“A little cloud as big as a man’s hand.”
It is not half a bad thing to “be laid up,” as it is called, for a
reasonable and moderate fraction of one’s life—more especially if a
“bright particular star” is impelled to beam softly and brilliantly upon
one in consequence. Jack, after the inflammation, which gave him “fits”
the first day or two, had subsided, began to enjoy himself after a
subdued fashion. Though food was restricted by the despotic doctor, and
liquor, other than tea, altogether interdicted, there was no embargo
laid upon tobacco. Mr. Redgrave, therefore, used to get over the window
which “gave” into the garden, and have many a soothing and delightful
pipe in the afternoons and the long, clear, bright nights.
He was, I firmly believe, perfectly well able to read; but he pretended
that it made his head ache, so Maud fell into the trap and volunteered
to read Macaulay’s _Essays_, the _Saturday Review_, _Macmillan’s
Magazine_, Market Harborough, and even some choice bits from Tennyson
and Browning. What pleasant mornings these were! Stangrove was out; Mrs.
Jane deep in housekeeping and nursery details; so these two people were
able for a brief season to taste uninterruptedly the charm of pure
intellectual enjoyment, unalloyed by the jar of small duties or the
regretful sense of unperformed work. Convalescence, that regal state and
condition, evades all ordinary responsibilities. It is above duty,
blame, arithmetic and grammar—the scourges and penances of this toiling
pilgrimage we call life. It was joy unspeakable to lie back with
half-closed eyes and hear Maud’s fresh, clear young voice ringing out in
accents of love, or laughter, or denunciation, or sounding strangely
unnatural in the bitterness of the _Saturday’s_ sarcasms.
There was much reviewing of reviewers too, poetizing upon poets;
philosophizing upon philosophers. Arguments and comments were
plentifully superinduced by the variety of texts. A week on board ship
is equal to a year on land—a day’s tending of an invalid involves a
feeling of dominancy and ownership, which renders the experience equal
in completeness to a week on shipboard. According to this scale of
reckoning, Maud Stangrove and John Redgrave had protracted opportunities
of knowing each other’s characters, amounting in all to such duration of
time as fully justified them in contracting that morally indissoluble
betrothal called an “engagement.” This unlimited liability they actually
had the temerity to enter into, and in the usual solemn manner sign,
seal, and ratify, before John Redgrave left Juandah, perfectly recovered
and unutterably happy.
He, of course, immediately acquainted Stangrove with the stupendous and
miraculous fact, which that unimaginative personage received with his
usual coolness.
“Maud is of age,” he remarked, “and is fully entitled to choose for
herself. She could not have chosen a better fellow; but I wish that
confounded mortgage of yours was sold for sewing guards, or whatever the
women buy obsolete deeds for. I was quite startled by seeing ‘Know all
men by these presents’ glaring at me on Jane’s work-table the other day.
I hate the look even of one; it’s like the skin of a dead serpent.”
“Pooh! pooh!” said Jack, “you don’t think the trifle of debt I owe upon
60,000 sheep—which they will be and more by lambing time—worth thinking
seriously about. Why, Mildmay Shrood told me when I was down——”
“Just what he wished you to believe, I dare say. He’s a good fellow, as
men of money go, I grant you; but he would put his thumb or his foot on
you if the money market fell with as little compunction as I feel for
this fellow here.” And Mark trod savagely upon a large brown flat
insect, which was making its way in a blundering, purblind fashion from
a decayed log to the wood-pile.
“I’m sorry that I can’t show as clear a sheet as I could have done once
upon a time, old fellow,” said Jack. “But, on the other hand, nothing
venture nothing have. If things turn out as I expect, please God, Maud
shall have everything in the wide world that she can frame a wish for.”
“And if not—you must pardon me for looking on the dark side of things—I
have so much more often seen that colour come up——”
“If not,” said Jack, “if not—I will never ask her or any woman to share
my poverty. Our engagement must remain as it is till I can tell with
some show of accuracy how things are likely to go. You may trust me not
to hurry her.”
“I trust you in that and in far more important matters,” returned Mark,
as he wrung his hand. “Henceforth you are our brother, save in name—let
things go as they will—but I must do my best for Maud.”
“Do you think I shall place a single obstacle in your way? If I thought
I could not add some colour and richness to her life, which—pardon me—it
lacks here, I would turn away now and never see her face more.”
* * * * *
When Jack returned to his home and his duties he displayed an amount of
interest in the statistics and general progress of the station which
amazed and delighted Mr. M‘Nab. That energetic personage had been
toiling away by himself since the news, much exaggerated, of Mr.
Redgrave’s adventure with his ordinary conscientious regularity.
Everything was in apple-pie order. The minimization of labour had been
carried out almost to a fault, as Jack thought, when he had to unsaddle
and feed his own horse, and, Mr. M‘Nab being absent, and Monsieur Dubois
gone for a load of wood, the place looked desolate enough after the
home-like, old-fashioned Juandah. However, Jack comforted himself with
thinking that this was the straight road to clearing off the mortgage—to
a triumphant sale of a fully stocked run, and to the final possession of
a “kingdom by the sea,” or beyond sea, in which Maud Stangrove should
reign, when “the happy princess followed him.”
Day after day he accompanied M‘Nab in long rides from one end of the run
to the other. With him he counted the sheep wherever such counting might
be necessary. He took his turn at weighing of rations, and in every way
worked with hand and head as hard (so M‘Nab, with grim humour, asserted)
as if he had been his own overseer.
In the rare intervals of leisure, when that embodiment of
concentrativeness permitted his thoughts to dwell upon any subject other
than sheep, he could not avoid the inference that the proprietor of
Gondaree was a changed man. Up to this turning-point of his life John
Redgrave had been content to work fairly, sometimes fiercely, with head
or hand; but, in any case, to accept success or failure with undisturbed
serenity. Now it was otherwise. He examined searchingly the whole
working of the establishment, and satisfied himself, much to M‘Nab’s
gratification, of the condition and well-being of each division of the
stock, of the plant, and machinery of the place. He went carefully
through the account-books, and verified the debits and credits, with an
accuracy which his lieutenant had not believed to be in him, as he
afterwards said. He compiled a statement of the financial position of
Gondaree, which, after various testings and corrections, was agreed
between them to be arithmetically, mathematically, indisputably exact.
He had fully decided to sell. The sheep were in fine condition, severely
culled, and originally well chosen. The run was of the best possible
quality, in full working order, and capable of yet greater development.
He could not imagine its fetching less than the highest market price. At
that time such a run, so stocked, so improved, was held to be good value
for twenty-five shillings per head. It was not impossible or even
unlikely that two competing buyers might run it up to twenty-seven and
sixpence. The lesser price would pay off the mortgage—he had no other
debts in the world—and leave him, say, forty or fifty thousand pounds.
This was the account current he had ciphered out many and many a time.
It was written upon sheets of paper, large and small, upon
blotting-pads, upon stray leaves of journals, and pretty well engraven
upon a less perishable, more retentive, material—the heart of John
Redgrave.
Something in this wise were the figures:—
10,000 fat sheep, now ready for market at, say, £7,500
15_s._
50,000 sheep, with station, stores, furniture, £62,500
implements, horses, drays, &c., all given in at, say,
25_s._
————
£70,000
Mortgage due Bank of N. Holland £25,000
Interest, commission, incidentals, and £5,000
expenses overlooked, say
——— £30,000
———-
£40,000
As far as any one could make out, judging from the present prices,
Gondaree was as safe to sell at this estimate as Mr. Stangrove’s fast,
handsome buggy horses—young, sound, and a dead match—were to bring fifty
pounds in any sale-yard in the colonies. Here was a magnificent surplus.
Say, forty thousand pounds. That was enough, surely. A large proportion
would of course remain on mortgage, and, as he would receive one-third
or one-half cash, it could not be better placed, receiving, as he would,
eight per cent. interest, the ordinary tariff between squatter and
squatter. Should he not sell before shearing, and realize this Aladdin’s
Palace, into which the Princess was ready to step, at once and without
delay?
He could not exactly afford the train of slaves, with diamonds as big as
pigeons’ eggs, and rubies and emeralds to match; but on three or four
thousand a year a decent approximation to rational luxury might be
reached. Should he decide at once, and, as with poor, dear, old,
despised _little_ Marshmead, scribble off the fatal advertisement and
abide the issue?
He took up his pen. But why do so few people sell out mining shares,
railway debentures, seductive scrip of all sorts, at exactly the maximum
of profit? He wavered. Then he concluded to reap the profit of the last,
_really_ the last shearing; wait till the 20,000 lambs were fit to
count, and thus make sure—of course it was a moral certainty—of an
additional twenty thousand pounds. Prices would keep up at least another
couple of years—that would be long enough for him.
So he decided to see his shearing over, and to have everything fit to
deliver, at a week’s notice, by the time the coming crop of lambs should
be weanable and countable. While this great resolve was maturing, the
fiercely bright summer days, each about sixteen hours long, were gliding
by. The stars burned nightly in the unclouded heavens, in which so pure
was the atmosphere, so free from the slightest hint of mist or storm,
that the most distant denizen of the thought-untravelled stellar waste
shone golden-clear. Even in the sultry monotony of that changeless
sea-like desert summer is not endless. Autumn, with an earlier twilight,
a keener breath of early morn, a shorter, scarce less burning day,
advanced, followed with slow but firm step the fading summer-time.
* * * * *
“So the fat sheep are drafted, tar-branded, and fairly on the road at
last,” said Mr. Redgrave, after a week’s tolerably sharp work. “They
look very prime. I hope they will meet as good a market as they
deserve.”
“Never a better lot left the Warroo,” said M‘Nab; “the wethers are very
even, and extraordinary weights. Better sheep I never handled. The
drover is a good steady fellow; and I’ll catch them up before they get
near the train.”
“The season has been dry the last month or two,” remarked Jack; “after
those unlucky floods one felt as if it never would be too dry again; but
it looks like it now for all that.”
“The feed is not so good as it might be on the road, they say,” agreed
M‘Nab; “but six weeks’ steady driving will take them to the train; and
they will lose very little condition in that time. If we don’t top the
market we ought to do.”
Within a few weeks after this conversation Jack found himself sole
denizen of Gondaree, M‘Nab having taken himself off by the mail,
allowing just sufficient time for him to catch the sheep and organize
the order in which they should be “trained” for the Melbourne market.
With the first mail after his departure, Jack discovered to his great
vexation that a sudden and serious fall had taken place in fat stock.
The season had, without any great demonstration of dryness, been
consistently free from rain. It was cool and breezy—a hopeful condition,
Jack thought. It was a very bad sign with the older residents.
It has been remarked, by persons of lengthened Australian experience,
that the sudden fluctuations in price which have occurred with a curious
periodicity since there has been stock enough in the colonies to found
theories upon, have usually as little warning as the alarm of fire in a
theatre. One person, scenting the coming danger, rises and steals
quietly out, a few more follow with ill-concealed haste, then with
sudden terror starts up every creature in the building, and the
resistless agony of the panic is in full operation.
So, apparently, is it with those mighty and disastrous changes in the
value of live stock, which have ever, in the history of Australia,
pulled men’s houses about their ears, like those of cards. They have
whelmed alike the grizzled pioneer after a life of toil, the youthful
capitalist in the first year of his first purchase, the hoary merchant,
and the gambling speculator in one tidal wave of ruin. Before such an
under-current sets in the apparent dearth of stock, in a land full of
sheep and cattle, from Cooktown to the county of Cumberland, is
curiously noticeable. Nobody will sell their oldest ewes, their most
decrepit cows; it pays so much better to hold on. Bills, when times and
credit are good, are renewed (with, of course, interest added), and
every financial accommodation is resorted to rather than that the
sanguine stockholder should be compelled to slay the goose which (in his
opinion) is so prolific of the golden eggs, in the guise of wool and
increase.
So the game goes on, until some fine day the money-market tightens,
after its deadly, unforeseen, boa-constrictor fashion. The ominous cry
of fire, or its financial synonym, is raised. A few wary or fortunate
operators “get out;” but for the rank and file, who have been trusting
to continuous good luck, high prices, and a “change in the climate for
the better,” the stampede of the panic is their only portion. In all
lost battles of life, more than once has it chanced that “the brave in
that trampling multitude had a fearful death to die.”
Similar storm-signals now smote upon Jack’s unaccustomed ear.
“We are sorry to note that all our correspondents speak of continued
absence of rain in their particular localities. A drought is beginning
to arouse the fears of stockholders, and prices of fat and store stock
have fallen rapidly.” Such was the utterance of the _Warroo Watchman_.
This was the letter from his town agents, to whom he had entrusted the
sale of the much-considered fat sheep:—
“Dear Sir,—If you haven’t started your fat sheep, keep them back till
you hear again from us.
“Market glutted—all stock down.
“Yours faithfully,
“DRAWE & BACKWELL.”
This looked bad. What a nuisance it was! For the last two years he
couldn’t have gone wrong, at whatever time he had despatched them; a
fair average price had been always obtainable; and now, just when
everything was marked out, the whole arrangements incapable of failure
in any way—here the confounded demand breaks down, and upsets all a
man’s calculations!
Something after this fashion ran Jack’s thoughts. What should he do?
Bringing the sheep back again was expensive, undignified, and would by
no means aid in decreasing the debt, which had lately become rather a
_bête noir_ in his daily imaginings. The Warroo was not sufficiently
advanced for the telegraph, or he might have held converse with the
ready-witted M‘Nab, who would have been certain to strike out the most
favourable line of action. He had nothing for it but to write to Drawe
and Backwell, to say that he _had_ sent forward the sheep; that they
must communicate with M‘Nab, in charge, and do the best they could under
the circumstances.
Up to this period of the enterprise John Redgrave, in despite of the
episodes of the wool-shed and the flood, had suffered from no anxiety as
to the ultimate success of the great venture. The prices of wool and
sheep, store, fat, ewes and lambs, culls—everything that could be
counted and could run out of a yard—had been firm and adamantine, as the
bullion in the vaults of the Bank of England. Every sort, kind, and
condition of sheep was worth half-a-sovereign, two to a pound, minimum;
one pound a head with station; without, ten shillings.
Now there seemed a danger of the citadel being undermined, of the great
fabric of investment and adventure—built up by a free expenditure of
capital and energy during the last five years—melting away like an
iceberg before the south wind. With such a thaw—resolving into primitive
elements the gilded temple—down would go the fame and fortune of John
Redgrave, and, for aught he cared, down might go his life, and stilled
for ever might be those restless heart-beats. Thus, when by a sudden
intuitive forecast the shadow of misfortune fell athwart the sunlight of
his soul, did he for an instant feel the dull agony of despair—thus
spoke he to his saddened spirit.
With the first mail that was due after M‘Nab’s departure, allowing him
time to reach the sheep, came a letter, as thus—“Sheep-market is
bad—decidedly bad, with no hope of getting better. I can keep the sheep
about Echuca till I get your answer. Shall I send them on, or return? My
advice is to sell at all hazards.”
Jack returned answer that he was to do whatever he thought best, and to
use his own discretion unreservedly.
The sheep were sold accordingly. They brought eight shillings and
tenpence all round, which just returned, clear of all expenses, eight
shillings net. A magnificent price truly, and a terrible come-down from
the fourteen or fifteen shillings which had been the regular price, for
years past, of large, aged, prime sheep, as were the Gondaree lot.
M‘Nab was back in remarkably quick time after this untoward outcome of
so much care and forethought, and planning and contriving.
“The sheep were beautifully driven; I never saw a lot better looked
after; they showed first-rate in the yards at Newmarket. All the
drovers, butchers, and agents said there hadn’t been a lot in like them
this season. They topped the market, but what sort of a market was
it?—rushed and glutted with all kinds of half-fat stock, going for
nothing. And cattle down too—regular store prices; a most miserable
sight.”
“And what’s said about wool and stations?” inquired Jack.
“That there’s going to be the devil to pay; there’s a tremendous
commercial panic in England. Discount up to war figures. The great
dissenting bankers—Underend, Burney & Co.—gone for any sum you like to
mention. Run on the Bank of England. Panic on the Stock Exchange. The
end of the world, as far as accommodation is concerned!”
“By Jove!” said Jack, “could anything have been more unlucky? I wish to
heavens that I had sold out three months since, though that might only
have landed some other unlucky beggar in the same fix. There’s no chance
of selling now at any price?”
“Sell!” answered M‘Nab, and here he looked kindly and almost pitifully
at Jack, on whose face there was a dark and troubled look, such as he
had never seen there in bygone mishaps. “There won’t be a station sold
for the next three years, except at prices which will leave the owners
the clothes they wear, and not a half-crown to put in the
breeches-pocket either.”
“What in the world shall I do?” groaned Jack. “I would have given much
to have cleared out after shearing.”
“Well, sir,” said M‘Nab, sitting down and putting on a calm,
argumentative look, “let us look at the matter both ways. No doubt the
outlook is gloomy; but here we have the place and the stock. There’s not
a station in the colonies that can be worked at a less annual expense.
Surely we can carry on and pay interest on the mortgage till times come
round.”
“Perhaps,” said Jack, disconsolately. “But suppose times _don’t_ come
round; and suppose the Bank presses for their money?”
“The times _will_ change and improve,” said M‘Nab, impressively, “as
surely as the sun will shine after the next stormy day, whenever that
may be. And as for the Bank, they seldom push any customer in whom they
have confidence, and who has a real good property at his back.”
“I trust so. But how in the world shall I ever grub on for three or four
years more in this infernal wilderness, waiting for better seasons, and
a rise in the market, which, for all we know, may never come?”
“My dear sir,” said M‘Nab, “nothing but patience and doggedness ever did
any good in stock matters yet. It’s the men that stick to their runs and
their cattle and sheep, in spite of losses and danger, and
discouragement and misery, that have always come out in the end with the
tremendous profits that from time to time have always been realized in
Australia, and _will again_. Look at old Ruggie M‘Alister, coming back
to his place one day, after counting out his two flocks to a person sent
up to take charge by his agents, finding the place burnt down, the hut
robbed, the cook speared, and a big black fellow swimming the Murray
with his best double-barrelled gun in his mouth. There was cause for
despair for ye, if ye like!”
“And what did your friend do?”
“Shot the black fellow with his carbine; dived for the double-barrel.
Lived under a dray with the bailiff till after shearing; got the run out
of debt, and is worth ten thousand a year, and has a villa near
Melbourne this minute.”
“I could have done that _once_,” answered Jack; “but whether I am
growing old, or have only one supply of energy, which is exhausted, I
know not; I can’t face the idea of all the work, and daily drudgery, and
endless monotony—over again—over again!”
“There’s nothing else to be done, sir. You’ll think better of it
to-morrow. And you needn’t bother about my salary. We’ll work together,
and I’ll never ask you for a penny of it till better times come.”
Next day, as was his custom, Jack did not find the storm-signals so
unmistakable or portentous. As M‘Nab had very properly pointed out,
there were still the first-class, fully-improved run, the sixty thousand
sheep. The clip would be large and well got up, in spite of the fall in
the value of the carcase.
Underend, Burneys, might totter and fall, crushing under the ruins of a
long-decayed house, tunnelled and worm-eaten with usury, the trusting
friend, the confiding public; but unless mankind and womenkind abandoned
those garments, delicate, indispensable, and universally suitable from
India to the Pole, the demand for wool, like that for gold, might
slacken, but could not cease. This confounded American war would come to
an end. Why the deuce could they not put off this insane, suicidal
contest for a year or two? The season would improve—even that was
against a man. It looked drier, and yet more dry, every day he got up.
Whereas, at Marshmead—ah! why, why did he ever leave that lovely (though
flattish—but never mind), cool, green, regularly raining Eden? “Sad was
the hour and luckless was the day”—as Hassan the camel-driver said. But
if he had never left it he would never have seen Maud. “So, after all,
it is Kismet. The will of Allah must be done!”
With this rather unorthodox consolation Jack ended his soliloquy, and
prepared to march sternly along the path of duty, though the flowerets
lay withered by the wayside, the surges of the shoreless sea of Ruin
sounded sullenly in his ears, and though the illuminating image of Maud
Stangrove, smiling welcome with eyes and brow, was hidden by mists and
storm-rack.
* * * * *
All things went on much as usual; but it was like the routine of a
household in which there has been a death. Jack’s favourite of all the
Lares and Penates had always been Hope. Her image was not shattered; but
the light and colour had faded from the serenely glowing lineaments. The
calm eyes that had looked forth over every marvel of earth and sea and
sky—resting on the far mountains, illumined by golden gleams from the
Eternal Throne—were now rayless.
Hope-inspired, John Redgrave was and had proved himself capable of
bodily and mental labour of no mean order—of self-denial severe and
enduring. But severed from the probability of attainment of success, of
eventual triumph, he was prone to a state of feeling as of the cheetah
that has missed the prey, and after a succession of lightning-like
bounds retires sullenly to hood and keeper.
As soon as he could assure himself that he was in a proper and befitting
state of mind, he rode down to Juandah, making the journey in a very
different tone and temper from the last. He did not find that his
altered prospects had made his friends less cordial; on the contrary, it
seemed to him that never before was he so manifestly the _bien-venu_ as
on this occasion. Maud sang and played, and talked cheerily, and with a
slight preference for the minor key, which harmonized with the sore and
bruised spirit of the guest. Mrs. Stangrove, too, exerted herself to the
extent of sprightliness wonderful to behold. When a man is suffering in
mind, body, or estate, the sympathy of sincere, unworldly women—and all
women are unworldly with those they love—is soothing, tender, and
inexpressively healing. As the dark-souled physician in the _Fair Maid
of Perth_ was enabled by the perfection of his art to apply to the
severed hand of the knight the unguent which stilled his raging torment
at a touch, so the sweet eyes and the soft tones of Maud Stangrove
cooled and composed his fevered soul. Mark Stangrove, also, was
unusually genial, even hilarious.
“This insatiable Warroo is going to have another dig at us,” he said.
“We have just _not_ escaped a flood, and now we are in for a drought.
That means a few years more of the mill for us. Well, we’re all in the
same boat; we must stick to the oars, keep a good look out, and weather
it out together.”
“A good look out!” echoed Jack. “I see nothing but rocks and breakers.”
“Come, come, old fellow; a capful of wind, or even a heavy gale, doesn’t
mean total wreck always. We shall, of course, have to take in sail,
throw cargo over, and all that. Seriously, things are going to be bad in
more ways than one. I’m not altogether taken by surprise; I’ve seen it
before; but I don’t wish to crow over you for all that. I think in some
ways you are better off than I am.”
“How do you make that out?”
“Why, though I am a good deal under-stocked, this drought will put me
ever so much about. I shall lose a lot of my lambs and calves, have to
travel all the sheep, and, generally, be compelled to spend money and
lose stock right and left till rain comes again.”
“You can afford it,” said Jack, “and I can’t; it will be the straw that
breaks the camel’s back. A long drought means unsaleable stock—which
means increase of debt, interest, and principal—which means ruin.”
“You go too fast, my dear fellow. I used to tell you that you were going
to be rich rather more quickly than I fancied probable; and now you are
determined to be ruined with equal rapidity. I must tell Maud to read
you a sermon upon patience and perseverance.”
“I deserve no quarter from her or from you either,” professed Jack, who
was now _en pénitence_ all round, “for dragging her into this uncertain,
anxious life of mine.”
“Well, accidents will happen, you know. I blame those rascally
bushrangers and your gun-shot wound for it all; no woman can nurse any
fellow, under a hundred, without appropriating him. But I’ll take care
that you are not married till you are something more than a bank
overseer, which is a different thing from a bank manager, you know.”
“Hang all banks and bank officials, from the board of directors to the
junior messenger,” fulminated Jack, “though, as they only sell money to
fools like me, who choose to buy, they are scarcely to blame either. And
now, old fellow, as I’ve relieved my mind, we’ll go in and be civil to
the ladies. Even if times are bad, one must not quite forget to be a
gentleman. Thank you, once and for all, old fellow, for your true
kindness.”
After this Jack put away his Skeleton gently, though firmly, into his
closet, and, turning the key, compelled him there to abide, only
permitting him to come out and sit by the fire with him occasionally
when no one was present, or to walk cheerfully round the room when he
was dressing in the morning—or to wake him before earliest dawn and
whisper in his ear till he rose desperately at the first faint streak of
day. But these being the regularly allotted periods and interviews,
lawfully to be claimed and recognized by all well-bred skeletons and
their proprietors, Jack could not with any conscience grumble.
He explained the whole state of affairs to Maud, who, to his surprise,
took it coolly, and, like Mark, said “that things might not turn out so
badly. That every one agreed that his station was very well managed, and
that probably he might overrate the probability of loss. That, whether
or no, she knew he would fight it out manfully—and that she would
wait—oh, yes! years upon years—as long as he would promise to think of
her, and for her, now and then.”
So they parted, Jack thinking how difficult it was to understand women.
He would have sworn that the fiery girl, whose petulances had so often
amused him, would have been as deeply disappointed, as intolerant of the
delay, as himself. And now here she was calmly looking forward to years
of stocking-mending and child-nursing on the Warroo before they could be
married, as if she had never dreamed of a higher life, to be realized in
a few short months.
John Redgrave had never experienced, and therefore had not realized, the
most deeply-rooted attribute of woman’s manifold nature—the capacity for
self-sacrifice. Rarely can he who is blessed with her first pure love
overtax its wondrous endurance—its angelic tenderness.
With right down hard work, as with the conscientious performance of
military duty, in the trenches or otherwise, before the enemy, much of
the darker portion of the spirit’s gloom disappears. Man is a working
animal—civilization notwithstanding; and an undecided mental condition,
combined with bodily inaction, has ever produced the direst forms of
misery to which our kind is subjected here below.
So day after day saw Jack and his faithful subject fully occupied from
dawn to sunset in the ordinary routine of station work. The personal
labour devolving upon each was tolerably severe, but the exact number of
hands allotted to the place by the inexorable M‘Nab was rigidly adhered
to, and not an extra boy even would he hear of until the inevitable
month before shearing, when all ordinary labour laws must perforce be
suspended.
The four boundary-riders, all active, steady men, young or in the prime
of life, well-paid and well-housed, did their duty regularly and
efficiently. It was part of M‘Nab’s creed that, if you kept a man at all
you should pay him well, and otherwise minister to his well-being. In
cheap labour there was no economy; and for anything like
indifferently-performed work he had a dislike almost amounting to
abhorrence. He and Jack transacted all the business that of right
appertained to the home station. They by turns convoyed the increasingly
numerous and hungry flocks of travelling sheep; took out the rations;
laid the poisoned meat, which, spread over the run in cartloads, was
daily returning an equivalent in dead eagles, dogs, and dingoes; counted
the sheep regularly; and all this time there was not a sheep-skin
unaccounted for—not a nail or a rail out of order in the whole
establishment.
So fared all things until the time for shearing drew nigh. Jack felt
quite delighted at the first engagement of washers, the first appearance
of three or four shearers, with their big swags and low-conditioned
horses, having journeyed from far land where winter was not wholly
obsolete as a potentate, and did not stand for a mere section of the
year between autumn and spring. The changed appearance of the
long-silent huts was pleasant to his eye; the daily increase of strange
voices and unembarrassed, careless talk; the giving out of rations; the
arrangement of the steam-engine; the arrival of teamsters—all these
things heralded the cheerful, toilsome, jostling shearing-time, half
festive, half burdensome, yet still combining the pains and pleasures of
harvest.