The open square in front of us is being appropriated for the night by a noisy crowd of itinerant ragamuffin “entertainers of the public,” of various callings.
There are the usual Try-yer-weight, Balm-of-Gilead, and Try-afore-yer-buy rascals, and others of like kidney. These, with the dirty evangelists of Kings-of-Pain and Quack-doctors, are busy erecting various machines and tables for the night’s work. The place is busy with moving figures and the Norse-alphabetical rappings of twenty hammers, and gay with the crowd-attracting glories of red paint and bright brass-work. The gloaming gradually sinks into night, and flaring lamps appear in all directions; and four long buildings, that during the week have formed the Covent Garden of Sydney, begin to light up as the numerous stall-holders within commence business. Most of these are Jews of the lower classes; but here and there the child-like smile of a quarantine-flag-coloured follower of Confucius, or the merry, black, oily face of an African, breaks the monotony. At one stall half-a-dozen under-sized Chinamen are fingering some shoddy clothes; at another a “young man from the country” is hurriedly purchasing some indecent photographs from a dealer in church pictures and altar decorations, looking around him nervously the while, lest “his people” should see him. Close by, a lump of human flesh, in black oily ringlets and an astoundingly ample dress of vivid green, is showing off the glories of a ruby-coloured velvet skirt to two fragile “daughters of the public” by holding it against her majestic base. Near this last group, seated upon the only empty show bench within sight, are two men. One, enveloped in a long, light dust-coat, and wearing a fashionable light-felt hat, looks to the casual observer like what he once was, namely, a gentleman. His companion is a short, thick-set fellow, with the ever-restless eyes of a detective or a criminal. His otherwise stolid-looking features are those that mark him at once as a foreigner, probably a Wurtemburger. As far as can be made out, as he sits in the shadow, he is more anxious to avoid notice than is his companion, and is dressed in a suit of dark-coloured tweed. Both are apparently watching for somebody they expect in the column of men, women, and children, as with the orderly manner, characteristic of a Sydney crowd, it dawdles its long length past.
“I know he left the hotel, and I know he’s not been able to see the firm to-day,” whispers the man in the dust-coat, rising and striking a match upon his pants, and proceeding to light a cigarette. “I slung him a moral yarn or two about Paddy’s Market that’ll fetch him along.”
“Why you not bring ’im mit you?” growls his companion.
“Because, my dear sir, if anything should happen to the young man, and I had been seen in his company, I might find it awkward; d’ye see, Grosse?”
The last speaker continues, after knocking the ashes off his cigarette with a delicate little cane he held in his gloved hands,—
“When I see him I’ll touch your arm. Clear out then at once. And when you see us again—at, you know where—don’t attempt to act if you don’t hear me whistling ‘Killaloo.’”
Here he of the cigarette whistled a bar of that melody for the benefit of his accomplice.
The two men continue for some time sitting moodily watching the faces of the crowd, till the one in the tweed clothes abruptly rises, and, pulling his hat well over his eyes, slouches off. His companion shortly after leaves his seat, and, settling his collar, strolls off in the opposite direction. His walk is slow and deliberate, and as his lack-lustre eyes gaze alternately right and left upon the busy stalls, more than one remark about “swell attire” reaches his ear. His face, however, remains a perfect blank, until he meets the eye of a gentleman going the other way, when it becomes suffused with the smiles and beams of gratified pleasure.
A few words of recognition pass between the two and they join company, and pushing onward are lost to our view. The latest arrival, as our readers have no doubt guessed, is the hero of this story. Regardful of all his uncle’s instructions, save that clause concerning the risk he ran by using his own name in Sydney, he has just met a casual but delightful acquaintance, who is stopping at the same hotel that he has put up at. But before we follow the pair let us try and learn a lesson from, or rather philosophize over, the human panorama before us.