A club dining-room in Australia is much like one in any other
part of the world. Even at the Antipodes--though the seasons are
reversed, and the foxes have wings--we still shun the club bore,
and let him have a table to himself; the head waiter usually looks
a more important personage than any of the members or guests;
and men may be seen giving each other dinners from much the same
ignoble motives as those which actuate their fellows elsewhere. In
the Cassowary Club, on the night of which we tell, the Bo'sun was
giving his dinner of necessity to honour the draft of hospitality
drawn on him by Grant. At the next table a young solicitor was
entertaining his one wealthy client; near by a band of haggard
University professors were dining a wandering scientist, all hair
and spectacles--both guest and hosts drinking mineral waters and
such horrors; while beyond them a lot of racing men were swilling
champagne and eating and talking as heartily as so many navvies. A
few squatters, down from their stations, had fore-gathered at the
centre table, where each was trying to make out that he had had
less rain than the others. The Bo'sun and his guests were taken in
hand by the head waiter, who formerly had been at a London Club, and
was laying himself out to do his best; he had seen that Gillespie
had "Wanderers' Club" on his cards, and he knew, and thanked his
stars that he did know, what "Wanderers' Club" on a man's card
meant. His fellow-waiters, to whom he usually referred as "a lot of
savages," were unfortunately in ignorance of the social distinction
implied by membership of such a club.
For a time there was nothing but the usual commonplace talk, while
the soup and fish were disposed of; when they reached the champagne
and the entrees, things become more homelike and conversation flowed.
A bushman, especially when primed with champagne, is always ready
to give his tongue a run--and when he has two open-mouthed new
chums for audience, as Gordon had, the only difficulty is to stop
him before bed-time; for long silent rides on the plain, and lonely
camps at night, give him a lot of enforced silence that he has to
make up for later.
"Where are you from last, Gordon?" said the Bo'sun. "Haven't seen
you in town for a long time."
"I've been hunting wild geese," drawled the man from far back,
screwing up one eye and inspecting a glass of champagne, which he
drank off at a gulp. "That's what I do most of my time now. The
old man--Grant, you know--my boss--he's always hearing of mobs of
cattle for sale, and if I'm down in the south-west the mob is sure
to be up in the far north-east, but it's all one to him. He wires
to me to go and inspect them quick and lively before someone else
gets them, and I ride and drive and coach hundreds of miles to get
at some flat-sided pike-horned mob of brutes without enough fat on
them to oil a man's hair with. I've to go right away out back now
and take over a place that the old man advanced some money on. He
was fool enough, or someone was fool enough for him, to advance
five thousand pounds on a block of new country with five thousand
cattle on it--book-muster, you know, and half the cattle haven't
been seen for years, and the other half are dead, I expect. Anyhow,
the man that borrowed the money is ruined, and I have to go up and
take over the station."