“No, for washing.”
The girl gave a wholly surprised stare, then jerked her thumb in the direction of the door.
“Bath-room, third turn to the left, first to the right.”
For a moment I stared back stonily; then I remembered the pearls, and thanked her, adding: “It is only just seven, isn’t it?”
“The very tick when I opened that door. My word, but you’ve got nice ’air when it’s down like that. I like dark ’air, I do. The worst of light ’air”—and she strolled to the looking-glass and examined her own elaborately dressed amber locks complacently—“it’s toney enough, I do allow; but you do ’ave to keep it clean, and no mistake. Now, then, if you wants a bath, you’d best look nippy, for there’s a run on ’em this time o’ morning. Look ’ere! I tell you what do,” she went on, with sudden friendliness; “I’ll pop along and turn it on for you while you get into your wrapper. My word, but that’s pretty, ain’t it? I like them delainey stuffs. Now, don’t you be long. I’ve twenty rooms to see to, I ’ave. But it must be awkward like in a new country. Different from England, ain’t it? A bit more go-ahead, eh?”
“How did you know?” I asked in amazement, conscious of having removed every scrap of label from my luggage.
“Know?” echoed the chambermaid scornfully. “Why, any kid ’ud know that—it’s sticking out a mile!”
There are, of course, hotels in Melbourne, two moderately good and immoderately expensive, ones, and several smaller fry. But it is in the Coffee Palaces that the ordinary people congregate, and it is from the ordinary people, after all, that one can best judge of a nation; the highly educated—I will not say intellectual—and leisured classes being much the same anywhere. Therefore it is in one of the Coffee Palaces that I would advise anyone to stay who really wishes to study the life and character of the Australians. There comes the shrewd commercial traveller, who, in such a scattered country as this, is a person of wide experience, with by no means the safe and easy road before him that is trodden by his English compeers; while from him you are often able to draw some of the clearest and best-balanced judgments of the whole trend of the country and people that it is possible to obtain. Here, also, are the visitors from other States, with, perhaps, not too much money to spend, and the New Zealander and the Tasmanian, the country cousin, the cocky farmer, and the small squatter, gathering most thickly at the time of the Agricultural or Sheep Show, or during that great week when the race for the Melbourne Cup is run.
The places are, of course, as their name implies, teetotal. If you want anything stronger than tea or coffee, or a soft drink, you give the money to the waitress, who sends out for it. But it is a lengthy progress, and one which all your neighbours seem to regard with such an intense suspicion that usually you content yourself with the truly national drink—tea. In the days of one’s youth one used to be told that tea and meat combined would inevitably turn to leather in one’s tummy. In Melbourne I feel that it must be the internal organs themselves which have turned to leather, so that there can be nothing more left to be feared, and one can even, after a while, drink tea and eat oysters at one fell meal with impunity. Of course, a good many children have succumbed to the united effects of boiled beef and tea, which is really the national food. But, then, it all conduces to the survival of the fittest, and until people will condescend to learn the art of vegetable growing, especially in drought-stricken districts, from the despised John Chinaman, it is as well to be prepared for the worst. The tea is usually drunk very strong and sweet, and most often without milk, many Australians having a deep-rooted suspicion of any fluid, even remotely appertaining to that cow which made their young lives such an intolerable burden to them. The workman, the artisan, the labourer, and dock-hands carry their tin billies, and a portion of tea twisted up in a piece of paper, out to their day’s work with them; and in the towns there is always a gas-jet or a fire to be found at which someone will let them boil the water. The swaggies and the wandering army of station hands, the shearer and harvester, they, too, carry their billies in one hand, as inevitably as they carry their swag—their blanket and store of flour, and mackintosh sheet or bit of oilcloth. And for them there are dry, fragrant eucalyptus leaves and twigs—inflammable as tinder to the least spark from flint and steel—to boil their water over; the very fact of its having to be boiled, and therefore insuring some measure of safety from typhoid germs, being one of the best possible excuses for the universal popularity of tea, particularly among such wanderers, and dwellers in country districts.
One of the first difficulties that confronts the new arrival in Melbourne is that of suitable lodgings, when he shall have tired of hotel and Coffee Palace. I know I walked innumerable streets and answered innumerable advertisements, before I began to realize that those lodgings with one or two bedrooms, a sitting-room, and privately served meals—probably presided over by an ubiquitous ex-butler and cook—which we regard so completely as a matter of course in England, are almost unknown in Australia, and so scarce and expensive as to be an impossibility, excepting for the very wealthy. Either a place was frankly a boarding-house, or one was termed a guest, and expected to have meals with the landlady, her family, and occasional friends; once I remember at an up-country lodging the “friend” being an Assyrian pedlar—certainly the most interesting person I ever met there—while someone who could play the piano or recite, and was generally of a friendly turn of mind, was greatly to be preferred.