A boding gloom seemed to fall suddenly like a pall from the branches of
the sighing, whispering, sad-voiced water-oaks, as they followed the
winding track which led along the bank of the tiny streamlet to the
small alluvial flat, upon which lay two―pah, what shall I say?―two
figures covered with rugs, which may or may not have exhibited the
human outline. ‘They lay as dead men only lie.’ A swarm of flies arose
at the lifting of the coverings, and a terrible and intolerable odour
diffused itself around. ‘Great God!’ cried Ernest, ‘are these
repulsive, fast-decaying masses of corruption all that are left of the
high-hearted, gallant fellows I saw ride out of Turonia so short a
while ago? Poor human nature, upon ever so slight summons, and must we
come to this! Accursed be the greed of the yellow gold which brought
our brother men to so hideous an ending.’
As these reflections flowed from the sympathetic heart of Ernest
Neuchamp with a natural force that could not be controlled, he turned
in time to notice that Mr. Merlin had directed the coverings to be
removed from the corpses, and had instituted, in spite of their
revolting condition after forty-eight hours’ exposure to a burning sun,
a thorough and searching examination.
One man, Carroll, lay on his side with face half upturned and arm
outstretched, in the hand of which was grasped a revolver with a barrel
discharged. An expression of defiance was still legibly imprinted upon
the features―a bullet wound through the centre of the forehead had
without doubt been the cause of death. The strong man had fallen prone,
as if struck by lightning, and for ever, ever more the wondrous
infinitely complicated machine was arrested. The soul had passed into
the region of endless life, death, sleep, sorrow, joy!
‘This man has been shot from the front, Greffham, shouldn’t you say?’
pronounced the clear, incisive tones of Mr. Merlin. ‘He may or may not
have been standing up to his assassin. If so, it was a species of duel,
and the best shot and quickest had it. If you wouldn’t care about
standing there, now, by that oak-tree, raise your arm, so; by Jove, you
would be just in the position that the man must been in that dropped
the poor sergeant.’
‘Just the sort of thing that Greffham would have gone in for if he was
hard up,’ said Mr. Bright, chuckling. He was reckless as to the flavour
of his jests, far from particular if only they were ‘hot’ enough.
‘You are always thinking of that gold-buyer of yours that was shot,
Bright,’ said Greffham, wincing uneasily, though, under the
concentrated gaze of three remarkably steady pairs of eyes,―Merlin’s,
Bright’s, and Markham’s. ‘It’s my belief that Halliday shot himself; he
was something like you, in always carrying half a bushel of revolvers,
and, like your battery, it went off accidentally sometimes.’
‘There’s a boot mark in the sand underneath that oak-tree,’ said
Markham, with great suavity; ‘it’s the very model of your track, Mr.
Greffham, that you made there. Excuse _me_, sir.’
‘I suppose other people wear boots as well as I,’ he said. ‘Bushmen and
diggers are deuced rough, and all that, but they haven’t come to going
barefoot yet.’
‘Nor wearing French boots with very narrow heels,’ said Markham, as he
measured the imprint of the said _bottine_ with a small pocket rule.
‘However, boots don’t go for much, unless corroborated.’ With this
sapient speech Mr. Markham closed his remarks and apparently lost
interest in the scene.
‘Now this poor fellow,’ interpolated Mr. Merlin, lifting up the
trooper’s face, and parting the thickly clustering brown curls, ‘has
been shot from _behind_. Here’s the little hole through the back of his
head, and the pistol must have been pretty close, as the powder has
burned one side of it considerably. He has simply fallen over on his
face, and there was an end of him. Here you can see where the valise
containing the gold and notes was unstrapped from Sergeant Carroll’s
saddle. The saddles had been put back to back on the ground. One
carbine is here still, and one is missing.’
‘By Jove!’ said Greffham, ‘you know everything, Merlin. You’re like the
man in the _Arabian Nights_ who described the camel that had passed the
day before,―lame, blind of an eye, having lost two front teeth, and
loaded half with rice and half with dates, and yet never saw him at
all. You’re a wonderful fellow! You’re so devilish sharp.’
‘And you’re a more wonderful fellow; you’re so devilish cool,’ said
Merlin. ‘I _do_ know a thing or two, and, upon my soul, I have
need―_par exemple_, old fellow―it was devilish good-natured of you to
come out all the way with us, but it has just occurred to me that you
seem to have seen these poor fellows so _very_ lately, just before they
were rubbed out, that, quite as a matter of form, I must trouble you to
explain your proceedings on that day to the authorities. Lionel
Greffham!’ continued he, in a voice which, raised and vibrating, was so
utterly changed that Ernest Neuchamp did not know it as that of this
smiling satirist with his society talk and ready rapier of repartee, ‘I
arrest you on suspicion of murder and robbery.’
Perhaps the least astonished and agitated individual of the company was
the accused himself. He swung round on one heel as Merlin laid a sinewy
grasp upon his shoulder, and, drawing a small foreign-looking revolver
from his breast, aimed fair at the heart of his quondam companion. At
the same moment he was covered by the weapons of Markham, the troopers,
and of Mr. Bright, who held straight for his former acquaintance with
unmistakable aim and determination.
‘It’s no use, Mr. Greffham,’ said Markham, ‘I made your popgun safe at
the inn last night. It would never have done to leave you the chance of
giving us “Squirt Street.” It won’t pop if you pull the trigger for a
week. Say you could drop Mr. Merlin, why we can “twice” you over and
over.’
Mr. Merlin’s clear gray eyes glittered with unwonted excitement. He
also held a revolver in his right hand. ‘My dear fellow,’ he said, ‘all
excitement is bad form. You must be aware that you are only arrested on
suspicion. Nothing may turn up to implicate you any more than Bright
there, but in all these cases a man in my position has a duty to
perform, and you know well I should do mine if you were my own brother,
or the best friend I had in the world.’
By this time Greffham had recovered his usual composure. ‘I don’t doubt
_that_ for one moment, Merlin,’ he said, with sardonic emphasis. ‘I
think you have such a talent in that line that you would rather enjoy
“running in” your own father. However, business is business. You’ve
thrown down your card, and as you seem to hold all the trumps at
present, you must have the odd trick.’
‘Precisely, precisely,’ assented Mr. Merlin; ‘I always thought you a
devilish sensible fellow. So now we must make a start for home. I am
afraid that I must―just as a matter of form, you know―Markham.’
That wary official moved forward, and noticing, without seeing, as it
were, that his superior officer still held his revolver ready for
immediate use, produced a pair of handcuffs, and with the ease and
quickness of long experience slipped them over the wrists of him who
was doomed never to sleep unfettered more.
The party, now become a procession, moved quietly homeward to Turonia.
They halted at the inn, the landlord of which was considerably
surprised at seeing the great Mr. Greffham’s hands closed before him,
while a trooper led his horse by a rein. Up to this period he had not
the smallest suspicion that the lavish swell, who, like all men who
affected wholesale piracy, was ‘quite the gentleman’ in the matter of
free spending of money, could be possibly mixed up with a cold-blooded
murder and an extensive robbery. But now his intellect being permitted
freedom, he remembered that Mr. Greffham had called at his inn at no
long time after the troopers, one of whom he knew well, and furthermore
that he remembered hearing a shot at a great distance. It might have
been a revolver. He could not say. It was firearms of some sort. Might
have been two shots. Saw nothing.
Ernest observed that Markham noted down in a large pocket-book the
exact minute and hour of the faint report of firearms to which the
innkeeper testified, the exact time at which the troopers were last
seen alive by him, and the time of the arrival of Greffham; and those
minor matters being definitely settled, Mr. Merlin conducting the
interrogation in a very different voice from his society one, the
subdued, if not noticeably saddened procession took the road for
Turonia. It was late when they reached that somewhat peculiar
settlement, but the streets were profusely lighted, busy, and more
thronged than at noonday. When the modern inland Australian substitute
for ‘a plump of spears beneath a pennon gay’ rode straight for the
camp, the foremost trooper leading the horse of a manacled prisoner,
whom many keen eyes at once recognised as Lionel Greffham, a low but
savage murmur came from the dense and excited crowd. Whatever interest
or enthusiasm might have been evoked in Mr. Neuchamp’s breast by the
wonders and novelties of the great goldfield and its heterogeneous,
picturesque population, had now collapsed. A feeling of doubt and
horror succeeded. A tinge of blood, a brooding death-shadow, was over
the splendour and the glamour of the enormous treasure-pile which now
in ceaseless, countless profusion seemed daily won from the reluctant
earth. He heard to his great satisfaction that Mr. Banks and his party
had arrived; that Levison’s manager, a man of boundless experience in
stock, more particularly cattle, was already hard at work at the
muster, and that every day an increasing number of the female cattle
destined for Rainbar was drafted and delivered to the ‘tailing mob’ in
Mr. Banks’s charge.
Satisfying himself by inspection that the very ordinary routine work of
mustering a herd, when the mere numbers and sex were alone concerned,
and where no battles had to be fought over individuals of disputed age,
size, or quality, could be very safely delegated to subordinates,
Ernest rode over to Branksome Hall for a farewell visit.
There he found himself an object of interest and friendly welcome,
somewhat heightened by his late adventurous journey in company with Mr.
Merlin. The young ladies were deeply shocked at the terrible finale to
their acquaintance, slight as it had ever been, with the unhappy man
who was now a prisoner and presumably a felon, where once he had shone
a star of the first magnitude. Mr. Branksome was sufficiently a man of
the world to have always distrusted the handsome and unscrupulous
adventurer. Beyond a formal call he had never been encouraged to see
much of the interior of the Hall.
‘Terrible affair this, Neuchamp,’ said the host, as the whole party sat
in the drawing-room before that evening summons had sounded which few
are sufficiently philosophical or sympathetic to decline. ‘I never had
a high opinion of Greffham―always distrusted the man, but as to his
murdering a couple of poor devils of troopers for the sake of a couple
of thousand ounces of gold, why, I should as soon have expected him to
have dropped strychnine into one’s soup-plate at the Occidental at
lunch.’
‘Never fancied him,’ said the Colonel; ‘deuced well-dressed,
well-set-up fellow; been in a cavalry regiment. But he had a
cold-blooded, hard way of looking at one―bad eye too, cruel, devilish
cruel―that man has taken life before, I swear―know the expression well,
killing is not the fashion much in this country, too young yet―life too
valuable―you don’t know the signs of it.’
‘I can hardly hear to speak of it,’ said the eldest Miss Branksome. ‘To
think that _any one_ of education and gentleman-like habit, for he
_was_ a gentleman as far as manner, appearance, every outward
observance can make one, should have descended so low, gone down into
the very pit of murder and theft, for what? What could have driven him
to the edge of such a precipice? Surely there must be demons and fiends
who have power over men’s souls.’
‘Extravagance, gambling, the habit of spending money without working
for it,’ said her father. ‘Debt in one shape or other is one of the
demons allotted to torment mortality in this period of the world’s
history. The demoniac of the age is the man who has bills or
liabilities coming due without the means to meet them. He may appear
ordinarily clothed and in his right mind, but, after some torturing
hour, it may be related of him, as of this unhappy wretch, the evil
“spirit tare him,” and he “wallowed foaming.’”
‘It seems a wonderful thing that he didn’t apply to some of his
friends, doesn’t it?’ queried Mr. Neuchamp. ‘He seemed to have plenty
of them. Even if he had not been completely put right they could surely
have given him enough to secure breathing time; but murder, robbery,
pah! it is purely incredible to me, predicated of a man that we have
all met more or less in habits of intimacy.’
‘Nothing so wonderful about that,’ said the Colonel; ‘deuced cool,
clever adventurer, you know, without one morsel of feeling in favour of
what some people call principle, humanity, or honesty. Seen the style
before. Big loot of any kind is the thing to bring out such a man in
real form. Known fellows in Indian service too, by gad, who would kill
a prisoner in cold blood or burn half a village for the sake of a few
diamonds or a hoard of gold mohurs.’
‘It’s positively awful, dreadful, miserable,’ said the youngest Miss
Branksome. ‘I shall dream of nothing else for a month, I know. Papa,
isn’t that the dinner bell? Now there’s a forfeit if anybody says a
word about gold or murder or anything belonging to Turonia again this
evening. We shall be quite demoralised with all this Fouché business.
There’s Mr. Bright begins to look as if he was going to act upon
“information received” every time I see him.’
The inmates of that pleasant home finished the evening without overt
allusion to the awful tragedy which had overshadowed their
neighbourhood, and brought dishonour and death, rare visitors ere this,
even to the reckless, toiling, far-gathered goldfields community. But
in every heart, from time to time, in the pause of the conversation, in
the silence of the night hour, arose the dimly-outlined picture of the
lonely flat where the sighing oaks whispered and faintly wailed over
two motionless figures, dread and silent, among the thick, dry, waving
grass. On the reverse shadow-tracery a well-known figure, with an evil
light in the cold blue eyes, a hellish sneer on the short, curved lip,
was pacing the gloomy flags of a felon’s cell!
Though Mr. Neuchamp on the morrow parted with great regret from his
kind friends of Branksome Hall, he could not conceal from himself that
Turonia, under the circumstances, would be the last place in which he
should choose to linger. A shadow of gloom, a savour of blood, was with
the whole place and surroundings in his eyes, and though the streets
still trembled as before under the tread of an army of Britain’s best
workers, and though at night there was store of pleasant society and
excitement, all interest in the gold city had marvellously abated. Mr.
Neuchamp was impatient until his moving contingent should be ready for
the road, and to that end betook himself with grateful energy to the
distraction of mustering the herd.
With the efficient aid of Mr. Cottonbush, the much-experienced overseer
deputed by Mr. Levison to carry out this particular duty, the whole
herd was mustered and drafted with an economy of time and completeness
of result very astonishing to Ernest.
His part was confined to giving Mr. Cottonbush a receipt for nineteen
hundred and seventy head of female cattle of all sorts, sizes, and
ages, and having divided the said cows and heifers into two droves, an
immediate departure was made for Rainbar. Mr. Banks was permitted to
examine and explore the wonders of Turonia for the space of one day
only; and after bidding farewell to his friends at the camp and at
Branksome Hall, Mr. Neuchamp rejoined his party, manfully performing
his share of road work until, after many a weary week’s travelling and
monotonous daily drudgery, they struck the river within a day’s ride of
Rainbar.
When Mr. Neuchamp once more alighted at the door of his cottage he felt
the pleasurable glow which is rarely absent from the mind of any
healthily constituted man returning after absence to his home.
‘Home, sweet home!’ hummed Mr. Neuchamp. ‘I don’t know whether the
time-honoured words strictly apply to Rainbar, but I’m glad to see the
old place again. The grass looks none too fresh, though, as if they had
had little or no rain. It would have been inspiriting to have seen a
little green after all the terrible dry weather we have had. I suppose
these two thousand new cattle will be able to keep alive. As for paying
for them, if I had not Levison’s advice and guarantee to depend upon, I
should utterly despair of it.’
He had finished his evening meal when Mr. Jack Windsor was announced,
that gentleman having been all day ‘out back,’ and having but just
returned. He was unaffectedly glad to see Ernest, and gave a favourable
account of the stock and station matters generally.
‘I don’t say as we’ve had much of a break-up of the dry time,’ he said,
‘but the rains come very stiddy and soaking every now and then.
Besides, there’s been one or two fine thunderstorms out back, where
I’ve been to-day. The feed’s a deal better than any I see in here.
We’re a-getting on towards the end of the autumn now, and we might have
a regular wet season, that will just crown us. I suppose the store
cattle is all right.’
‘In very fair strength and spirits, Jack. Mr. Banks thought that they
would do splendidly here before spring, if there was any rain at all.’
‘If it wasn’t for these confounded cockies,’ said Mr. Windsor, ‘that
big flat would be a first-rate place to break ’em into, while they’ll
have to be at the water every day. But it’s no use thinking of it. I’ve
had a deal of bother with ’em as it is; them boys are always cutting
about the run on horseback, looking for a calf, or a colt, or
something. I’d give a tenner out of my own pocket they was all out of
that and back at Bowning or some other stringy-bark hole as is fit for
’em.’
Three days had elapsed since this conversation, when the two large
droves of patient, slow-moving cattle arrived at Rainbar. Mr. Windsor
was much impressed by their general appearance, and asserted
confidently that such a lot of cows and heifers had never before been
seen on the river.
‘They’re regular first-class bred ’uns, that’s what they are,’ he
asserted; ‘that’s the best of going in with a man like Levison. He’s
always got the sugar, consequence he always gets the worth of his
money, and doesn’t get put off with half-and-half goods. He knows a
thing or two, does Levison. Anyhow he’s a stunning mate to go shares
with.’
After a short time spent in making necessary arrangements for the new
arrivals, Mr. Neuchamp commenced to review his position. Much
seriousness of visage resulted from the financial examination.
In the first place no cattle had been sold in his absence. Nor were
there now any in sufficiently high condition to be turned into cash
with the same facility as of old. A considerable hole had been made in
the overdraft which Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton had grudgingly
permitted him. He had signed bills at twelve months’ date for the late
purchase of cattle; and accommodating as Mr. Levison might be, the
acceptances would have to be met or provided for at maturity.
Prospectively profitable as the transaction was, Mr. Neuchamp commenced
to make acquaintances with the ominous suggestion, ‘Bankruptcy,’ and to
wonder whether he should _really_, in spite of all his plans, prudence,
and philanthropy, be compelled, even as others were whom he had
contemptuously pitied in old times, to surrender unconditionally.
Of this dread and final catastrophe Mr. Neuchamp had a lively horror
which no sophistry could abate. He was not one to fall back upon the
many excuses and palliations which the fluctuating markets, the
uncertain season, afforded. No, no; the stoppage of payment meant Ruin
and Disgrace. It would sound the knell of hope, would proclaim
dishonour inevitable, irrevocable, as well as the total failure of all
the plans and projects which his heart held dearest. His perusal of the
newspapers, which had accumulated to a goodly pile in his absence,
brought no hint of indulgence. The markets were low; the season had not
yet improved so as to place the stock out of danger. If all debts
incurred were to be met, there was little expectation of being able to
liquidate them by the aid of the stock then depasturing upon Rainbar.
More than this, he found among his correspondence an epistle from
Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton, written in the very old-fashioned manner
affected by that sound but non-progressive firm. It informed their very
worthy and most esteemed constituent, Mr. E. Neuchamp, that the five
hundred pounds last paid to his credit was exhausted, and that unless,
of course, his account was supported by remittance, they could under
_no circumstances_ continue to honour his orders.
A letter from Paul Frankston, though kind and hearty in tone, was not
reassuring. He said that the times were exceedingly bad,―so bad that
even he, Paul, had had work to meet his engagements, and had at no time
for many years past been so sorely pressed. He noticed that every day
fresh station properties were being brought into the market, and hoped
that an utter crash and collapse of stock and stations was not about to
take place, as in 1842-43. The only reason for believing that a
favourable change would take place in the stock-market was that the
yield of gold appeared to be increasing, and that though temporary
inconvenience had taken place, he, Paul, fully believed that in the
course of a year or two there would be a very different state of
matters. He therefore advised Ernest to be hopeful, and, while keeping
down expenses to the narrowest limit, to hold on to his station with
his eyelids, so to speak. Those who had done so at any former period of
the country’s history were now wealthy men. He believed yet that
Ernest, if he steadily adhered to his proper work and―pardon
him―abstained from speculative experiments, would eventually do well.
He hoped that he had got his newly-purchased store cattle safely on the
run. He had the greatest confidence in Levison’s unerring judgment in
such matters. He might be unduly prejudiced in his favour, but he had
never known him to be wrong. If everything went to the bad, no doubt
this purchase would make matters no worse. If otherwise, they were the
nucleus of a future, and not a small one either. His last advice was to
keep the ordinary station work in the best possible trim, and not to
spend one shilling in other than absolute necessities. Antonia was very
well, but did nothing but read all day. He had suggested her going in
for a degree at the University, but she had not cared for the
suggestion. When rain came perhaps Ernest might manage another run down
the country.
Mr. Neuchamp steadily devoted himself to a full consideration of the
matters placed before him in this letter―considerate and delicate in
feeling, as indeed had been every word and line of advice received by
him from Paul Frankston from the very beginning of their acquaintance.
No one could have fancied that the whole of the obligation had been
upon his, Ernest’s, side, from the day when he first exploded Hartley
Selmore’s politico-economical arrangement for subsidising holders of
station properties with the capital of ingenuous newly-arrived
colonists. For how much generous hospitality, shrewd counsel, often
implied rather than proffered, substantial assistance and unswerving
friendship, was he not his debtor? And Antonia? The more he saw of
girls generally,―and he did not rate those Australian young ladies, who
had equal advantages of training, society, and culture, at a jot below
their English contemporaries,―the more deep became his conviction of
her unusual range of thought, depth of feeling, and purity of mind. As
the dry, cool wind of the Australian autumn wailed and sighed over the
wide gray plains, and around the useful but unromantic edifices which
went to make up the homestead at Rainbar, Ernest began to feel a
somewhat intensified, intolerable sensation of intellectual loneliness.
For the hundredth, five hundredth, time he wished that it would rain.
Why did it not rain? Was the land accursed, like Egypt in the olden
Pharaoh days? Rain would do so much. Put an end to his anxieties about
the stock. Improve the condition and lessen the expense of the new
cattle. Perhaps, nay, certainly, send up the price of stock generally.
Liberalise the ideas of Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton. Render a trip to
town possible; and oh, the sight once more of the verandah at Morahmee!
the savour of the fresh brine-laden air! the sight of the foam-fringed
billows of the unbounded sea! the―― But the further contemplation of
impossible delights, rendered such by his now comparatively lengthened
inland exile, was sternly repressed by the philosophic mind of Mr.
Neuchamp. And rain, in England at least, had always seemed such a
little thing―to be had for nothing; to be guarded against by the timid,
complained about by the superficial, anathematised by the reckless,
constant in and out of season―a nuisance, a drug, a daily dread. Why
then, in the name of all the mighty, merciful powers, did it not rain?
It was clearly no use fretting about the absence of the gladdening,
fertilising phenomenon in a dry and thirsty land, or philosophising
about the relation of monsoons to icebergs, any unusual protraction or
prominence in which natural facts and forces of the calm unswerving
giantess, Nature, might alter climates and prices, from Lake
Alexandrina to the Snowy River, from Carpentaria to the county of
Cumberland. The matter on hand was the plain and prosaic adjustment of
his ‘duty a dead sure thing,’ and admitting of but little variation
from the point.
Therefore for the present, and as day after day arose bright and cool,
with breezy morn and pure fresh bracing atmosphere, unhappily
suggestive of continuous dry weather, Mr. Neuchamp, discarding
theories, reveries, and projects, sternly addressed himself to work.
From earliest dawn to a late hour the whole of the little community was
astir. It had been with a feeling of deep satisfaction that Ernest had
watched, for the first time, the great droves of ‘new cattle’ spread,
unchecked, over the Rainbar plain, and take their first meal of the
scanty but highly nutritive salsolaceous herbage. Bred in a ‘sour
grass’ country, far inferior for fattening purposes, though having
merits of its own, the docile, highly-bred herd might be expected,
under ordinary conditions, to grow and develop in the most
unprecedented manner. There is a peculiar pleasure, felt by all station
proprietors, in the examination of the droves or flocks of store stock
placed for the first time upon their new pastures. Generally purchased
at a comparatively low price, and passing from inferior to superior
fattening country, if the season be favourable a cheering alteration
takes place. It is pleasant for the sheep-owner to perceive his
‘large-framed healthy wethers’ (as per advertisement) laying on
condition day by day, passing through all the stages of comparative
obesity which enables him to ‘top the market’ with them as fat sheep,
having previously denuded them of a fleece which, perhaps, fully pays
the cost of the original purchase.
But the gratification known to the purchaser of ‘store’ or ‘lean’
cattle, either for fattening or for increase, is of a higher and more
intense, because of a more complex, nature, as becomes the more
individualised character of the stock.
Day by day, if but the pasture be sufficient, the range wide, the
weather favourable, the season propitious, the stockmen practised and
efficient―if, I repeat, all these conditions be fulfilled―then indeed
does the happy pastoralist taste all the joys of his successful and
pleasant position. Day by day, as he rides forth in the fresh morn, the
warm kind eve, he notes the stranger kine more habitually wander out to
the springing pasture and back to the creek, marsh, river, which is
their water privilege. He sees the steers grow glossy of hide, thicker,
lengthier, ripen into marketable bullocks. He sees the tiny she
yearlings grow into sonsy heifers; the angular cows into imposing,
deep-brisketed, flat-backed matrons, ever and anon with younglets, ‘to
the manor born,’ and likely in time to pay double the original cost of
the parent, with a high percentage for personal profit. Lastly, the
first draft of bullocks picked from these, if a mixed herd, pays for
the whole lot―steers, bullocks, cows, and calves―leaving the spirited
purchaser with a tolerably large and increasing herd, all profit.
Many of these pleasurable emotions would have found lodging in the
breast of Mr. Neuchamp had circumstances, that is, the season, been
favourable. But nothing was favourable. The skies were like brass―even
as the money market―with no rent or fissure through which mercy or
change could by any means be perceived. The scanty pasture provoked the
instinct-guided cattle to wander far and fast. In pursuit Ernest was
fain to hurry, personally or vicariously, till every horse on the
establishment, Osmund included, had as much as he could do to carry his
rider for a day’s slow journey. Indeed the said rider was occasionally
to be descried carrying his saddle home upon his own proper back,
having left his weak and weary steed out on the plain.
The original herd, every beast of which had been bred and reared at
Rainbar, was not altogether badly off. Acquainted with every nook and
corner of the run, they ‘went back’ almost incredible distances for
grass, only returning to the bare vicinity of the water when desperate
with thirst. It is wonderful what privation in that respect the
half-wild herds of cattle and horses will undergo in a dry country in a
dry season, without seriously imperilling their health and strength. If
they can only procure a debauch upon water from time to time, they
stave off famine in a manner quite impossible to the shorthorns and
unadventurous beeves of more rainy climes, more succulent pastures.
As to the members of the co-operative settlement―the cockatoos, as Jack
Windsor incorrectly called them―they were not, in that time of trial,
an element of help or consolation. Their cattle had increased even
suspiciously fast. The untoward season had brought out the narrow greed
and cunning of their natures into unpleasant prominence.
Under the impression that Ernest would most probably be ruined and be
compelled shortly to sell Rainbar, they arrived at the conclusion that
there was nothing to be gained by concession, and so gradually threw
off any semblance of deference. They rigidly enforced the exclusion of
the Rainbar cattle from their very extensive pre-emptive grass rights,
and they hunted with their dogs new cattle and old indifferently, not
particularly caring, it would seem, whether they were or were not lost.
Ernest was first grieved, then indignant, at this gross ingratitude.
Under the influence of these feelings he expostulated with them warmly,
alleging his right, as having advanced a portion of the purchase-money
for their holdings, to some consideration, if the general sympathy and
kindness which he had accorded to them was to go for nothing.
Abraham Freeman replied that they did not see that they had anything to
thank him for, particularly that they had left good homes to come to
this confounded dry sand-heap of a country. That they intended to stick
up for their pre-emptives, as the cattle were all their dependence now,
and that if he wanted to make terms with them, they would be satisfied
with that portion of the run―with the river frontage, of course―which
lay to the westward of their settlement. If he just gave them the use
of that bit of country―it was only five or six miles in length, and
didn’t go far back―then they would bind themselves _not to take up any
more of his run_.
This last implied threat completed the obliteration of the last shred
of Mr. Neuchamp’s patience. These heartless, unprincipled wretches,
whom he had raised from a position of indifferently paid toil, akin to
daily labour, to that of thriving graziers, basely forgetful of his
exceptional benevolence, were actually trading upon their power of
annoyance and injurious occupation of his run! Very bitter were Mr.
Neuchamp’s reflections when this evil growth of human nature was thus
indisputably proved. Had it not been so bad a season he might have
overlooked it. But now, when fate and the very skies were at war with
him, this instance of ingratitude overpowered all philosophic calmness.
He immediately convened a meeting of the heads of families of the house
of Freeman, and informed them, in sufficiently decided tones, that he
found himself to have been mistaken in his estimate of their principles
and characters; that he had sought to benefit them chiefly; had already
assisted them to a partial independence, and that he had looked for
some decent recognition of his efforts for their sole advantage. They
had chosen to deceive and to threaten. He was resolved now to confine
them strictly to their land, to require repayment of the money which he
had lent, and to hold no terms of any kind whatever with them.
Messrs. Freeman Brothers were somewhat astonished by Ernest’s capacity
for righteous indignation. They had not expected anything of the sort.
They had looked for unlimited toleration. They now began to consider
that a declaration of war might possibly result injuriously to their
own interests, and they possibly had the grace to remember that, up to
this stage of the affair, Mr. Neuchamp had been considerate, or, in
their phraseology, ‘soft,’ to an extent altogether unprecedented in
their experience of the pastoral tenants of the Crown. They would have
no more loading, an easy way of providing themselves with the very
moderate amount of cash necessary for their ordinary expenditure.
Certainly they did not need any large outlay. There are few lands under
the sun, the Coral Islands of that charmed main the Great South Sea
excepted, where there is such a possibility of tranquil, joyous
progress along life’s pathway, without the use of the circulating
medium, as in the settlements of the older colonies of Australia.
For instance, the Freemans had, as it were for nothing, house-room,
fuel, water, and light. Their garden supplied them with an annual crop
of pumpkins, melons, and other esculents, which gave them vegetable
food for the greater part of the year. Far larger crops might have been
produced by a comparatively trifling increase of labour or thought.
They had milk, butter, and meat from their herd, in ordinary years in
profusion. The few necessaries which they were absolutely reduced to
import or purchase were clothes, of which, owing to the mildness of the
climate, they needed but few; tea and sugar, salt and flour, with a
trifling stock of household utensils and furniture. With respect to the
tea and sugar, a large reduction might have been made in this section
had it been the fashion, as it was the exceptional practice, of
isolated settlers to substitute milk for the former, as an ordinary
adjunct to the three meals of the day.
But tea in Australia, grateful alike in the burning heat of summer and
in the bitter frosts and sleet of winter―portable, innocuous,
nutritive, and slightly stimulating―is the beer of the common people;
and we know from experience that the attempt ‘to rob a poor man of his
beer’ has always hitherto proved unpopular and unsuccessful.
We must therefore assume that a half-chest of tea and a couple of bags
of medium brown sugar must be added to the expenditure of the small
farmer, or ‘free selector,’ as he is now universally called.
Australia is not a good game country. Still the different varieties of
the kangaroo are palatable and nutritious, more resembling the flesh of
the hare and rabbit, with a flavour of veal, than beef or mutton. With
the aid of a brace of rough greyhounds―the kangaroo-dog of the
colonists―these are easily procured in any quantity. The skins are
worth a shilling each, and are useful as mats or for coverings. The
rivers and creeks, particularly the larger watercourses, are generally
filled with fresh-water codfish and several other divisions of the
perch family. These are considered to afford valuable supplementary aid
to the perhaps scanty supply of butchers’ meat, on many a far-out farm
in summer time.
With regard to the condition of the rather exclusive settlement formed
and owned by the Freeman family, they had each made shift to bring from
a couple to half a dozen brood mares, perhaps originally purchased for
from half-a-crown to half-a-sovereign each, out of the Bowning pound.
These hardy, though not perhaps well-bred, animals had increased
wonderfully since their arrival, and were now, of themselves, quite a
small herd. The younger members of the Freeman families could of course
ride like Comanches, and no inconsiderable portion of their time was
spent in running in these swift and half-wild mustangs, breaking them,
losing them, finding them; and in all these operations and employment
galloping around and across the Rainbar run, to the wrath and constant
annoyance of Jack Windsor and Charley Banks.
Some effort was made, in a half-sullen, half-apologetic way, by Abraham
Freeman to remove the ban under which the whole settlement lay. But
Ernest was fixed and implacable in righteous disapproval. He gave
strict orders that no stock of the offending co-operatives was to be
permitted to graze upon the Rainbar run; that the boys were to be told
that they would be summoned for trespass if they were found riding over
the run or driving stock off without notice. War was declared in form.
The strayed cattle belonging to the smaller graziers were placed in the
Rainbar yard from time to time, and kept there till taken away by their
owners. They were not permitted to purchase any articles from the
station store. And, in fine, a blockade cordon was morally drawn round
that nucleus of agricultural co-operative progress which had called
forth so many sanguine prophecies. Mr. Neuchamp was sternly immutable
and indignant of attitude. Slow to arouse and difficult to persuade of
intentional wrongdoing, he was _very_ loath to retreat from any gage of
battle thus produced.
Both Charley Banks and Jack Windsor regarded this latter step with
disapprobation. It had been ridiculously credulous and weak, according
to their mode of thought, to invite the Freemans to settle on Rainbar.
It was lamentably imprudent to quarrel openly with them now they _were_
settled.
The second brother assented without much hostile observation,
regretting that they had fallen out for nothing, as he expressed it;
and Mr. Joe Freeman smiled in a scarcely reassuring manner, as Charley
Banks thought, and said if it came to a pounding match, the cove would
find that they could do him a deuced sight more hurt than he could do
them.
Mr. Windsor, who had seen more of the ways of small freeholders, and
understood their modes of feeling and action better than did Charley
Banks, much less Mr. Neuchamp, did not regard this open declaration of
hostilities as likely to add to their comfort, profit, or advantage.
‘Mr. Neuchamp did a soft thing in bringing these chaps here, and now
he’s acting far from wise in letting ’em know what he thinks of ’em. He
ought to have kept in with ’em and watched ’em, and if they went “on
the cross” about the stock, he’d have had ’em safe and sound in
Drewarrina Gaol some fine day.’
This was Jack’s idea of justifiable free-selectoricide. It might
occasionally miss fire, but in the long-run it was very likely to bag
the ‘picker-up of unconsidered trifles’ in the shape of unbranded
stock.
‘Those chaps can do the boss a deuced sight more damage than he can do
them if they’re drove to it,’ continued Mr. Windsor. ‘They watch him
when he isn’t thinkin’ of them, and if our cattle ain’t on their land,
they can _make ’em_ trespass any night they please. I know the likes of
them well, and I’d rather take ’em quiet than hustle ’em any day.’
‘You’re not far wrong, Jack,’ assented Mr. Banks. ‘We must keep these
new cattle close, or they’ll have a lot ready for Drewarrina pound some
fine morning, as sure as my name is Charley Banks.’
By careful watching, by riding early and riding late, this highly
probable outcome of the feud between Mr. Neuchamp and his late
_protégés_ was for a time avoided. But
There never yet was human power
Which could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong.
It is questionable whether Byron had the operation of the Lands
Occupation Act for the colony of New South Wales in view when he penned
these lines, but they apply as closely to the general consequences of
that great statute as if his lordship had intended to settle the
affairs of Australia, after leading to victory the anti-Turkish party
of the day.
The brothers Freeman, by a peculiar mental process, had managed to
ignore the very substantial aid in cash and employment, the former
still unrepaid, furnished by Mr. Neuchamp. By fixing all their
attention upon his latter line of conduct, they became convinced that
in denying their cattle access to every portion of the Rainbar run he
had inflicted upon them a great wrong. This they determined to avenge
if not to redress; and one fine morning an ill-written note, brought by
a brown-faced urchin of ten years old about breakfast time, informed
Mr. Neuchamp that William and Joseph Freeman had discovered three
hundred and forty-seven of his cattle trespassing upon their land,
which cattle were now in their custody, and which they proposed driving
to Drewarrina pound (about seventy miles off) if not forthwith released
with damages and expenses paid.
‘What in the name of all that’s rascally can we do?’ inquired Ernest of
Charley Banks, as he tossed the note over to him across the breakfast
table. ‘I feel inclined to go down and take the cattle by force. The
dishonest, scheming vagabonds!’
‘That’s what I should like to do,’ said Banks, ‘and I think Jack and I
could hammer that Bill Freeman and his brother, but I’m afraid it won’t
do. If we rescue the cattle we can be summoned and fined; besides
taking us all the way to that rascally hole of a township.’
‘Then let them keep them, and drive them over to the pound. The damage
can’t be much.’
‘And let them hunt them over, and yard them half the time?’ demanded
Mr. Banks. ‘No, that wouldn’t do either. The cattle wouldn’t recover it
for the whole season. You’ll have to buy him off. So much a head. It’s
the shortest way through it.’
Mr. Neuchamp groaned. This way was degrading. A pecuniary loss, for
which he did not care so much as he ought to have done, for Ernest was
one of those people who rarely regard a cheque or order as the bag of
golden sovereigns that anything over a ten-pound note really is. Also,
a loss of dignity, which he felt keenly, that he should be placed in
the dilemma of having to pay to release his own cattle from his own
tenants, so to speak, or to see them injured and lowered in value by
those base burghers of the corporation he had himself led into the land
of promise!
‘There is nothing else to be done,’ said Charley. ‘They have the best
of us now; we must pay.’
‘I don’t believe the cattle were on their land at all,’ pleaded the
founder of the society.
‘That’s nothing,’ opposed Mr. Banks, ‘they’ll swear they _found ’em
there_, and bring three or four witnesses to prove it; you’d better
give me a cheque for thirty pounds, and let me square it with them. I
think we shall get out for that.’
Mr. Neuchamp much regretted sacrificing any portion of his latest and
probably concluding advance from Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton in such
an unsatisfactory manner, but was compelled to employ that only
universal solvent, a cash payment. Mr. Banks departed with the magic
missive. I have no authentic record of what actually passed between him
and Bill Freeman, but he returned with the cattle. It was also noticed
that no peculiar exacerbation occurred between the litigants after this
interview.
Another month wore away in the performance of the ordinary work, and
the endurance of rather more than the ordinary crosses and losses
consequent upon the still protracted drought.
No rain. And again, no rain. Nothing grew. All nature became daily more
wan, pale, leafless. The crop of expenses, inevitable and regular, in
contradistinction to the produce of the season, grew and matured, until
once more the limit of advance agreed to by Messrs. Oldstile and
Crampton was definitely reached. Of this ultimate fact Mr. Neuchamp was
unpleasantly reminded by the return, unpaid, of his last half-dozen
orders, arriving by the mail preceding that which furnished an
exceedingly formal letter, advising the unpleasant step which his
agents, to their extreme regret, had been compelled to take.
Ernest felt this hitherto unknown annoyance to be the precursor of a
financial earthquake, in which possibly his present possessions and
future hopes might be engulfed.
He tried to consider his position with the calmness proper to so grave
a conjuncture. But he had much difficulty in preserving the requisite
freedom from disturbance. Ever and anon would come, as with a lightning
flash, the vision of all his cherished projects disappearing down the
dark chasm of insolvency and ruin.
His stud of Australian Arabs, now so promising, would be sold for the
price of bush mustangs. His store cattle, nearly broken to the run,
would be as valueless as if, in spite of their high breeding, they had
been composed in great part of the ‘scrub-danglers,’ one of whom had so
unwarrantably assaulted him on his arrival at Rainbar. His pet
engineering scheme, unfinished and derided, would be henceforth
ticketed among the denizens of the locality as Neuchamp’s Folly. Ernest
had not more than the ordinary share of self-love, through which nature
makes provision for the preservation of the individual, but he
commenced to feel by anticipation the pangs which are inseparable from
pronounced failure in any soever enterprise or profession. He heard Mr.
Jermyn Croker’s unqualified verdict that ‘he had always been a
philanthropic lunatic, from whom nothing else could have been expected;
the only wonder being that any one had been found fool enough to trust
him, and thereby enable him to make so respectable a smash of it.’
Others doubtless would follow in the same suit. Even the good-natured
Parklands and the charitable Aymer Brandon, who gave, as they required
indeed, much frank social absolution, could scarcely refrain from
unreserved condemnation of his ‘improvement’ theory. As to the
‘grateful tenantry’ idea, represented by Freeman Brothers, with their
grass-rights, their hostility, and their herds and their flocks―for
they had lately purchased a thousand debilitated travelling sheep at
about sixpence per head―it would not bear thinking of. He was now in
full endurance of the reactionary stage of despondency occasionally
bestowed as a counterpoise to the ordinarily high average of tone with
which the sanguine man is blessed or cursed, as the case may be. As Mr.
Neuchamp reviewed his generous and lofty aims, his far-reaching plans
and projects dependent upon so kindly a future for success, he inclined
to the latter reading. They appeared to him in this his dark hour as
the fantasies of an opium-eater or the dream-palaces of a slumbering
child.
Mr. Neuchamp, after a day spent in sad consideration, unfortunately
permitted himself to pursue the unending evil of regret during the
night. His heightened imagination multiplied disaster and enlarged evil
to such a degree that he was more than once tempted to spring from his
thorny couch and take to the broad starlit plain for the relief of
exercise.
‘So sore was the delirious goad,
I took my steed and forth I rode,’
says the remorseful Marmion; and but that in the present state of the
fodder market no horses had been stabled at Rainbar for many a day, our
latter-day Crusader might have followed out the idea literally. As it
was he but arose at earliest dawn and mechanically took the garden
path, trusting to find some excuse for an hour or two of hard manual
labour which might guide or exorcise the evil spirits that were rending
his very soul.
He had been putting out all his strength for an hour or more, and was
in much the same bodily state and condition as if he had taken a
ten-mile spin with a greatcoat on, after the prescription of Mr.
Geoffry Delamayn, when he observed a solitary horseman wending his way
along the ‘up-river’ road, which was distinguishable more by dust than
by colouring from the grassless waste through which it wound.
The stranger, who was habited in a collarless Crimean shirt and rather
dilapidated habiliments generally, rode his emaciated steed steadily on
at the slow, hopeless, leg-weary jog to which most of the horses of the
territory had long been reduced, until he reached the garden gate.
Ernest,―taking him for granted as the usual ‘reporter’ of travelling
sheep, about to clear off the last fragments of what once had been
pasture; an invalid shepherd, making for the Drewarrina Hospital; a
mounted tramp or ‘traveller’ looking for work, with no great hope of,
or indeed concern about, finding it; or lastly, a supernumerary for
some travelling stock caravan, who had been ‘hunted’ for drunkenness or
inefficiency,―raised not his head. For any or all of these toilers of
the waste there would be the unvarying hospitality of the men’s hut.
But the stranger sat calmly upon his despondent horse at the gate
surveying Ernest’s exceedingly efficient spade performance with
apparent approval, until at length he broke silence. ‘My word, Mr.
Noochamp, you’re nigh as good as a Chinaman. You’d make wages at
post-hole digging, if the rain forgets to come and we’re all smothered.
How’s those AD store cattle getting on?’
Ernest looked up hastily and indignantly at the first tones of the
stranger’s accost, but immediately relaxed his visage and flung down
his spade as he recognised in the horseman’s countenance the grave,
reflective lineaments of Abstinens Levison.
END OF VOL. II
_Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, _Edinburgh_.
Transcriber’s Note
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation remain unchanged.
“to one of his own invention, viz. ƎNE (a conjoined hieroglyph)”. The
initial character of the hieroglyph is printed half a line lower in the
original.