The House on Hill Street Read Online Free PDF

everything that is base in mankind.
    Well, all that is about to change, he told himself with a surge of satisfaction. Oh yes indeed. Changes were most definitely afoot in Van Diemen’s Land, and not a moment too soon!
    He crossed the road and walked on down Lower Collins Street and, by the time he reached the junction of Sun Street, he found that he was holding his breath. He always avoided inhaling deeply when he visited the suburb of Wapping, but today, in the heat of early December and with a strong southerly breeze, the stench from the Hobart Town Rivulet was particularly disgusting. More so than ever to Silas, because he had recently returned from his property in the southern midlands, where the air was pure and the river waters pristine.
    He turned left into the narrow lane where Polly Jordan lived and, unable to hold his breath any longer, reluctantly exhaled to breathe in the stench of rotting animal parts and sewage and all the other forms of putrid matter that was washed down the rivulet from the abattoirs and households and mills upstream, only to end in Wapping.
    The surface of the narrow laneway, which for much of the year was a soggy, muddy mess, particularly when the rivulet flooded as it often did, had dried in the summer sun, and several scruffy little girls were playing hopscotch in the dust. Silas scowled. They should have been at school. Women leant against the doorways of conjoined tin shanties and squalid wooden huts, gossiping and enjoying the pleasant weather, seemingly mindless of the fearful stench. In deference to their feelings, Silas resisted the urge to hold a kerchief to his nose. Instead, he tipped the brim of his hat as he passed by. They waved. ‘’Allo Mr Stanford,’ one of them called. The women of Wapping knew Silas Stanford, just as Silas Stanford knew them.
    To Silas, Wapping epitomised the shameful dichotomy that was Hobart Town. Here, where the rivulet wound its way into the Derwent, the muddy streets and the network of poverty-ridden back alleys and lanes were little more than a cesspit, while barely a half a mile to the west were the grand homes of the prosperous and powerful. Silas, in his mission to help redress the balance in whatever way he could, was today making one of his many routine house calls on behalf of the Hobart Town Businessmen’s Philanthropic Society. A whaler by the name of Albert Jordan had died accidentally six weeks before and had been buried at sea. The society was providing his pregnant widow with a monthly rental allowance and weekly supplies of fresh rations for her children.
    Polly Jordan’s poky tin shack was at the far end of the lane, and its front door opened directly onto the street, where two boys were squatting in the dirt playing marbles. Upon his approach, Silas recognised the older boy.
    ‘Charlie Jordan,’ he said sternly, ‘you should be in school.’
    ‘Oh. Hullo, Mr Stanford.’ Nine-year-old Charlie scrambled respectfully to his feet. His mother’s instructions had been well drummed into him for the past month.
    ‘I want you nice and proper, whenever anyone comes from the society, Charlie,’ Polly had ordered, ‘your best behaviour, mind. They’re good people, that lot, and they deserve our respect.’ Her son had correctly read the warning to mean: W e need that lot, Charlie. Don’t go messing things up .
    It had been Silas himself who had founded the Businessmen’s Philanthropic Society five years previously, but most people had lost sight of the fact. Bigger names than his had attached themselves to the cause, many for the purposes of self-promotion, which did not in the least bother Silas. So long as they offered money along with their names, he was perfectly happy for them to reap whatever benefit they wished.
    Respectful though Charlie’s manner was, the boy didn’t appear too dismayed at being caught playing truant.
    ‘I haven’t been able to go to school, Mr Stanford. I’ve had the grippe something awful this past