She drove him out to Randwick and on the way they managed to leave alone the tender scar which was their voyage aboard the Leviathan. When he proposed a game of cards she found herself, against her better judgement, asking if he could accept her IOU. 65

Bishop Dancer's Ferret

Bishop Dancer is a man you would most quickly understand if you saw him on a Saturday in Camden, dressed in his red hunting jacket and high black boots, leaning forward to accept some hot toddy from the stirrup cup. He had a handsome ruddy face which these days extended to his crown. What hair remained clung to the sides and back of his head; it was fine and white, cut very short, as was his beard. With no mitre to assist you, you might be inclined to think him a gentleman farmer. He had big thighs, strong shoulders, and although you could see the man had a belly, it was not one of your featherdown bellies, but a firm one. He sat well on his horse and it was a good specimen, too-sixteen hands and no stockhorse in its breeding. Dancer could not, of course he could not, have clergy who were notorious around the track, who lost their horses or their carriages because they heard a horse was "going to try." Sydney-a venal citywas too puritanical to allow such a thing. But had you informed Dancer of this story after dinner, he would have found it funny. He could find nothing in his heart against the races and he left that sort of raging to the Baptists or Methodists. The true Church of England, he would have felt (but never said) was the Church of gentlemen. Sometimes gentlemen incur debts. He had interviewed Oscar closely on his arrival. He put him through his paces, questioning the fidgety fellow as closely as a candidate from Cambridge. He was looking for signs of this Broad Church heresy. He could find none. He accepted Virgin birth, the physical Resurrection, the loaves and fishes. The Bishop allowed him his view on Genesis with a little uneasiness, but it was no longer politic to make a fuss about this matter. He soon sniffed out, however, Oscar's Low Church background. In normal circumstances he would not have cared for it at all. He loathed Evangelicals with all their foot-thumping "enthusiasm."

; Bishop Dancer's Ferret

He did not like their "bare boards" approach to ritual, and there was plenty of this in Oscar's attitude. Bishop Dancer was delighted to find it so. "This fellah," he told himself, "will be my ferret out at Randwick." And when he thought it, he imagined Oscar quite literally as a ferret, his long white neck disappearing down in a hole.

| He asked the untidy applicant about candles on the altar. Oscar I; throught they should be lit only for illumination. He asked about vestments. Oscar thought a simple surplice quite acceptable, but preferred a plain black cassock. He asked about genuflexion. Oscar confessed himself uncomfortable with the practice.

Bishop Dancer became quite hearty. He had the young man stay to luncheon. He had him fed beef, although the beef was cold, and was not even mildly disconcerted when the young man refused his claret. There was going to be fun out at Randwick, that bed of Puseyites with all their popish ritual. There would be a firstclass row out there, but he would win. He must win. For he had, by one of those anomalies which made the diocese so interesting, the right to appoint the incumbent himself. If the Randwick vestry did not like it, they could go over to the Church of Rome. They;, would not get their new parson dressing up in white silk and! red satin. This one was a nervous little fellow, the Bishop judged, I but he would not budge on this issue. He would not be susceptible j! to Tractarians, only to missionaries. Even at luncheon he per[sisted with a request that he be sent "up-country" (wherever i that might be-when asked he could not say). Bishop Dancer told him I bluntly that mission work was a waste of time. The blacks were dying

< off like flies, and if he doubted this he should look at the streets of I Sydney, man, and note the condition of the specimens he saw there.; The field was over-supplied with missionaries and Methodists fighting f Baptists to see who could give the "poor wretches" the greater numj ber of blankets. Leave the blacks to the Dissenters, Dancer advised. [God had work for him to do at Randwick.

; It did not occur to Oscar that a bishop might lie to him. He accepted \ Dancer's story and, indeed, relayed it to Theophilus who disseminated Î it further through the columns of The Times. It was because of this gullibility that Oscar allowed himself to be placed almost next door to the notorious Randwick racecourse. He was Bishop Dancer's ferret, but it was not Kebble, Pusey and Newman who were to cause him the greatest stress in his new parish, but Volunteer, Rioter, Atlanta, Mnemon, and Kildare.

66

St John's

Sydney was a blinding place. It made him squint. The stories of the gospel lay across the harsh landscape like sheets of newspaper on a polished floor. They slid, slipped, did not connect to anything beneath them. It was a place without moss or lichen, and the people scrabbling to make a place like troops caught under fire on hard soil. St John's at Randwick was built from red brick with very white mortar. The fine clay dust that overlay everything, even the cypress hedge beside the vicarage, could not soften the feeling of the place. It was all harsh edges like facets of convict-broken rock.

He had been ready to minister to his flock, but found them to be creatures of their landscape. They did not embrace him, but rather stood their distance. He found their conversation as direct as nails. They found his to be tangled, its point as elusive as the end of a mishandled skein. They warned him about snakes, spiders and the advisability of locking his windows at night. He thought the fault was with himself. He had his housekeeper bake scones and invited the vestry to tea. They sat stiffly on their chairs and conversation could not be got under way. He felt young, inadequate, inexperienced. He asked them about the parishioners, but it seemed they knew almost nothing. Only when he asked if there were natives in the congregation did they show themselves capable of smiling.

They knew he was Dancer's man. They waited and watched. They found his form of service as unappetizing as unbuttered bread.

He prayed to God to give him the key to their hearts. He had nothing else to do but pray and write his sermons. In the long winter afternoons he listened to the drum of horses' hooves. He sent his sixteen volumes of track records to Mr Stratton and swore never to gamble again. He had promised God in the midst of that dreadful storm. There was reason enough for Mr Stratton to gamble, but not for him. He was

•7 K f.

St John's

clothed and provided for. He had shelter enough for a family of eight. He had three hundred pounds a year, and a housekeeper to feed him mutton every night. He did not require wealth. He coveted nothing. The horses drummed through the afternoon. The track was hard in April but softened with the rains in May. He preached sermons against

gambling.

It was Mrs Judd, his housekeeper, who warned him off his gambling sermons and told him about the "generous gents" who not only contributed to the church's coffers but kept book at the nearby racecourse. This information gave him the excuse his cunning gambler's mind required. He must go to the course and see for himself.

Because he could not bet with men he had preached against, he got himself involved with a series of messengers, runners, touts and spivs who carried his money away and brought precious little of it back. He followed no system. He was just having "some fun" just like a smoker might have "just one" borrowed cigarette. The touts and runners led him, in due course, to the floating two-up games at the five hotels which lay, strung like beads on the deuce's necklace, between Randwick and St Andrew's. There was fan-tan down in George Street. There was swy and poker and every card game to be imagined among the taverns down in Paddington. Oscar had never seen such a passion for gambling. It was not confined to certain types or classes. It seemed to be the chief industry of the colony.