Grif: A Story of Australian Life

by B. L. Farjeon

Grif, although but a poor and humble member of the human family, was as gregariously inclined as the rest of his species, and loved, when opportunity offered, to associate with his fellows. The circumstance of birth had placed him upon the lowest rang of the social ladder, and, being grovelling by nature, he had no thought of striving upwards, and was always prowling about, like a hungry dog searching for a bone. Being gregariously inclined, he was to be depended upon as an item in a mob. The object of a gathering of people was not a thing to be considered--politics, religion, amusement, were all one to him. If he but chanced to come across a throng, he added one more to the number, from sheer force of habit. Thus he was a passive auditor of street preachers of every denomination, and being in the habit of standing quite still, with his mouth open and his hands in his pockets, or where his pockets ought to be, he grew to be looked upon as a godsend by the orators, who spoke at him, and scoffed at him, and humbled him, and hurled anathemas at his head, as representing a class entirely devoid of godliness. They twisted his moral nature, and picked at it, and pulled it to pieces, and grew eloquent upon it. They said--Look at his rags, look at his dirt, look at the ignorance written on his countenance. They told him to repent if he wished to be saved from damnation; and they prayed for him and wept for him so earnestly that sometimes he experienced a dull wonder that the earth did not open and swallow him, he felt so utterly and thoroughly bad. To the political orators who were in the habit of "stumping-it" in the Market-square he was not of so much importance. "The People" in the aggregate was what the stump politicians gnashed their teeth at and wept over; and it was remarkable to observe with what complacency the People listened to these bemoanings. At the period during which Grif played his insignificant part in the history of the gold-colony, working-men-politicians were in great force, and night after night the Market-square would be thronged with an auditory not unwilling to be amused by listening to the outpourings of half-crazy or wholly-knavish demagogues, who had either gone mad over "the people's wrongs," or were working to get into the parliament, where they could make "pickings" for themselves. Many a red-hot radical who could not get an audience in Great Britain, and who had emigrated to what he thought was to be the "people's paradise" here was listened to, and laughed at, and applauded, and--did no harm after all. Grif did not understand what it all meant. He heard a great deal about the ground-down people, the crushed people, the poor starving people, upon whose substance the oligarchs were fattening; but all he could make out was that things were wrong altogether, a conclusion which precisely tallied with his own experience. But he, for one, bore his lot uncomplainingly, and with an unconscious exercise of philosophy, walked in the gutters (not feeling himself good enough to indulge in the pavement) without a murmur. Grif did not object to gutters; he had formed their acquaintance in his earliest infancy, and time and association had almost endeared them to him. Everything in the world is comparative. Pleasure, pain, success, disappointment, act in different ways upon different people: the effect depends upon constitution and education. So, dirt and cleanliness are differently regarded by different classes of society. To a well-regulated mind the spectacle of Grif walking in a narrow street, and picking his steps carefully along the gutter, would have caused a sensation of wondering disgust; and a pair of well-polished Wellington boots might naturally have objected to come into contact with the dirty broken bluchers in which Grif's feet slip-slopped constantly. But, in the eyes of Grif, dirty boots were no disgrace; he felt not the shame of them. From the moment he came into possession of a second-hand pair (he had never known the respectable bliss of a new tight-fitting boot, pressing on corn or bunion), they were dragged down to his own level, and forfeited their position in society. They may have been occasionally scraped, but they were never polished; and so they lost their respectability, and became depraved and degraded, and their seams and soles were eaten into with mud and dirt, until they gave up the ghost in the boot world, and trod the earth no more.

It might be gathered from Grif's mutterings, as he walked along the streets the day after he had given Alice the promise to be honest, that his mind was disturbed. "She's right, o' course she is," he said, "I know that well enough; but what was I to do? I know it'll be no go my tryin'. He must be a precious green cove who'd have anythin' to do with me!" and he looked down upon his boots, not with disgust, but with distrust, and stepped out of the gutter on to the pavement. "I never wanted to steal; I only wanted my grub and a blanket. If any swell'd have given 'em to me, it'd have been all right. But they ain't a bit of use to any one, ain't the swells. I've got to try to got a billet as a errand boy. All right. It ain't a bit of good, I know. Every one on 'em knows what sort of a cove I am. But I'll try, at all events. I promised her I would, and I ain't agoin' to deceive her!"

And thus it fell out that Grif had issued from his last night's bed, the packing-case, with the intention, for the first time in his life, of endeavouring to obtain an honest livelihood.

But Grif did not seem destined to be successful. He walked into scores of shops and places of business with the timid yet half defiant inquiry, "Do you want a errand boy?" and was sometimes roughly, often ignominiously, turned out. Scarcely from one of the storekeepers did he obtain a kind word, and it was not in his favour that many of them knew him, and had been in the habit of seeing him prowl about the Melbourne streets. He was not a savoury-looking boy, and did not bear upon his outward appearance any recommendation to the situation he was soliciting. His boots were muddy, his clothes were ragged, his skin was dirty, his hair was matted. He did not add another word to the query, "Do you want a errand boy?" and he did not at all take it in bad part that he was treated with contumely. Indeed, if such a state of mind can be conceived, he was in a sort of measure exultant at each rebuff. "I told her so," he muttered to himself, triumphantly; "who'd have anything to do with a beggar like me? But I promised her I'd try, and I ain't agoin' to deceive her." Two or three times he was surlily spoken to by the policemen, and on each occasion he slunk off without a murmur, not without a dim consciousness that he was absolutely compromising his character by attempting to obtain an honest livelihood. Readers who are not acquainted with colonial life, must not suppose that the police, or that other "institutions," differ in any essential in the colonies from those of the older countries. The colonies are certainly new, but they do not commence their career at the year One, but at the year Eighteen Hundred and Odd. There is just about the same comparative amount of vice and virtue, goodness and wickedness, ruffianism and kind-heartedness, as is to be met with in any other part of the world. Those who say otherwise, and cause others to think otherwise, are in the wrong. There are in the colonies, just as much average unkindness and uncharitableness, just as much charity and benevolence, just as much ignorance, just as noble-mindedness, as can be found amongst of human creatures anywhere. It is true that men get into false positions oftener than in older countries, but that is scarcely to be wondered at in new colonies where people of all classes are thrown indiscriminately together, and have not had time to settle into their proper positions. Those readers will therefore please not to wonder that Grif should be looked upon in precisely the some light as he would be looked upon if he were prowling about London streets. To the Melbourne constable, he was just what a ragged pilfering boy would be to London constable. It did not much affect him. He was accustomed to be buffeted, and cuffed, and maltreated. The world had given him nothing but hard knocks since his birth, and he took them without murmuring. He looked upon it quite as a matter of course when the conservators of public peace spoke harshly to him. But he had a promise to perform; and he resolved to perform it conscientiously. So it happened that he stood at the door of the great place of business of Mr. Zachariah Blemish, with the intention of asking for the situation of an errand boy. The green baize folding doors somewhat daunted him; but hesitating for one moment only, he pushed them open and entered. It chanced that, exactly upon his entrance, Zachariah Blemish came out of his own particular private room for the purpose of putting a question to one of his clerks, and that the great Blemish and the small Grif stood face to face. It was a marvellous contrast! The great Blemish, sleek and shining; the small Grif, rough and muddy: the great Blemish clean and polished, smooth-shaved and glossy; the small Grif, dirty and ragged, with the incipient stubble of manhood upon his chin and cheeks. For nature is impartial in her supply of beard and whiskers. Money will not buy them, nor will grease produce them, though it be puffed and perfumed.

The rich, great Blemish, then, looked down upon the poor little Grif. For a moment, the great man's breath was taken away at the sight. In his counting-house, sanctified by the visits of Members of Parliament, of Ministers, and of merchants of the highest standing--in sight of his books, wherein were daily entered records of transactions amounting to thousands of pounds--the appearance of a ragged boy, and such a ragged boy, was, to speak of it in the mildest terms, an anomaly.

"What do you want here?" asked Blemish.

"Do you want a errand boy?" asked Grif, in return.

"A what?" inquired Blemish, sharply.

"A errand boy," replied Grif, calmly.

At this juncture, a policeman, who had watched Grif enter the office, and who was sycophantishly disposed to protect the interests of wealth and position, popped his head in at the door, and touching his hat, begged Mr. Blemish's pardon, but the boy was a thief, and he thought he was up to no good.