He is gone; he has left a void in my existence. I had grown to love him
so well; I had been so proud when men praised him. My love was a sort
of self-love,--I had looked upon him in part as the work of my own
hands. I am a long time ere I can settle back, with good heart, to my
pastoral life. Before my cousin went, we cast up our gains and settled
our shares. When he resigned the allowance which Roland had made him,
his father secretly gave to me, for his use, a sum equal to that which I
and Guy Bolding brought into the common stock. Roland had raised a sum
upon mortgage; and while the interest was a trivial deduction from his
income, compared to the former allowance, the capital was much more
useful to his son than a mere yearly payment could have been. Thus,
between us, we had a considerable sum for Australian settlers,--L4,500.
For the first two years we made nothing,--indeed, great part of the
first year was spent in learning our art, at the station of an old
settler. But at the end of the third year, our flocks having then
become very considerable, we cleared a return beyond my most sanguine
expectations. And when my cousin left, just in the sixth year of exile,
our shares amounted to L4,000 each, exclusive of the value of the two
stations. My cousin had at first wished that I should forward his share
to his father; but he soon saw that Roland would never take it, and it
was finally agreed that it should rest in my hands, for me to manage for
him, send him out an interest at five per cent, and devote the surplus
profits to the increase of his capital. I had now, therefore, the
control of L12,000, and we might consider ourselves very respectable
capitalists. I kept on the cattle station, by the aid of the Will-o'-
the-Wisp, for about two years after Vivian's departure (we had then had
it altogether for five). At the end of that time, I sold it and the
stock to great advantage. And the sheep--for the "brand" of which I had
a high reputation--having wonderfully prospered in the mean while, I
thought we might safely extend our speculations into new ventures.
Glad, too, of a change of scene, I left Bolding in charge of the flocks
and bent my course to Adelaide, for the fame of that new settlement had
already disturbed the peace of the Bush. I found Uncle Jack residing
near Adelaide in a very handsome villa, with all the signs and
appurtenances of colonial opulence; and report, perhaps, did not
exaggerate the gains he had made,--so many strings to his bow, and each
arrow, this time, seemed to have gone straight to the white of the
butts. I now thought I had acquired knowledge and caution sufficient to
avail myself of Uncle Jack's ideas, without ruining myself by following
them out in his company; and I saw a kind of retributive justice in
making his brain minister to the fortunes which his ideality
and constructiveness, according to Squills, had served so notably to
impoverish. I must here gratefully acknowledge that I owed much to this
irregular genius. The investigation of the supposed mines had proved
unsatisfactory to Mr. Bullion, and they were not fairly discovered till
a few years after. But Jack had convinced himself of their existence,
and purchased, on his own account, "for an old song," some barren land
which he was persuaded would prove to him a Golconda, one day or other,
under the euphonious title (which, indeed, it ultimately established) of
the "Tibbets' Wheal." The suspension of the mines, however, fortunately
suspended the existence of the Grog and Store Depot, and Uncle Jack was
now assisting in the foundation of Port Philip. Profiting by his
advice, I adventured in that new settlement some timid and wary
purchases, which I resold to considerable advantage. Meanwhile I must
not omit to state briefly what, since my departure from England, had
been the ministerial career of Trevanion.
That refining fastidiousness, that scrupulosity of political conscience,
which had characterized him as an independent member, and often served,
in the opinion both of friend and of foe, to give the attribute of
general impracticability to a mind that, in all details, was so
essentially and laboriously practical, might perhaps have founded
Trevanion's reputation as a minister if he could have been a minister
without colleagues,--if, standing alone, and from the necessary height,
he could have placed, clear and single, before the--world, his exquisite
honesty of purpose and the width of a statesmanship marvellously
accomplished and comprehensive. But Trevanion could not amalgamate with
others, nor subscribe to the discipline of a cabinet in which he was not
the chief, especially in a policy which must have been thoroughly
abhorrent to such a nature,--a policy that, of late years, has
distinguished not one faction alone, but has seemed so forced upon the
more eminent political leaders on either side that they who take the
more charitable view of things may perhaps hold it to arise from the
necessity of the age, fostered by the temper of the public: I mean the
policy of Expediency. Certainly not in this book will I introduce the
angry elements of party politics; and how should I know much about them?
All that I have to say is that, right or wrong, such a policy must have
been at war, every moment, with each principle of Trevanion's
statesmanship, and fretted each fibre of his moral constitution. The
aristocratic combinations which his alliance with the Castleton interest
had brought to his aid served perhaps to fortify his position in the
Cabinet; yet aristocratic combinations were of small avail against what
seemed the atmospherical epidemic of the age. I could see how his
situation had preyed on his mind when I read a paragraph in the
newspapers, "that it was reported, on good authority, that Mr. Trevanion
had tendered his resignation, but had been prevailed upon to withdraw
it, as his retirement at that moment would break up the government."
Some months afterwards came another paragraph, to the effect "that Mr.
Trevanion was taken suddenly ill, and that it was feared his illness was
of a nature to preclude his resuming his official labors." Then
Parliament broke up. Before it met again, Mr. Trevanion was gazetted as
Earl of Ulverstone,--a title that had been once in his family,--and had
left the Administration, unable to encounter the fatigues of office. To
an ordinary man the elevation to an earldom, passing over the lesser
honors in the peerage, would have seemed no mean close to a political
career; but I felt what profound despair of striving against
circumstance for utility--what entanglements with his colleagues, whom
he could neither conscientiously support, nor, according to his high
old-fashioned notions of party honor and etiquette, energetically
oppose--had driven him to abandon that stormy scene in which his
existence had been passed. The House of Lords, to that active
intellect, was as the retirement of some warrior of old into the
cloisters of a convent. The gazette that chronicled the earldom of
Ulverstone was the proclamation that Albert Trevanion lived no more for
the world of public men. And, indeed, from that date his career
vanished out of sight. Trevanion died,--the Earl of Ulverstone made no
sign.
I had hitherto written but twice to Lady Ellinor during my exile,--once
upon the marriage of Fanny with Lord Castleton, which took place about
six months after I sailed from England, and again when thanking her
husband for some rare animals, equine, pastoral, and bovine, which he
had sent as presents to Bolding and myself. I wrote again after
Trevanion's elevation to the peerage, and received, in due time, a reply
confirming all my impressions; for it was full of bitterness and gall,
accusations of the world, fears for the country,--Richelieu himself
could not have taken a gloomier view of things when his levees were
deserted and his power seemed annihilated before the "Day of Dupes."
Only one gleam of comfort appeared to visit Lady Ulverstone's breast,
and thence to settle prospectively over the future of the world,--a
second son had been born to Lord Castleton; to that son would descend
the estates of Ulverstone and the representation of that line
distinguished by Trevanion and enriched by Trevanion's wife. Never was
there a child of such promise! Not Virgil himself, when he called on
the Sicilian Muses to celebrate the advent of a son to Pollio, ever
sounded a loftier strain. Here was one, now, perchance, engaged on
words of two syllables, called:
"By laboring Nature to sustain
The nodding frame of heaven and earth and main,
See to their base restored, earth, sea, and air,
And joyful ages from behind in crowding ranks appear!"
Happy dream which Heaven sends to grandparents,--rebaptism of Hope in
the font whose drops sprinkle the grandchild!
Time flies on; affairs continue to prosper. I am just leaving the bank
at Adelaide with a satisfied air when I am stopped in the street by
bowing acquaintances who never shook me by the hand before. They shake
me by the hand now, and cry, "I wish you joy, sir. That brave fellow,
your namesake, is of course your near relation."
"What do you mean?"
"Have you not seen the papers? Here they are."
"Gallant Conduct of Ensign De Caxton! Promoted to a Lieutenancy
on the Field!"
I wipe my eyes, and cry: "Thank Heaven,--it is my cousin!" Then new
hand-shakings, new groups gather round. I feel taller by the head than
I was before! We grumbling English, always quarrelling with each
other,--the world not wide enough to hold us; and yet, when in the far
land some bold deed is done by a countryman, how we feel that we are
brothers; how our hearts warm to each other! What a letter I wrote
home, and how joyously I went back to the Bush! The Will-o'-the-Wisp
has attained to a cattle station of his own. I go fifty miles out of my
way to tell him the news and give him the newspaper; for he knows now
that his old master, Vivian, is a Cumberland man,--a Caxton. Poor Will-
o'-the-Wisp! The tea that night tasted uncommonly like whiskey-punch!
Father Mathew, forgive us; but if you had been a Cumberland man, and
heard the Will-o'-the-Wisp roaring out, "Blue Bonnets over the Borders,"
I think your tea, too, would not have come out of the--caddy!