When a man has suffered the indignity of actual incarceration, a savour
of irrevocable dishonour is apt to cling to the sensation, however
innocent the victim may subsequently be proved. Some robes once soiled
cannot be washed white. The bloom cannot be replaced upon the blushing
fruit. And Ernest sorrowfully reflected that, for all future time,
if one of those ruthless vivisectors, a cross-examining barrister,
chose to ask him, as a witness before a crowded court, whether or not
he had ever been in gaol charged with highway robbery, he would be
compelled to answer ‘yes,’ with the privilege of explanation after
that categorical answer, of course. Much regretful and indignant
thought passed through his mind before lunch. The last Neuchamp that
had heard a prison door barred behind him was enclosed by a troop of
Ironside dragoons in the donjon at Neuchampstead, while they merrily
revelled above, and praised the malignant’s ale and serving-maids.
That was honourable captivity. But to be boxed up in ‘the logs’ of
a bush township, side by side with a confessed robber and swindler!
It was hard! The star of the Neuchamps was for a time under an evil
influence. However, after a remarkably good lunch and a bottle of Bass
(dear to England’s subalterns in every land of exile) a more cheerful
and philosophical frame of mind succeeded. After all, anybody might be
arrested by mistake. No one would ever hear of it, any more than of the
detention of Livingstone for a day by King Unilury on the Moombitonja.
His friends at Morahmee would _never_ discover it, that was as certain
as anything could be.
He ‘had a great mind,’ as the phrase runs, to buy a horse, and so
relieve himself, for the future, from all risk of evil communications,
and other misfortune, which society seemed, with one accord, to trace
directly to his using his own proper legs for purposes of locomotion.
But he was a true reformer in this one particular. He was not less
obstinate than enthusiastic, and he told himself, as he had commenced
his journey on foot, that he would so end it, and complete the distance
to Garrandilla in spite of all the strange people in this very strange
country. He had his own secret doubts as to whether he would need much
persuasion to ride or drive whenever he returned to Sydney. But in the
meanwhile, and until he was fairly landed at Garrandilla——
Having plentifully refreshed himself, and even provided something
edible in case of accidents, he accordingly left town very early next
morning, shouldering his knapsack, as usual, and cleared off about ten
miles of his journey in the comparative coolness of early morn.
Here he discovered a friendly creek, possessing shade and water, so
flinging himself on the sward, he addressed himself to some corned beef
with a vigour unabated by previous misfortunes.
Preoccupied with these minute but necessary details, he did not observe
that another man had, like him, selected the spot as appropriate to
rest, if not to refreshment. The personage whom he so suddenly descried
was not pedestrianising, like him, as two serviceable roadsters
grazed within a few yards, their fore legs confined by the short chain
attached to two leather straps, which had more than once attracted his
attention in his travels. In one respect the new traveller differed
from any other wayfarer whom Mr. Neuchamp had as yet encountered; for,
in spite of the inconveniences to which his late incautious acceptance
of companionship had subjected him, he could not refrain from a close
examination of the stranger. The unknown was apparently not about to
make or to drink a pot of tea. Neither was he smoking, preparing to
smoke, nor obviously having just finished smoking.
‘Good-morning,’ said this person, bending a pair of exceedingly keen
gray eyes upon Ernest. ‘Travelling early, like myself. Bound for Nubba?’
‘Yes!’ answered Ernest.
‘Going any farther?’
‘As far as Garrandilla,’ he replied.
‘Humph!’ said the new acquaintance. ‘I suppose you were at Boonamarran
last night. I left Boree station early, and am going on as soon as my
horses have had another half-hour’s picking at this patch of good feed.’
‘Have you breakfasted yet?’ inquired Ernest.
‘Well, I’m not particular about a meal or two,’ cheerfully replied the
stranger. ‘I can always find a salad, and with a crust of bread I can
manage to get along.’
‘Salad in the bush?’ asked Ernest, with astonishment. ‘I never heard of
any before.’
‘There’s always plenty, if you know where to look for it,’ gravely
answered the stranger; ‘only men in this country are a deal more fond
of making for the nearest public-house than of studying the book of
nature, and learning what it teaches them. No man need fast in this
country if he knows anything about the herbage and the plants he’s
always riding and trampling over.’
‘You amaze me!’ said Ernest; ‘I always thought people ate nothing but
meat in this country.’
‘When you’ve been longer in Australia’ (Ernest groaned) ‘you’ll find
out, by degrees, that there’s a deal of difference in people here, much
as, I suppose, there is in other countries. See here,’ he continued,
taking up and cropping with great relish a succulent-looking bunch
of greens, ‘here’s a real good wholesome cabbage—warrigal cabbage,
the shepherds call it. Here’s another,’ uprooting a long dark-green
fibrous-looking wild endive. ‘As long as you’ve these two and
marshmallow sprout, you can’t starve. Many a pound it’s saved me, and
you may take my word for it there’s more money made in this country
by saving than by profits. I suppose you’re going to learn colonial
experience at Garrandilla.’
‘How can he know that?’ thought Mr. Neuchamp. ‘These people seem
to guess correctly about everything concerning _me_, while I am
continually deceived about them.’
‘I am just bound on that errand,’ he answered, ‘though I cannot tell
how you arrived at the fact.’
‘Well, I didn’t suppose you were going as a shepherd, or a stockman,
or a knock-about man,’ said the stranger carelessly, ‘so you must have
been going to learn the ways of the country.’
‘Do you know Mr. Jedwood?’ inquired Ernest.
‘Yes; heard of him. That’s a good manager; sharp hand; teach you all
about stock; make you work while you’re there, I expect.’
‘I don’t mind that; I didn’t come up into the bush for anything else.
It’s not exactly the place one would pick for choice for lounging in,
is it?’
‘I don’t know about that. I’m never contented anywhere else,’ said the
unknown.
‘And I suppose you’re looking out for an overseer’s situation,’
inquired Ernest, exercising his right of cross-examination in turn.
He thought by the stranger’s economical ideas that he could only be
upon his promotion, and not yet arrived at the enviable and lucrative
position of ‘super,’ as he had heard the appointment called.
The stranger smiled faintly in his own grave and reflective fashion,
and then, leaning on one elbow and pulling up a tuft of _Anthistiria
australis_, which he chewed meditatively, said, ‘Well, I have jobs of
overseeing now and then.’
‘And you expect to save enough money some day,’ demanded Ernest, rather
elated by the success of his hit, ‘I shouldn’t wonder, to go into a
small station, or leave off work altogether?’
‘Some of these days—some of these days,’ repeated the stranger, staring
absently before him, ‘I expect to have what I call enough. But you
can’t be sure of anything.’
‘In the meanwhile you save all you can,’ laughed Ernest.
‘It’s no laughing matter,’ said the stranger; ‘if you don’t save you
waste your money, if you waste your money you get into debt, if you get
into debt you get so close to ruin that any day he may put his paw down
and crush you or lame you for life.’
‘That’s a solemn view to take of a little debt,’ said Ernest, ‘but you
are right on the whole; and when I come into a station of my own I will
be awfully saving.’
‘That’s right; you can’t go wrong if you act up to that. Now, see
here, we’re about fifteen miles from Nubba.’
Here the stranger raised himself from his recumbent position,
exhibiting to Ernest a tall, well-made, sinewy frame, with a keen
handsome visage half covered with a bushy brown beard. The eyes were
perhaps the most remarkable feature in the face; they were moderate in
size, but wonderfully clear and piercing. There was the rare look of
absolute unbroken health about the man’s whole figure which one sees
chiefly in children and very young persons.
‘I’ve a second horse and saddle,’ continued the tall stranger; ‘I
generally take a couple when I’m travelling, they’re company for one
another, and for me too. So if you are going by Nubba, just you ride
this roan horse, and we’ll jog on together.’
Ernest considered for a moment. He had paid _de sa personne_ for
over-hasty acquaintanceship. But he could not for a moment distrust the
steady eye and truthful visage of the man who made this friendly offer.
He was interested, too, in his talk, and deeming him to be of a rank
and condition that he could in some way repay for the obligation, he
accepted it frankly.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I shall be glad to go with you as far as
Nubba. I suppose your horse won’t be anything the worse for me and my
knapsack.’
‘Not he. We’ll saddle up. I have a good way to go before sundown.’
‘May I ask to whom I am indebted for the accommodation?’ inquired
Ernest. ‘My name is Ernest Neuchamp.’
‘Well, Mr.—a—Smith,’ said the stranger, with a slight appearance of
hesitation. ‘It don’t much matter about names, except you have to
write a cheque or pay a bill. Now then, here’s your horse; he’s quiet,
and an out-and-out ambler.’
After walking for several days, it was a pleasant sensation enough when
Ernest, a fair horseman and respectable performer in the hunting-field,
found himself on the back of a free easy-paced hackney again. The roan
horse paced along at a rate which he was obliged to moderate, to avoid
shaking his benefactor, whose horse did not walk very brilliantly, into
a jelly.
‘This is my morning horse,’ said Mr. Smith, slightly out of
breath—though he sat his horse with a peculiar instinctive ease, not
alone as if he had been accustomed to a horse all his days, but as
if he had been born upon one. ‘When you are going a longish journey,
you generally have one clever hack and one not quite so good. Well,
what you ought to do is to ride the roughest one in the morning, while
_you’re_ fresh, and in the afternoon take the fast or easy one, and you
finish the day comfortably.’
‘Indeed,’ said Ernest, ‘that never struck me before; but in England we
don’t ride far, and never more than one horse at a time.’
‘Fine country, England,’ said Mr. Smith musingly. ‘I was reading in
Hallam’s _Middle Ages_ the other day about these Barons making war
upon one another. They must have been a good deal like the squatters
here, only they didn’t get fined for assaults at the courts of petty
sessions, and they had their own lock-ups, and could put a chap in the
logs or in their own cellar, and keep him there. I should like to see
England.’
‘Then you never have seen the old country?’ said Ernest. ‘How strange
it seems to see a grown Englishman like you, for you are one, and very
like a Yorkshireman too, who has never seen the chalk cliffs and green
meadows. When do you intend to go?’
‘Some day, when I can afford it,’ answered Mr. Smith.
They were now going at a good journeying pace, not far from five miles
an hour, through an open, thinly-timbered, well-grassed country. The
grass was long, rather dry looking, and of a grayish green. The road
was perfectly smooth, without stone, rut, or inequality of any kind.
The day had become insensibly warmer, but the air was wonderfully
clear, pure, and dry. Mr. Neuchamp felt sensibly exhilarated by the
atmospheric tone.
‘What a grand climate,’ he thought, as Mr. Smith had subsided into
rather an abstracted silence. ‘Here we have a combination of sufficient
warmth for comfort and high spirits, with that bracing cold of night
and early morning necessary to ensure appetite and energy. And there
are months upon months of this weather. Once bring a man or woman here,
with a sound and unworn constitution, and they might live for ever.
No wonder the general tendency of the features of the country-born
people is towards the Greek type. The vales and groves of Hellas had no
brighter sky than this deep azure, no purer air, no softer whispering
breeze.’
After this slight æsthetical reverie Mr. Neuchamp fell a wondering
as to the precise social status of his preoccupied but accommodating
companion. Rendered wary by previous mistakes, he bestowed great care
and caution upon his analysis, and after a most judicial summing-up,
decided in his own mind that Mr. Smith was a working overseer,
with aspirations superior to his present position, which, from his
economical habits and self-denying principles, he would at some
distant period realise. ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Neuchamp to himself, ‘I shall
see him some day with a nice little station of his own and four or five
thousand sheep. He will of course be able to work up from that. But how
pleasant it will be to visit him some day and behold his honest pride
at having successfully surmounted all his difficulties and triumphantly
landed himself upon his own property! How we shall laugh over to-day’s
salads and wise saws.’ Here Ernest woke up from his Alnaschar musings
by which the deserved greatness was to be bestowed upon Mr. Smith. That
individual, all unconscious apparently of his imminent and triumphant
pastoral profits, called out—
‘Do you see that rise with the plain beyond? Well, Nubba’s about a mile
the other side. I’m going forty miles farther, so I must have something
to eat before we start. Come and have dinner, or whatever you call it,
with me.’
They rode into the bush town together. The usual wide street or two;
the straggling shops and cottages; at each corner a large pretentious
store or hotel, a bullock dray, a buggy, a horseman or two, a score of
foot-passengers, the incoming mail with four horses and five lamps,
made up the visible traffic and population. Forest land had been
monotonously prevalent before they reached the town; a vast, apparently
endless plain, the first Mr. Neuchamp had ever seen, stretched beyond
it to the horizon. As they rode up to a balconied and two-storied brick
hotel he noticed a new ecclesiastical building, the architecture of
which contrasted strangely with that of the majority. His educated eye
was attracted.
‘What a nice church—Early English too; I never expected to see such a
building here.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Smith uninterestedly, ‘looks neat and strong; see
they’ve finished it since I passed this way last.’
‘It has a decidedly Anglican look, now one examines it. Quite a treat
to see such a building in the wilderness. Do you happen to belong to
the Church of England, Mr. Smith?’
‘Well, I may say—that is, I believe I’m a Protestant; I don’t know
about any denomination in particular. There’s good men in all of them.
I respect a man who does the work well that he believes in, and is paid
for doing. That’s my view of the matter.’
‘But the glorious tenets of the Reformation to which the English
Church has ever held firmly ought to commend its teachings to every
open-minded intelligent man,’ said Ernest, a little moved.
‘I can’t say,’ said Mr. Smith slowly; ‘I don’t know if we should
believe in old Harry the Eighth much in the present day. He wouldn’t
quite do for us out here, though I reckon him a grand Englishman in
many ways. Here’s the inn, and I’m not above owning I’m ready for a
chop.’
The horses were put into the stable; Mr. Neuchamp conveyed his knapsack
into a bedroom, and in a comparatively short time joined Mr. Smith at
one of the most tempting meals he had lately encountered.
It was past mid-day, and nothing in the way of disparagement could have
been fairly said against the appetite of either gentleman. ‘What will
you take, beer or wine?’ asked Mr. Smith, ringing the bell as they sat
down.
Ernest thought pale ale not inappropriate, though he wondered at his
theoretically economical friend being so luxurious in practice. ‘Just
the way with all these bushmen,’ he thought. ‘This poor fellow will
have to go without something for this; but I won’t hurt his feelings by
refusing to join him.’
‘Bring in some bottled beer, then,’ said Mr. Smith. The waiter flew to
execute his command.
‘Here,’ thought Ernest, ‘is another example of the superior sympathy of
colonial manners. Here is the poor overseer, working his way up in the
world, and he is treated with as much deference as if he were a wealthy
man. There is nothing like a colony for the repression of vulgar
servility to mere wealth.’
Here the waiter, bearing beer, reappeared.
‘I don’t take anything but tea myself,’ said Mr. Smith, ‘but to those
who are used to it cool bitter beer goes well in any kind of weather.
Anything is better than the confounded hard stuff.’
Mr. Neuchamp did not comprehend whether the latter deleterious compound
was a solid or a liquid, but he was annoyed at drinking at the expense
of a man unable to bear the cost, and who did not keep him company in
the consumption of the liquor.
‘I wouldn’t have had anything but tea if I had known that was your
tipple too,’ he said. ‘I’m not averse to Good Templarism in the desert,
and can live on coffee as well as a Bedouin Arab. You must come to my
place some day when I have one, and we’ll drink tea till all’s blue.’
‘Very well,’ said Smith. ‘I’m passing Garrandilla—shall I say you’re
coming along by degrees, and will be there some day?’
‘Just so,’ said Ernest; ‘there’s no necessity for hurry. Tell Mr.
Jedwood that, picking up colonial experience as I go along, I shall be
there within a month.’
‘Well, good-bye,’ said Mr. Smith; ‘I daresay we shall see each other
again. Don’t you go and waste your money, mind that, and you’ll be a
big squatter some day.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Ernest; ‘I don’t so much want to make
money, you know, as to do some good in the land.’
‘That’s quite right,’ said Mr. Smith, grasping his hand with the hearty
grip of the man of whole heart and strong will, ‘but you try and make
some money first. People won’t believe in your opinions unless you show
them that you can make money to begin with; after that you can say
anything, and teach and preach as much as you like; and if you want to
hold your own in any line you fancy, don’t you go and waste your money,
as I said before. Good-bye.’
The horses had been brought round; Mr. Smith, rather inconsistently,
gave the highly respectful groom half a crown after this economical
homily, and mounting the roan horse touched the other with the bridle
rein, and ambled off at the rate of six miles an hour.
‘Good-hearted fellow, Smith,’ said Mr. Neuchamp expressively to the
landlord, who with a select part of the townspeople had paid Mr. Smith
the compliment of assembling to see him off; ‘hope he’ll get on in the
world; I feel sure he deserves it.’
‘Get on in the world, sir!’ echoed the landlord, in tones of wild
amaze; ‘who do you mean, sir?’
‘Why, Mr. Smith, of course, the gentleman who has just ridden away,’
said Ernest, rather tartly. ‘He is a most economical but estimable and
intelligent person, and I feel convinced that he will get on, and have
a station of his own before many years.’
‘Mr. Smith! a station of his own!’ said the landlord in faint tones,
as of one preparing to swoon. ‘Do you know who you’re a-talkin’ of,
sir? why, that’s Habstinens Levison, Hesquire, the richest man in
Australia. Station of his own! Good lor—(‘scuse me, sir, you ain’t long
from ’ome, sir?); why, he’s got _thirty stations_, sir, with more than
a hundred thousand head of cattle, and half a million of sheep! So I’ve
heard tell, leastwise.’
Mr. Neuchamp thought it would not be inappropriate if _he_ fainted
after this astounding revelation. He had heard Mr. Frankston tell
a story or two of the wealthy and eccentric Abstinens Levison, and
here he had met him in the flesh, and had been rather proud of his
penetration in summing him up as an overseer on his promotion, who had
saved a few hundred pounds and would be a squatter before he died.
‘Mr. Levison was here one day, sir,’ continued the landlord, ‘callin’
hisself Smith, or Jones, or something; he don’t want to be worrited by
charity-agents and such; when the clergyman spotted him and asks him
for something towards the Church of Hengland there—‘andsome building,
ain’t it, sir?—what I call respectable and substantial—he writes him
out a cheque very quiet and crumples it up and gives it ’im; when he
looks at it outside, blest if it warn’t for five hundred pounds!’
‘I suppose the reverend gentleman was contented with that,’ said
Ernest, thinking of the stranger’s non-committal remarks as they passed
the same building.
‘Not he—parsons ain’t never contented, ’specially those as has a turn
for begging for a good object—they say. Next time he passes through,
our reverend thought he’d touch him a bit more. “Mr. Levison,” says
he, “this here beauteous structure as you’ve so magnificently
contributed to, ain’t got no lightning-conductor, and it’s a pity such
a pooty building should be hinjured by the hangry helements,” says he.
“Look here,” says Levison, “I’ve helped you to build the church, and
given my share; if God Almighty chooses to knock it down again, He can
do so, it’s no business of mine any further,” he says.’
Ernest thought this very like one of Levison’s reflective, unprejudiced
speeches, and could imagine his saying it without any feeling of
irreverence. Five hundred pounds without a word, unobtrusively, hardly
caring to use his own well-known name for fear of the drawbacks
and disabilities of proverbial wealth. ’A most extraordinary man
truly,’ thought Ernest—‘simple, strong, manifestly of the true hunter
type; a man given to lone journeyings through the wilderness; fond
of preserving his incognito, and of the small, wellnigh incredible
economies which speak to him of his earlier life.’ Now, Mr. Neuchamp
saw the secret of the ultra-respectful bearing of the servants and
landlord of the inn to the owner of a couple of millions of acres,
leasehold, and of more sheep than Esterhazy, and more cattle than a
score of Mexican rancheros. ‘He certainly is a man of unpretentious
demeanour,’ thought Ernest. ’Whoever would have guessed that he was so
tremendous a proprietor! “Don’t you go for to waste your money.” Was
that the way he had made the nucleus of this colossal fortune? and did
the occasional saving of a meal, and the utilising of the edible plants
of the plain and forest dell, go to swell the rills which joined their
streams of profit into the great river of his prosperity?‘ Ernest
Neuchamp all but resolved to give up speculating upon the character
and professions of these provokingly unintelligible colonists, to
believe what he saw—even that, with deduction and reason—and to ’learn
and labour truly to get his own living,’ without constant reference
to the motives and practice of others engaged in the same necessary
pursuit. All this he for the time fully believed that he would in the
future carry out. But his nature, with its passionate proclivities for
intellectual research, continued to whisper of regions of territory
and character yet unexplored, and to beckon the ardent champion of
light and truth forward even yet, though clouds of distrust and
disappointment clustered round his path.
Mr. Neuchamp decided to stay where he was that evening, and to take a
strictly impartial and prosaic survey of the town and environs.