard to say that he had never shaved. Well, one night, at past eleven o'clock, he knocked up a storekeeper at the diggings, and bought a razor and strop, a pair of scissors, a pair of moleskin trousers, a pair of watertight boots, and a blue serge shirt. In the course of conversation with the storekeeper, and while he was selecting the articles, he said that they were for a man whom he had engaged as a shepherd, and who was to start at daybreak the following morning. That was the last indisputable occurrence that was known in connection with him; the next day he disappeared and was not heard of again. For a day or two, no notice was taken of his absence; but, after that, depositors and others grew uneasy, and rumour invented a hundred different stories about him. A detective who knew him intimately, said that he was standing at the pit entrance of the Theatre Royal in Bourke Street, when a man passed in, the glitter of whose eyes attracted the detective's attention strangely. He could not recall the man's face, which was clean shaven, and he thought no more about it at the time. The missing man was traced to Melbourne, but no further. Some three or four weeks after his disappearance, the body of a drowned person was found in a river in New South Wales, and, from certain marks about it, it was supposed to be that of our missing friend. The inquest was adjourned, to allow time for the production of evidence from Victoria, and twelve medical men, all of whom knew the missing party were subpoenaed for the purpose of identifying him, or otherwise. The body was much decomposed, but some of the witnesses said that they would know if it was the missing man by the peculiar shape of one of his toes. The singularity of the affair lies in this. Six of the witnesses swore that it was the missing man, and six of them swore that it was not. Both sides were very positive. Some months after the inquest, a story was current that he had been seen at Texas, which story was shortly afterwards followed up by another, that he was shot in a tavern in South America. Then came other reports that he was living in great magnificence in all sorts of out-of-the-way places. But whether he is alive or not, no one in the colony knows, and to this day the mystery is not cleared up, and probably never will be."
"And the depositors' money?" asked the lawyer.
"Was never heard of. Vanished. If he was drowned, he did not like to part with it, and he took it into the other world with him."
Everybody at the table was much interested in the story, and commented upon it; after which there was a lull in the conversation.
"I have a great surprise in store for you to-night," said Mr. Blemish; addressing a gentleman of about sixty years of age, whose face was covered with iron-grey whiskers, beard, and moustache.
From some unexplained cause, the gentleman addressed looked suddenly and excitedly into the face of his host, and exclaimed, in a quick, nervous voice-
"A surprise!"
"Yes, and I hope a pleasant one."
"What surprise?" he asked, in the same agitated manner.
"Nay." returned Mr. Blemish, gently, "it will not be a surprise if I tell you beforehand."
The flush that had risen to that portion of the gentleman's face which the iron-grey whiskers, beard, and moustache allowed to be seen, slowly died away, and was replaced by a whitish-grey tint, which almost made him look like the ghost of an antique warrior. He debated within himself for a few moments, and then, taking out his pocket-book, wrote upon a leaf, "I shall take it as a particular favour if