Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/264

254 houses and stores. Here, at the conservative corner, where squatters imbibe, Thomas Coke holds sway. Mark him as he stands, with legs well set beneath a portly frame, head of a Bismarck, on broad, unrounded shoulders, descendant of generations of Irish gentlemen. Blood and breeding tell. A lay-rector, brought up to sniff Popery, sip port, and bag game, ruined by the O'Connell Reforms of which, with clenched fists and flashing eye, he still speaks. Wife and daughters he left in Ireland, so that he might seek fresh fortune and a new home in Australia.

First the paid manager, then the proprietor of rural hostelries, the disendowed rector, with the dignity and grace that never forsook him, played the host for profit, as erstwhile for love. Tom Parnell and "the Radical crew," as he termed it, of this new land he roundly denounced, turning away thereby clients more liberal to Will Short's 'Farmers' Arms' opposite. "He went on Sunday to the church," not to "sit among the boys," but to occupy front seat and to hand round the plate, looking the squire of the parish he was born to be. He wrote each week [to the daughters in Dublin, and sent them means to maintain the position the family had ever filled. For thirty years father and daughters never wavered in their ardent, Hibernian affection. Here, they never saw each other more. To the last, in dusty, sordid, brawling Gum ford, Tom Coke held his head high, ever sober, solid, dignified—a gentleman and Christian, untainted by all the grossness of the bar. God rest thee, Tom Coke, and keep thy memory green!

As Gwyneth passed. Coke's quick eye observed her, as did that of the young bank-clerk spending his spare hours in the only way that suggested itself, lounging and refreshing oft, beneath the hospitable verandah.