"If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly."
MACBETH, _Act I, Sc. 6._
When Mr. Rainsfield parted from Mr. Billing, after escorting him to the
junction of the Alma and Brompton roads, he returned home to carry out
his contemplated arrangements; in the concatenation of which, his first
step was to remove the stores from the building used as a store to an
apartment in the house; and he had barely effected this, before Tom, his
wife, and Kate returned. When the ladies retired in the evening Tom
asked his brother if John Ferguson had been at Strawberry Hill in the
morning; and how it was that he had not been seen by any other inmate
of the house.
Rainsfield replied that John Ferguson had certainly been there in the
morning; and that the cause of his not having been seen by the family
was an interview that had taken place between himself and Ferguson by
which he, Mr. Rainsfield, had learnt that the blacks were meditating
some fresh outrage; and he would therefore be glad if Tom would
undertake a mission to them to mediate a pacification.
Rainsfield was playing a deep and hazardous game, and he felt it
himself. Even to his brother he had recourse to dissimulation to blind
or divert him from a perception of a stratagem in which he was aware he
could not procure Tom's concurrence. He therefore wished to get him out
of the way while he worked his diabolical machinations. He knew that
whatever the purpose of the blacks might be, they would not be diverted
by the persuasion of Tom; and, as he naturally conceived their object
to be pilfering, he intended to be perfectly prepared for them. At the
same time he wished none of his own family to witness the preparations
he was making.
"Very well," said Tom, "I will go to-morrow; for, to tell you the
truth, I have myself thought for some time that they were hatching some
mischief; and my suspicions were the more aroused when I witnessed,
along with John Ferguson, their last corroboree. It struck me then, more
than once, that I heard your name uttered by them in their song."
"Were you then at the corroboree?" enquired Rainsfield.
"Yes," replied Tom. "But tell me what information John Ferguson imparted
to you, and how he obtained it."
"Well, I can hardly tell you now," said Rainsfield, "for I was so
agitated at the time that much of it was lost to me; but I believe he
said his blacks boys, who had returned from the camp after the
corroboree, had informed him that the tribe intended something; though
what the exact nature of the meditated aggression was, they were unable
or unwilling to explain."
On the following day Rainsfield was anxious to get Tom off before the
arrival of Billing, whose absence he had not perceived. And he wished,
if possible, to prevent the necessity of accounting for the
storekeeper's journey to Alma; the very circumstance of which, unusual
as it was, he knew would excite the wonder of Tom. While, if not
perfectly satisfied with his explanation, he feared his brother might be
induced to seek further information from Mrs. Billing; whom Rainsfield
felt no doubt was a confident of her husband, and acquainted with the
object of the journey, at least such object as was assigned to it by
himself. So he urged upon Tom the advisableness of dispatch, to prevent
the blacks from carrying out their plans, if they meditated anything
that night.
Tom promised to go about mid-day, or early in the afternoon, and to stop
with them until late in the evening, so as to detain them, if they
meditated any outrage on the station, from its execution; and about one
o'clock he took his departure, much to the relief of his brother. Not
long afterwards the horse that was supposed to be carrying the burden of
Mr. Billing's body presented himself at the door of the house, though
minus his rider. The valise was instantly removed by Mr. Rainsfield, who
perceived that the desired articles were therein; and he then dispatched
one of his men, with the horse, to go back and look for the missing
equestrian; without allowing the sensitive nerves of that doating
creature, the sharer of all his earthly troubles, to be unnecessarily
agitated by a knowledge of her husband's abasement.
The rider was not long in returning with the lost representative of
commerce, who had in the agony of his motion, and in a futile effort to
stop the career of his carrier, lost his balance in his saddle, and
described what in skating counties is designated a "spread eagle." He,
however, found himself less hurt than he at first anticipated, and he
speedily adopted a sensible resolution to make the best progress he
could on foot. While the horse, after relieving himself of his
encumbrance, and getting beyond the reach of capture, must have taken
his leisure, for Mr. Billing was no very great distance behind him.
"Well, Mr. Billing," said his master, as that individual addressed made
his appearance in a sorry plight, "how did you enjoy your excursion to
Alma? I am sorry to see you have got thrown; I trust you have not hurt
yourself."
"I am happy, sir, to assure you," replied Mr. Billing, "that, through
the gracious dispensation of Providence, I have sustained no osseous
fractures; though, sir, I may add, my mental agony, and bodily
sufferings, have been such as I never wish again to experience."
"You must expect to have some inconvenience in your first ride, Mr.
Billing," said his master; "but you will find, upon your second attempt,
that the unpleasantness will be diminished."
"That second attempt, sir," replied the little man, "will never be made
by me. I have a positive abhorrence for a horse, sir, and no power on
earth, sir, would induce me to become a chevalier."
"Very well, Mr. Billing," replied the other, "I'll not attempt to
persuade you against your own inclinations; I can only thank you for
your services on this occasion, and if you will meet me in the store,
when you have recovered yourself a little, we will proceed to business;"
saying which, the couple parted.
In the store where Rainsfield entered were, besides sundry articles that
were not strictly alimentary, the carcass of a sheep, suspended from one
of the beams, and a bag of flour; or rather a bag that had contained
flour, for the bag was suspended supinely by two ropes, with its mouth
open; and on a sheet on the floor was heaped the flour it had contained.
To this heap, after closing and locking the door, Rainsfield advanced;
and, first taking a furtive glance around, to satisfy himself that he
was unnoticed, he stooped down and deliberately mixed with it the
arsenic that had been brought by Mr. Billing. He had performed this
operation, and had just rebagged the flour, when Billing turned the
handle of the door, at the sound of which Rainsfield started like a
detected thief.
At no time are the words of the immortal bard, "thus conscience doth
make cowards of us all," more forcibly displayed than when an honourable
or upright man steps from the straight path of honour and integrity to
perform a despicable or criminal action. Thus Mr. Rainsfield could not
quiet the chidings of his conscience, which did not disguise from him
the enormity of the crime he was committing; and when he heard the step
of his storekeeper at the door he felt the weight of contemplated
guilt, and for some moments had not the power of articulation.
Mr. Billing was just turning away, thinking his master was not in the
building, when Mr. Rainsfield opened the door with a blush on his cheek,
and a lie in his mouth, to support his first deception and subsequent
interruption.
"I hardly heard you, Mr. Billing," said he, "when you tried the door, as
I was busy, and I had locked it to prevent being disturbed. You see," he
continued, as his confidential entered, "I have had a sheep killed for
our purpose. This we will now inoculate with the strychnine you have
procured; and we will send it out to the plains for the dogs to consume
to-morrow; and we can continue the operation at frequent intervals until
the animals disappear. The arsenic, I think, we may keep for the
present, and see first how this acts. You will perceive I have removed
all the stores into the house with the exception of this one bag of
flour, which I discovered to be slightly damaged, so had it sifted. I
was just packing it again as you came to the door, and being so much
occupied I did not hear you. By the way," he repeated to himself, "I may
as well close it up;" and turning to Billing, he resumed: "will you be
good enough to step into the house and get me a needle and string?"
Mr. Billing went for the required articles, and during his absence,
Rainsfield removed the sheet on which the flour had been spread, and
destroyed all traces of his labour; so that, upon Billing's return, the
work, or that portion of it, was accomplished, and the bag was placed in
an upright position against the wall.
The sheep was then removed from the beam, and the inside was well rubbed
and besmeared with the poison; after which it was placed in its former
position, and the outside submitted to a similar manipulation. This
completed the pair left the store; the door was locked by the master,
and the key taken away by him to prevent, as he said, the possibility
of accidents.
"Do you not think," suggested Mr. Billing, "we had better have the flour
removed into the house?"
"Oh, no, it does not signify to-day," replied Rainsfield, "it will take
no harm there until the morning, and we can have it removed then when we
send the fellows up to the plains with the meat."
In the meantime Tom took his way to the blacks' camp, where he found a
large number of the tribe collected; and all in apparent agitation. He
at once perceived that some event was about to take place, and he
conjectured that what was intended was a sortie on his brother's
station. The men were mostly standing before the entrances to their
"gunyahs," facing one another in the circular enclosure; and carrying
on a united disputation at the highest pitch of their voices, all at one
and the same time. They were supported occasionally by the opinions of
the gins, which, though volunteered by those soft, if not fair
creatures, were, as is usually the case even with their civilized
contemporaries, totally unheeded by their lords; who continued their
ratiocination with unabated ardour. Whatever was the nature of the
discussion in progress, it ceased as Tom rode into the midst of the
disputants; and to the sound of the human hubbub succeeded that of the
canine, which, but for the reverence the blacks had for their dogs, Tom
would have silenced by knocking the brains out of a score of the brutes.
He, however, resisted the temptation, and made his way straight up to
the abode of the chief, dismounted, fastened his horse to a tree, and
advanced to the sable scoundrel with a smile; which was returned by a
malignant scowl. This was not lost upon Tom, though he pretended not to
have seen it; and, as he sat down upon a log in front of Dugingi, and
lit his pipe from a fire-stick, he said:
"Well, Dugingi, what are you up to now? I see you have got something in
the wind."
A grunt was the only answer he got to this query; but he pushed his
enquiries and demanded: "Are you going to pay us another visit at
Strawberry Hill, Dugingi?" Still he elicited no information, and began
to be rather disgusted.
"Do you mean to answer me at all, you black thief?" he exclaimed; "see
here! if you won't be civil and open your mouth beyond those grunts,
I'll break your head." And he raised the heavy riding-whip he carried,
as he spoke, in an attitude of menace that made the black shrink to the
entrance of his gunyah.
"What's the matter, Mister Tom?" said Jemmy Davies, who came up at this
juncture, "why are you 'riled?' Has Dugingi been saying anything to
you?"
"No, Jemmy, it is because the wretch won't speak that I am put out. I
have asked him what is the cause of this uproar; and what he is up to
with the tribe; and the brute won't utter a word, but only answers me
with grunts. I am of a good mind to treat him to a sound thrashing for
his insolence; but you tell me, Jemmy, what you are after here?"
"Nothing particular, sir," replied the black; "some of our fellows are
kicking up a row, and they won't be quiet."
"Well, what are they kicking up the row about, Jemmy?"
"One feller said, that another feller hit the other feller's gin,
because the gin beat the other feller's gin's piccanini."
"Well," said Tom, "that is a very lucid explanation of the subject of
discussion in your conclave, Jemmy; but I strongly suspect it is not
strictly true. Now, tell me, were you not hatching some mischief against
us?"
"No, sir, 'pon my honour," exclaimed Jemmy Davies, "we never thought of
such a thing."
"Now, it's no use telling that to me," cried Tom, "I am confident you
were; and I know you have been thinking of it for some time. Were you
not talking about it in your last corroboree; and was not this talk
to-day the continuation of the plot? You may as well confess it to me,
for I know it all; you intend my brother some injury."
"Well, sir," replied the black, "suppose we were talking about Mr.
Rainsfield we would not hurt you."
"I am not at all afraid of your hurting me," exclaimed Tom; "for it's
short work I'd make of a score of you, if you were to try any violence
to me; but why annoy my brother?"
"You see, sir," replied Jemmy, "we all like you, because you are good to
the black fellows; but your brother is bad to us, and the tribe hate
him. They would not kill him because he never killed any of them; but
they still hate him and take his rations."
"That's it!" said Tom; "it is just because you steal his rations that he
is so severe on you; if you had not molested us, he would not have
molested you; but we are obliged to keep you away, because you have
made yourselves dangerous. Why don't you behave yourselves to us, the
same as you do to the Fergusons? and we wouldn't prevent you coming to
the station; but if you persist in stealing I am afraid my brother will
some day be disposed to shoot some of you."
"We don't interfere with Mr. Ferguson," replied Jemmy Davies, "because
he is good to us; and I have told you the reason why we hate Mr.
Rainsfield is because he is bad to us. I don't believe the tribe would
ever like him now however good he would be."
"Will you just try and persuade them, Jemmy, to be a little more civil,"
said Tom, "and depend upon me to get you justice. It is of no use our
always living like this; and you may be sure my brother will shoot some
of you if you continue to steal. Tell me now the truth; are you thinking
of robbing us again?"
"No, sir," replied the black, "don't you believe it. Some of them want
to, and some do not; I don't; I will try and keep the others back."
"That's right, Jemmy," exclaimed Tom, "exert yourself, for depend upon
it it will be better for you, and the tribe too, to remain friendly to
us."
Tom Rainsfield had some confidence in, not only the word of Jemmy
Davies, but also in his influence with the tribe; and therefore believed
the ingenuous story the black told of the animated discussion; his
refusal to acquiesce in the meditated theft; and his desire to deter the
others from its committal. He therefore felt relieved in his mind for
the time being; and determined to impress upon his brother the
necessity, for his own security, of adopting some lenient measures
towards the blacks. In this train of thought, and accompanied by Jemmy
Davies, he left the camp, and returned to the crossing-place of the
river, where he parted with his companion, after obtaining a
re-assurance from him that no outrage would be committed with his
concurrence.
Tom, after crossing the Gibson, and directing his steps homewards, fell
in with William Ferguson, returning from Strawberry Hill, and was easily
persuaded to accompany him and remain the night at Fern Vale; where, in
the meantime, we will leave him to revert to Mr. Rainsfield and his
expected visitors.