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Project Gutenberg has the other two volumes of this work.
Volume I: see https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54067
Volume II: see https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55652
Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
In the expression “the [Ǝ]NE brand” [Ǝ] represent the
reverse E character depressed by half a line.
In the expression "the M[Ḋ] brand" [Ḋ] represents a
reversed D depressed by half a line.
A COLONIAL REFORMER
[Illustration: Colophon]
A COLONIAL REFORMER
by
ROLF BOLDREWOOD
Author of ‘Robbery Under Arms,’ ‘The Squatter’S Dream,’
‘The Miner’S Right,’ etc.
In Three Volumes
VOL. III
London
Macmillan and Co.
and New York
1890
All rights reserved
CHAPTER XXIV
In the strange exceptional condition of nervous tension up to which
that marvellous instrument, the human ‘harp of a thousand strings,’ is
capable of being wound, under the pressure of dread and perplexity,
there is a type of visitor whose face is always hailed with pleasure.
This is a fact as unquestionable as the converse proposition. For
the _bien-venu_ under such delicate and peculiar circumstances,
helpfulness, sympathy, and decision are indispensable. Of no avail
are weakly condolences or mild assenting pity. The power to dispense
substantial aid may or may not be wanting. But the friend in need
must have the moral power and clearness of mental vision which render
decisiveness possible and just. His fiat, favourable or unfavourable,
lets in the light, separates real danger from undefined terror, offers
security for well-grounded hope, or persuades to the calmness of
resignation.
A man so endowed, in a very unusual degree, was Mr. Levison. Deriving
his leading characteristics from Nature’s gift—very scantily
supplemented by education—he yet possessed the rare qualities of
apprehensive acuteness, intrepidity, and discrimination in such measure
and proportion as a hundred prize-takers at competitive examinations
might have vainly hoped to emulate. Like that Australian judge, of
whom the American citizen, in an inland assize town, is reported to
have said, ‘Wal, Judge Shortcharge may be right, or he may be wrong,
but he _decides_. I go for the judge myself.’
Abstinens Levison much resembled that brief but weighty legal luminary,
in that, after due consideration of any case concerning which he was
minded to give judgment, his verdict was clear and irrevocable.
For this reason the soul of Ernest Neuchamp was glad within him at
the prospect of hearing from the lips of the grave, undemonstrative,
unwavering pastoralist words of comfort or of rebuke, which would be to
him as the Oracles of the Gods.
‘Jump off and come in,’ he said. ‘Delighted to see you—horse knocked
up as usual? We’ll take the saddle off here, and let him pick at those
reeds; they’re better than nothing. I was having a go-in at the garden
here, just to take it out of myself a little, and forget my annoyances.
But we must have some breakfast, though we are all going to be ruined,
as you say—and it looks very like it.’
As Mr. Neuchamp in his revulsion of feeling rattled off these
greetings, partly in welcome and partly in explanation, his guest
removed the saddle and several folds of blanket from the very prominent
vertebræ of his gaunt courser, watching him roll and then attack the
scantily furnished reed-bed, with much satisfaction.
‘Where did you come from this morning?’ inquired Ernest of his
guest, as, after a prolonged visit to the bathroom, they sat down to
breakfast; ‘you must have made a very early start if you came from
Mildool.’
‘I camped on the river,’ said Mr. Levison, attacking the corned beef
in a deliberate but determined manner; ‘in the bend, just below those
free-selecting friends of yours; you don’t seem to have been getting on
well with ’em lately, from what they say.’
‘We are not on good terms, I must admit,’ replied Mr. Neuchamp, with a
slight air of embarrassment, recollecting Levison’s prophecy of evil,
which had been verified to the letter; ‘but it is entirely their own
fault. I was much deceived in them.’
‘Very like,’ answered that gentleman, with as near an approach to a
smile as his grave features ever permitted. ‘It takes a smart man to be
up to chaps of their sort.’
‘Did you stay there?’ asked Ernest, anxious to lead the conversation
into a less unsatisfactory channel; ‘they have not made themselves a
very convenient dwelling.’
‘No!’ replied Mr. Levison, preferring a request for another instalment
of the cold round of beef. ‘I never stay at a place if I’m going to
make a deal. It makes a difference in the bargain, I always think; and
I wanted to make a little deal with those chaps, from what I heard as I
came up the river.’
‘A deal?’ said Ernest, with some surprise; ‘and how did you get on? I
shouldn’t have thought they had much to sell.’
‘Well, they’ve got a middling lot of quiet cattle for one thing;
they’re regular crawlers, but none the worse for that if grass
ever grows again. Then they’ve got, what with their selections and
pre-emptives, a tidy slice, and of not the worst part, of Rainbar run.
And as there was a friend of mine that a small place like that would
suit, and the cattle and the few sheep, at a price—at a price,’ he
continued, with slow earnestness—‘why—I’ll ask for another cup of
tea—I had an hour’s mighty hard dealing, and bought the whole jimbang
right out.’
‘Indeed!’ said Ernest, gratified in one sense, but slightly alarmed
at the idea of a second pastoral proprietor being introduced into the
sacred demesne of Rainbar; ‘but they have to fulfil their residence
condition, haven’t they, according to the Land Act?’
‘Of course I made _that_ all right,’ affirmed the senior colonist.
‘They’re bound down to reside till their time is up, and they don’t get
the balance of their money till they can convey, all square and legal.
They didn’t know me, as luck would have it, and I dropped to their
being very eager to sell out. These kind of chaps never look ahead
beyond their noses, whereby I had ’em pretty well at my own price, for
cash—cash, you know. A fine thing is cash, when you take care of it,
and bring it out like an ace. It takes all before it.’
‘What did you give for the cattle?’ asked Ernest, with melancholy
interest.
‘Well, these small holders always believe the end of the world’s come
when they find themselves landed in a real crusher of a dry season.
They think the weather is bound to keep set fair for a lifetime. I
showed ’em how their cattle was falling off, and at last they offered
the lot all round at eight and sixpence—no calves given in, except
regular staggering Bobs. And so my friend has the run, and the stock,
and the pre-empts all in his own hands. He’ll do well out of ’em, or
I’m much mistaken.’
‘And does your friend propose to come and live here?’
‘Well, he might, and he might not. I think I’ll take another egg—fine
things eggs in a dry season. I expect your fowls live on grasshoppers
pretty much. You see, if he could get two or three fellows as he could
depend on to take up some more of the best bits of the bends, leaving a
slice here and a slice there—so as it’s not worth any one else’s while
to come in, because they’d have no pre-emptive worth talking of—he’d be
able to keep all that angle pretty well to himself, and I believe it
will keep well on it a thousand head of cattle some day.’
‘I’m afraid it will spoil the sale of the run,’ said Ernest, with some
diffidence; ‘not that it will matter to me much, as I shall have to
sell out whether or no, and at present prices there will be little if
anything left. You will have to take your cattle back if they’re not
paid for.’
‘Well, I don’t say but what it _might_ spoil the sale of the run,
especially if my friend was to be wide awake and take up his fresh
selections with judgment. And don’t you think, now,’ Mr. Levison
interrogated, fixing his clear gray eyes full upon Ernest’s
countenance, ‘as it was a blind trick of yours to go and bring these
chaps here, like a lot of catarrhed sheep, all among your own stock,
just to make it hot for yourself and crab the sale of the run,
supposing you wanted to sell?’
Mr. Neuchamp had in his hours of remorse and repentance sufficiently
gone over the ground of his errors and miscalculations, so as to
be very fully convinced of the folly of this his most indefensible
proceeding. He had been thirsting for the words of the oracle. Now that
the hollow sounds came from Dodona’s oak, he liked not their purport.
The spirit of his ancestors, temporarily oppressed by misfortune,
awoke in his breast, and he thus made answer: ‘My dear sir, I am most
willing to own that I have in this matter acted unwisely. And the
more I see of this great but perplexing country, the more ready I am
to admit that extreme caution is necessary in many transactions where
such need does not appear on the surface. But I have acted in this,
and in all other stages of my Australian career, upon the principle
of attempting to do good to my fellow-creatures, and of raising the
standard of human happiness and culture. Such motives I hold to be the
true foundation of every instructed, christianised, and, therefore,
permanent community. Want of success may have attended my efforts to
carry out these ideas; but of such efforts and endeavours, whatever may
be the result, I trust I shall never feel ashamed!’
As Mr. Neuchamp uttered the concluding words of this vindication of his
faith with a kindling eye and slightly raised tone, he held his head
erect and looked with a fixed and rather stern regard at Mr. Levison,
as if defying all the Paynim hosts of selfishness and monopoly.
Mr. Levison met his gaze with a moment’s searching glance, and then,
with a relapse into his ordinary expression of judicial calculation,
thus answered—
‘I ain’t going to say that you are acting altogether wrong in trying
to right things in a general way in life. There’s more than you has
noticed a lot of wrong turns and breakdowns for want of a finger-post
or two. And I like to see a man back his opinion right through, whether
it’s right or wrong. But if you lose your team, and break your pole,
and spoil your loading when you’re on a long overland trip, how are you
to help your mates or any other chap that’s bogged when they want you
to double-bank? That’s what I look at. You’ve got to stand and look on,
just like a broke loafer or a coach passenger. What I say, and what I
stick to, is that a man should make sure, and double sure, of his own
footing, and _then_ he can wire in and haul out any man, woman, or
child as he takes a fancy to put on firm ground. But, if you go too
fast, and your agent drops you, and you want to help a fellow, why,
you’re bust, and he’s bust, and what can either of ye do but sit on
your stern fixings and look at each other?’
Mr. Levison’s illustrations were homely, but they had a force and
application which Ernest fully recognised.
‘You have the truth on your side,’ he said, after a pause. ‘I see it
now—very plainly, too. I wonder why I could not see it before.’
‘There’s a deal of studying required, it seems to me,’ propounded his
eccentric mentor, ‘and a deal of experience, and knocking about, and
loss of time and money, too, before a man comes to see the _right thing
at the right time_. That’s where the hardship all lies. If the thing’s
right and the time’s wrong, _that’s_ no good. And the right time and
the wrong thing is worse again. What you’ve been a-doin’ of ain’t so
much wrong in itself—only the time’s wrong, that’s where your mistake
is,—except things take a great start soon; and I don’t say they won’t,
mind you.‘
Here Mr. Levison looked at Ernest with an expression half humorous,
half prophetic, so extremely unusual that the latter began to wonder
whether there was any case on record of half a dozen cups of tea having
produced temporary insanity. But the unaccustomed gleam departed
suddenly from the dark, steadfast gray eyes, and the countenance
resumed its wonted cast of calm investigation and unalterable decision.
‘Does old Frankston ever give you a dressing down in the advice line?’
inquired Mr. Levison, without continuing the development of the idea
he had last started. ‘Because if he does, you’d have a bad time of
it between us. But I’ve done all the preaching part of the story for
this time, and I’m a-going on to the second chapter. Do you know the
friend’s name as I bought these Freeman chaps out for?’
‘No,’ said Ernest. ‘I shall be happy to afford him all the assistance I
can—that is, if I’m here, you know,’ he added, with sudden reflection.
‘That’s all right; but he’s a youngish chap, and easy had. Will you
promise to advise him to live economically, mind his business till
times improve, and not waste his money, above all things? Tell him I
said so.’
‘I don’t think I am the best adviser you could pick in that way,’ said
Ernest. ‘I am too sensible of my own defects; but I will deliver your
message and add my feeble weight to the influence of your name.’
‘That’s all right, and handsomely said. Now, my friend’s name is Ernest
Neuchamp! I’ve bought the land and the cattle for him. They’re cheap
enough if he never pays me for them, but I believe he will, and that
those Freeman chaps will be biting their fingers at letting theirselves
go so cheap this time next year. But, mind you tell him not to waste
his money. Tell him Levison said so. Ha, ha! I must start now.’
Mr. Levison laughed for the first time since Ernest had made his
acquaintance. It must have been the sight of Ernest’s wonder-stricken
face which caused this unprecedented though brief incongruity.
‘I can never sufficiently thank you,’ he said; ‘but where’s the money
to come from? The station will never pay it.’
‘That’s more than you can know,’ answered the Changer of Destinies;
‘It’s more than I know, too. I don’t mind telling you—as I said
before—you’re not likely to interfere much with any man’s profits. But
cattle are _going to rise_, and that to no foolish price. You mark my
words. Before this time twelve months fat cattle will be worth five
pounds a head, as sure as my name’s Ab. Levison. And if rain comes—and
I’ve seen some signs that I have great dependence on—store cattle will
be two and three pounds a head, and hard to buy at that.’
These last words he uttered with great solemnity, and Mr. Neuchamp
perceived that he was fully imbued with faith in his own vaticinations.
‘I hope it may be so,’ Ernest replied. ‘Good heavens! what a wonderful
change it would make in everything. But why should stock rise so?’
‘Because the _yield of gold_ is increasing every day and every hour in
these colonies. Don’t you see the papers? I thought you was sure to
have read everything. Why, you are not half posted up. Look here!’
Here he produced from one of his capacious pockets a much worn and
closely printed Melbourne _Argus_, in which mention was made of ‘the
astonishing discovery of gold near Bunninyong at Mr. Yuille’s station,
commonly known as Ballarat, in such quantity and richness as bade fair
to rival the hitherto exhaustless yields of Turonia and California.
Great excitement had taken place. Melbourne was deserted. You could
not get your hair cut. The barristers were gone, leaving the judges
lamenting. The doctors had followed their patients. The clergymen had
followed their flocks. The shepherds had deserted theirs. All society
existed in a state of dislocation!’
‘Now,’ he continued, receiving the journal from Ernest, and carefully
refolding and returning it to its place of safety, ‘do you see what
all this gold breaking out here and there and all about means?’
‘For the present the Melbourne people seem to think it means loss, if
not ruin, to them. The shepherds have nearly all run away, it seems,
as also labourers of every description. The writer anticipates a great
fall in the value of property. Indeed, houses and town allotments are
considered to be hardly worth holding. I should have thought otherwise
myself, but’ (here Ernest looked at his companion) ‘I begin to doubt
the correctness of my own opinions.’
‘Well, that writer’s an ass, whoever he is; and you’re a deal nearer
the mark than he is. He’s a donkey, that, because their ain’t a thistle
right against his nose, thinks there ain’t no more thistles in the
world—let alone corn. Now I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’ the whole
matter over since a friend of mine in Port Phillip sent me this paper,
and I cipher it out this way. They’ve sent down five thousand ounces
this week from this place, Ballarat. Then they’ve struck it at Forest
Creek, fifty miles off. Well, that tells me that there’s plenty of it,
and more than years will see out, judging from California and Turonia,
as we know of. Now what do you suppose all Europe—all the world—will do
when they hear of this, that you can dig up gold like potatoes? Why,
they won’t be able to find ships fast enough to bring ‘em here. When
they do come they’ll want to be fed. The tea and sugar and tents and
spades and shovels old Paul Frankston and the other merchants will find
’em somehow; the flour the farmers will find them, or if they can’t,
old Paul and his friends will get it from Chili. _But they can’t import
beef and mutton._ No; not if meat rose to a shilling a pound. Live
stock is the worst freight in the world, and there’s nowhere within
boating distance where it grows plentiful as it does here. So when my
sum’s worked out it means this, that more gold means double and treble
the population, and double and treble the price of everything that we
have here and want to sell.’
As Mr. Levison paused,—not for breath, for he did not exceed his
ordinary slow monotonal enunciation, as he propounded these original
and startling ideas much as though he were reading from a book,—Mr.
Neuchamp looked fixedly at his guest, as if to discover whether or
no some subtle local influence peculiar to Rainbar had infected with
speculative mania the shrewd, calm-judging stockholder.
But the _genius loci_, however seductive, would have fared ill in
a mental encounter with the slow, sure inferences and iron logic
of Abstinens Levison. He displayed no trace of more than ordinary
interest. And from all that was apparent, the onward march of a
revolution fated to flood the land with wealth and to change a handful
of pioneer communities into a nation, was accepted by him with the same
faint unnoted surprise as would have been the announcement of a glut in
the cattle market or the ‘sticking up’ of the downriver mail coach.
‘That’s how it is in my mind,’ he slowly continued, as if pursuing his
ordinary train of thoughts, ‘and before we meet again you’ll know all
about it. I’m off to Melbourne as soon as I can get on to the mail
line. I shall buy stock right and left, and pick up as many cottages
and town allotments as I can find with good titles. They’ll be like
these Freeman store cattle; cent per cent will be a trifle to what
profits are to be had out of them. But all this yarning won’t buy the
child a frock. Where’s that young man of yours? I want to leave my
horse and saddle in his charge.’
‘Where are you going now?’ asked Ernest. ‘How can you get over to
the mail station without a horse? It’s a hundred and eighty miles to
Wargan, where the coach line comes in.’
‘It’s only thirty miles to Wood-duck Lagoon, where the horse mail
passes,’ said his determined guest. ‘I left word for them down at
Mingadee to send a led horse by the mailman for me to-morrow. Johnny
Daly’s an old stockman of mine, and one of those chaps that when he
says he’ll do a thing he always does it. I’m as sure of finding a horse
there at ten o’clock to-morrow as if I saw him now.’
‘But suppose he loses him on the way, or don’t find your horse ready at
Mingadee, what then? Hadn’t you better take a man and horse from here?’
‘Well, I don’t say Johnny would _steal_ a horse, out and out, if he
knew I expected one at a certain hour; he’s a good boy, though he does
come from the Weddin Mountains. But he’d _have_ one for me, some road
or other, if there wasn’t one nearer than Bargo Brush. As for your
horses, I’m obliged, and know I’m welcome, but it would knock up one
going and one coming back, for they’re all as poor as crows, and that
don’t pay, besides a man’s time for nothing. I’ve plenty of time, and
the night’s the best travelling weather now. If you’ll call this native
chap I’ll be off.’
Ernest, though extremely loath to let his friend and benefactor depart
on foot—of which, as a mode of progression, he was beginning to
acquire the Australian opinion, viz. that it wore a poverty-stricken
appearance—could not decently oppose Mr. Levison’s fixed desire to
take the road. He therefore called up Jack Windsor, to whose care Mr.
Levison solemnly confided his emaciated quadruped, a much worn and
sunburned saddle and bridle, together with a considerable portion of
gray blanket, which, in many folds, did duty as saddle-cloth.
‘Now, young man,’ he said solemnly, walking aside with Mr. Windsor,
‘you take care of these and my old horse. Give them to nobody without
he brings Mr. Cottonbush’s written order; do you hear? That’s as good a
stock horse and journey hack as ever you crossed, though he’s low now.’
‘He is _very_ low!’ averred Jack, looking at the bare-ribbed spectral
but well-formed animal that was grazing within a few yards of the spot,
‘but he may get over it. I’ll take a look at him night and morning, and
see that he’s lifted regular if he gets down.’
‘All right,’ said his master. ‘I had to lift him myself this morning,
and very hard work I had to get him up. But if it rains within the next
two months you’ll have him kicking up his heels like a colt.’
‘Are you going to walk to Wood-duck Lagoon, sir?’ inquired Jack
respectfully.
‘Yes, I am, and no great matter either,’ returned the exceptionally
wiry capitalist. ‘_I’m_ right enough; don’t you trouble about me. What
you and young Banks have to look out for is, to keep all these Circle
Dot cattle well within bounds till the weather breaks, and then you
can’t go wrong, and I look upon Mr. Neuchamp’s pile as made. I’ve taken
to him, more than a bit. Besides, he’s got another good back, though he
don’t know it. I’ve bought out the Freeman’s, stock, lock, and barrel,
so their cattle won’t bother you any more.’
Here Mr. Windsor gave a leap off the ground, and cast his cabbage-tree
hat violently from his curly brown locks in another direction.
‘Yes, I’ve bought ’em pretty right; they didn’t know me, or they’d have
stuck it on—bought ’em _for a friend_! So they’ll have the pleasure of
seeing you and Banks branding the increase next year, just as they are
giving up possession; and the calves will be worth more then than I
paid for the cows yesterday. But I might be mistaken, you know.’
‘It would be for the first time; so they all used to say at
Boocalthra,’ answered Jack.
‘_You_ were there, then?’ said Mr. Levison, bending his extremely
discriminating gaze upon the bronzed, resolute face. ‘_Now_ I remember
your brand; you were the curly-headed boy that used to ride the colts
for the horse-breaker. Glad you turned out steady. I didn’t expect it.
Stick to Rainbar; now you’re in a good place, and you’ll do well. But
whatever you do, if you walk your feet off, don’t let these Circle Dot
cows and heifers get out of bounds till the rain comes. If you are
regularly beat, go down to Mingadee; there’s a hundred and fifty stock
horses there, spelling for next winter’s work, and Cottonbush will
have my orders to let you have half a dozen. I know what fresh cattle
are in a season like this. Well, good-bye, Jack the Devil; I remember
all about you now.’ Mr. Windsor grinned, yet preserved an air of
diffidence. ‘Take care of the old horse, and don’t you lend that saddle
to no one!’
With these parting words tending to thrift, in curious
contradistinction to the tenor of his action at Rainbar, Mr. Levison
proceeded to take a hurried leave of his entertainer.
‘I’ve just been talking to that native chap of yours,’ he said, ‘about
my old horse. He wants a bit of looking after now, but you’d be
surprised to see what style he has when he’s in good fettle. Wonderful
horse on a camp. Best cutting-out horse, this day, on the river. Pulls
rather hard, that’s the worst of him.’
Mr. Neuchamp, who, having as yet not gone through the terrible
trials of a prolonged drought, had never witnessed the incredible
emaciation to which stock may be reduced, and their rapid and magical
transformation at the wand of the enchanter ‘Rain,’ looked as if he
really _would_ be surprised at the tottering, hollow-eyed, fleshless
spectre, in appearance something between an expiring poley cow and an
anatomical preparation, ‘pulling hard’ again, or doing any deed of
valour as a charger.
‘Ah! you’ll be all in the fashion, then,’ said Mr. Levison, with his
customary affirmative expression, which apparently meant that having
asserted his opinion it was waste of time to attempt to prove it.
‘When old BI (that’s what the men call him, his name’s written on him
pretty big) kicks up his heels, it’ll mean that Rainbar’s _worth twenty
thousand pounds_! That’s why I want you to be careful, and not waste
your money and get sold up just before the tide turns. How’s that Arab
horse-breeding notion turned out? They’d fetch about three pound a head
all round just now.’
‘Very well, so far; they’re a little poor, but nothing could look more
promising than the yearlings—plenty of bone, and as handsome as you
could make them. I should grieve more about their forced sale than
anything.’
‘Well, you’re not sold up yet, and won’t be if you’ll be careful and
take my advice and Paul Frankston’s. You mark me, horses will be
horses in a year or two. They’re hardly worth owning now; but their
turn’s coming, with everything else that any man will have to sell in
Australia for the next ten years.’
Mr. Levison placed the few necessary articles which he had abstracted
from his valise, in the moiety of the gray blanket which he had
apparently not required as a saddle-cloth. He requested leave to cut
off and to take with him a fair-sized section of damper, sternly
refusing any other description of edible. Then, turning his face to the
broad plain, he held out his hand to Ernest, and finally exhorting him
not to waste his money, addressed himself to the far-stretching trail
after such a fashion as convinced Ernest that he was no inexperienced
pedestrian.
Mr. Neuchamp returned to his cottage in a very different frame of
mind from that which characterised his pre-matutinal discipline in
the garden. How short a time, how trifling an incident, occasionally
suffices to turn the scale from anxiety to repose, from despair to
glowing hope. This last cheering mental condition was indispensably
necessary to Mr. Neuchamp’s acceptation of burdens, even to his very
life. He had gone forth in the clear dawnlight a miserable man,
racked by presentiments of scorn unalterable to come, gazing on
‘Ruin’s red letters writ in flame,’ and associated with the hitherto
untarnished fame and sufficing fortune of Ernest Neuchamp; he had heard
in imagination the laugh of scorn, the half-contemptuous, pitying
condolence. Now, though much remained uncertain and unsafe, the blessed
flower of Hope had recommenced to bloom. Its fragrance was once more
shed over the soul of the fainting pilgrim through life’s desert, and
the wayfarer arose refreshed and invigorated, free once more to turn
his brow erect and undaunted towards the Mecca of his dreams.
This particular morning happened to be that of the bi-weekly
post-day, a day to which Mr. Neuchamp had looked forward of late
with considerably more apprehension than interest. How wonderfully
different, as the years roll on, are the feelings with which that
humble messenger of fate, the postman, is greeted! In life’s careless
spring he is the custodian of friendship’s offering, the distributor of
the small sweet joys of childhood, the dawning intellectual pleasures
of youth, the rose-hued, enchanting flower-tokens of love. As the days
of the years of our pilgrimage roll on, ‘the air is full of farewells
to the dying and mournings for the dead.’ How altered is the character
of the missives which lie motionless, but charged with subtle, terrible
forces!—electric agents they!—thrilling or rending the vital frame from
that overcharged battery, the heart!
To this undesirable tenor and complexion had much of Mr. Neuchamp’s
correspondence, drought-leavened and gloomy, arrived. Many of his
smaller accounts were of necessity left unpaid. The cruel season,
unchanged in the more vital characteristic of periodic moisture, seemed
to be culminating in an apparently fixed and fatal determination on the
part of Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton to let him have no more money on
account.
But several minor matters, on this particular day, besides the visit
of Mr. Levison, seemed to point to Fortune’s more indulgent mood.
The pile of letters and papers was pleasantly, if not hopefully,
variegated by those periodicals and peculiarly stamped envelopes which
denote the delivery of the European mail. Upon these Ernest dashed
with unconcealed eagerness, and tearing open a letter in his brother
Courtenay’s delicate Italian handwriting, utterly devoid of linear
emphasis, read as follows:
NEUCHAMPSTEAD, _6th March 18—_.
DEAR ERNEST—I cannot acknowledge surprise at the contents of your
last letter, having always looked for some such ending to your
colonial adventure. The day of success for such enterprises has gone
by—if indeed _any one_ ever was really successful at any time in
such wanderings and Quixotisms. You quote the greater examples. Yet
a little temporary notoriety, chiefly ending in imprisonment or the
block, was the guerdon of Columbus and one Raleigh, instances which
occur to me. As I have said before, I have no doubt that our family
would have substantially benefited by remaining on their paternal
fiords and leaving Normandy and England to the robbers and hangers-on
who followed the popular pirate of the day. Being in England, I
suppose we shall have to stay, though the climate daily recommends
itself less to any one whose epidermis does not resemble a suit of
armour. The crops have been bad this year. The tenants are slow and
deficient. No one seems to have any money except certain Liverpool
or Manchester persons, born with an aptitude for swindling in ‘gray
shirtings,’ cotton twist, racehorses, or other equally plausible
instrument for gambling. I spend little and risk nothing. So I may
hope to survive in my insignificance, unless the grand Radical
earthquake, which will surely swallow England’s aristocracy of birth
and culture in a coming day, be antedated. All men of family who
dabble in agriculture, commerce, or colonisation, are earthen pots
which must inevitably be shattered by the aggressive flotilla of
brazen vessels which encumbers every tide nowadays. You will admit I
had no expectation of other result than your ruin when you embarked.
In announcing that fact spare me the details. You will find your old
rooms ready at Neuchampstead, and refurnished. I have been extravagant
in some curious antique furniture.
I enclose a draft for three thousand pounds. Such a sum is of no use
to a gentleman in England. Fling it after the rest. It may console
you, years hence, when you are adding Australian pollen masses to
the famous collection of orchids for which _alone_ Neuchampstead
is celebrated, that your experiment had full justice. It is only
the bourgeois who leaves the table before his ‘system’ is fairly
tried.—Good-bye, my dear brother. Yours sincerely,
COURTENAY NEUCHAMP.
_P.S._—I forgot to add that I gave Augusta your message. How could
you be so incautious? I would have suppressed it, but had, of course,
no option. She starts for Sydney by the mail steamer. Are the women
in Australia so obstinate? But they are much the same everywhere, I
apprehend.—C. N.
The first emotion which Mr. Neuchamp experienced after reading this
characteristic letter was one of unqualified delight. The sight of
the draft for the three thousand pounds, so slightingly alluded to
by Courtenay, was as the vision of the palm-trees at the well to the
fainting desert pilgrim, of the distant sail to the gaunt, perishing
seaman on the drifting raft—the symbol of blessed hope, of assured
deliverance. The capital sum, or the trifling annual income derivable
from it, in gold-flooded England, might be of little utility there,
as Courtenay had averred with the humorous indifferentism which he
professed. But _here_, in this rich unwatered level, metaphorically and
otherwise, it was like the river-born trickling tunnels with which,
since forgotten Pharaoh days, the toiling fellaheen saturate the black
gaping Nile gardens, sure precursor of profound vegetation and the
hundred-fold increase.
No use to a gentleman in England! A company of guardian angels must
surely have wafted to him the precious, delicate document across the
seas, across the desert here. What use would it not be to him, Ernest?
It would pay in full for the Circle Dot store cattle, also for those
purchased from Freeman Brothers, leaving a balance to the credit of his
account with those treasure-guarding griffins, Oldstile and Crampton.
Besides, the bills due to Levison for the store cattle were not due
for several months yet. In the meantime rain or other wonders might
happen. The young horses, too, children of Omar, fleet son of the
desert, with delicately-formed aristocratic heads, deerlike limbs,
which had been dear to him almost as their ancestors had been to some
lonely subdivision of the wandering Shammar or Aneezah!—they were saved
from ruin and disgrace—saved from the indignity of passing for the
merest trifle into the possession of unheeding vulgar purchasers, who
would probably stigmatise them as weeds, wanting in bone, or by any
other cheap form of ignorant depreciation.
Saved! saved! saved! All was saved. Once more secure. Once more his
own. Once more the land and the grazing herd, the humble abode, the
garden, the paddock, even the long-neglected but not despaired-of
canal, all the acted resolves and outcome of a sincere but perhaps
over-sanguine mind, dearer than ever were they to him, their author
and projector. They were his own again. How like Courtenay, too!
Ever better than his word; incredulous as to improved benefits and
successes; deprecating haste, risk, imprudence; doubtful of all but
the garnered grain, the assayed gold, the concrete and the absolute in
life,—but, in the hour of need, sparing of that counsel which is but
another name for reproach, stanch in aid, generous alike in the mode
and measure of his gift.
Having recovered from this natural exaltation and relief at the
unexpected succour, Mr. Neuchamp turned to the consideration of the
very important postscript of his brother’s letter with apprehension.
Had his cousin, Miss Augusta Neuchamp, really sailed and arrived in
Sydney, as would appear? If so, where was she to go? What was he to
do? She could hardly come to Rainbar to take up her abode in this
small cottage, which, though possessing several rooms, was, like many
dwellings in the bush proper, practically undivided as to sound; the
conversation of any one, in any given room, being equally beneficial
and entertaining to the occupant of any other. Then there was not a
woman upon the whole establishment. The wives and daughters of the
Freemans, even if the latter were eligible for ladies’ maids, were
little less than hostile.
A residence in Sydney seemed the only possible plan; but he knew his
cousin too well to think that there would be no drawback to that
arrangement. Energetic, well-intentioned, possessing a clear available
intelligence, and considerable mental force, when exercised within
certain well-defined, but it must be confessed narrow limits, Augusta
Neuchamp was a benevolent despot in her own way. She ardently desired
to arrange the destinies of the classes or individuals who came within
the sphere of her action in accordance with what _she_ considered
to be the plain intentions of Providence with regard to them. Of
the tremendous issues involved in such a translation, she had no
conception. Plain to bluntness in her speech, she rarely evaded the
awkwardness of expressing disappointment. Unquestionably refined by
habit and education, she possessed little imagination and less tact.
Thus she rarely failed to provide herself, in any locality which she
honoured with her presence, with a large and increasing supply of
opponents, if not of enemies. A moderate private income enabled her
to indulge her tastes for improving herself or others. Possessing no
very near relatives, she was uncontrolled as to her movements and mode
of life. She had reached the age of twenty-five, though by no means
unprepossessing in appearance, without finding any suitor sufficiently
valorous to adopt or oppose, in the character of a husband, her very
clearly expressed views of life. Had she consented to reserve a
modification in these important respects, her friends averred that she
might have been ‘settled’ ere now. But such palterings with principle
were alien and abhorrent to the nature of Augusta Neuchamp. And Augusta
Neuchamp she had accordingly remained.
The appearance of Miss Neuchamp was generally described as commanding,
although she was slightly, if at all, over the medium height of woman.
But there was an expression about her high-bridged aquiline nose and
compressed lips which left no one in doubt as to the fact that, in
controversy or contending action, the first to yield would _not_ be
the possessor of those features. Her clear blue eyes would have been
handsome had there been a shade of doubt or softness at any time
visible. Such a moment of feminine weakness never came. They looked at
you and through you and over you, but never fell in maiden doubt or
fear beneath your gaze. Two courses were open to the individual of the
conflicting sex in her presence—unconditional surrender or flight.
It was hard, Ernest thought, that just as he was relieved from one
anxiety he should be provided by unkind Fate with another. He revolved
the imminent question of the disposition of Miss Augusta Neuchamp in
his mind until prevented by mutual apprehension from pursuing the
terribly perplexing subject. Of all people in the wide world, he
thought his cousin was the most impracticable, the most unyielding to
argument, the most certain to expose herself to dislike and ridicule in
Australia. She knew everything. She believed nothing, unless indeed it
related to herself or proceeded directly from that source. Everything
which differed from her stereotyped system was wrong, ruinous,
degenerate, or provincial. How she would criticise the place, the
people, the climate, the railways, the houses, the fences, the workmen,
the men and the women, the grass, and the gum-trees!
If he could only persuade her to take lodgings in Sydney, until he
could go down and argue the point with her, much might be gained.
Antonia Frankston would visit her, and harder than adamant must she
be if that gentle voice and natural manner did not convert her to a
favourable opinion of Australian life.
No such preparatory process was possible. A letter arrived from the
fair emigrant which left no doubt of her immediate intentions. It ran
thus:
DEAR COUSIN ERNEST—I have dared the perils of the deep, not the least
for your sake, but _me voici_. I made a short stay in Sydney, but
being extremely tired of the dust and mosquitoes, I decided upon the
course of travelling by rail and coach to your far-away estate at
once. [Here Ernest groaned, a suspicious sound which might have been
in sympathy for the trials of a lonely if not distressed damsel, or
an expression of despondency at the idea of his own inevitable cares
and anxieties, such as must attend the entertainment of the first
lady-guest ever seen at Rainbar. He continued the reading of the
epistle.] If Sydney had been a more interesting place I might have
lingered for a week or two so as to exchange letters with you. Had
it possessed that foreign air which one finds so pleasant in many
continental spots, otherwise dull enough, I could have amused myself.
But being, as it is, a second-hand copy of a provincial British town—I
grant you the botanical element is lovely, though neglected—I could
not endure another week. I seemed to long for the desert, in all its
vastness and grandeur, where your abode is placed. It was like staying
in an Algerian town, a dwarfed and dirty Paris, full of _cafés_ and
shabby Frenchmen playing at dominoes. I had no lady acquaintances.
There _are_ a few, I suppose. So I grew desperate, and took my passage
through the agency company; Cobb, I think, is the name. If you have
no phaeton or dogcart available, you might bring a saddle-horse for
me.—Your affectionate cousin,
AUGUSTA NEUCHAMP.
Just after the perusal of this letter, which showed that Miss
Neuchamp’s angles still stood out as sharply as those of a Theban
obelisk—the voyage and change of sky notwithstanding—Mr. Neuchamp was
startled by the sudden appearance of Piambook, who rushed into his
presence with an air of sincere discomposure very different from that
of his usual unimpressible demeanour. His rolling dark eyes gleamed—his
features worked—his mouth, slightly open, could only articulate the
borrowed phrase of his conquerors, ‘My word! my word!’ It was for some
moments the only sound that could be extracted from him by Ernest’s
inquiries.
‘What is it, Piambook?’ at length demanded Ernest, so decidedly, almost
fiercely, that his sable retainer capitulated.
‘Me look out longa wheelbarrow,’ he explained at length. He had been
despatched to a distant point of the run at a very early hour of the
morning.
‘Well, what did you see?’ pursued his master. ‘You can yabber fast
enough when you like.’
‘That one wheelbarrow plenty broket,’ explained the observing
pre-Adamite. ‘Mine see um longa plain—plenty sit down—liket three
fellow wheel. Billy Robinson, he go longa township.’
‘Well, what then? the coach broke down; that’s not wonderful—passengers
walked, I suppose.’
‘Me seeum that one white-fellow gin,’ quoth Piambook, in a low,
mysterious voice. Then, bursting into an immoderate fit of laughter,
he continued, ‘That one carry liket spyglass.’ Here he placed his thumb
and forefinger, circularly contracted, to his eye, and, gazing at Mr.
Neuchamp, again laughed till his dusky orbs were dim.
Mr. Neuchamp at once comprehended by this pantomime the gold eyeglass
which Miss Augusta, partially short-sighted, habitually wore; and
becoming uneasy as to her state and condition under the circumstances
of a presumed breakdown, asked eagerly of his follower what she was
doing.
‘That one sit along a wheelbarrow, liket this one;’ here he took up a
book from Ernest’s table and pretended to look into it with great and
absorbed interest.
‘Anybody in the coach, Piambook?’
‘One fellow Chinaman,’ returned the messenger, with cool indifference.
After this information Mr. Neuchamp at once perceived that no time must
be lost. Augusta could not be left a moment longer than was necessary,
sitting in a disabled coach in the midst of a boundless plain, with a
Chinaman for her _vis-à-vis_. What a situation for a young lady to whom
Baden was as familiar as Brompton, Paris as Piccadilly, Rome, Florence,
Venice, as the stations on the Eastern Counties Railway! He did not
believe she was afraid. She was afraid of nothing. But the situation
was embarrassing.
The hawk-eyed Piambook had descried the stranded coach—the wheelbarrow,
as his comrades called it—on the mail track, about a mile off his path
of duty. It was full twelve miles from Rainbar. In a quarter of an hour
the express waggon with two cheerful but enfeebled steeds stumbled and
blundered along at a very different pace from that of Mr. Parklands,
when he rattled up Ernest to the Rainbar door, on the occasion of their
first memorable drive.
However, the distance from home was luckily short, and in about two
hours Mr. Neuchamp arrived at the spot where, in the disabled coach,
sat Miss Augusta Neuchamp, possessing her soul in _impatience_, and
gradually coming to the conclusion that Ah Ling—who sat stolidly
staring at her and regretting the loss of time which might have been
spent in watering his garden or smoking opium, the only two occupations
he ever indulged in—was about to rob and perhaps murder her. As she
always carried a small revolver, and was by no means ignorant of its
use, it is possible that Ah Ling was in greater danger than he was
aware of. His fair neighbour would infallibly have shot him had he made
any hasty or incautious motion.
When Mr. Neuchamp rumbled up in his useful but not imposing vehicle, a
slight shade of satisfaction overspread her features.
‘Oh, Ernest, I am delighted to see you; however did you find out my
position? Don’t you think it was inexcusable of the coach company to
send us all this way in a damaged vehicle? I thought all your coaching
arrangements were so perfect.’
‘Accidents will happen, my dear Augusta,’ said Ernest, ‘in all
companies and communities, you know. Cobb and Co. are the best of
fellows in the main. But _whatever_ induced you to come up into this
wild place without writing to me first? Have you not suffered all kinds
of hardship and disagreeables?’
‘Well, perhaps a few; but I knew all about the country from some
books I read on the voyage out. I studied the directory till I found
out the coach lines, and I should not have complained but for this
last blunder. But what a barren wilderness this all seems. I thought
Australia was a land of rich pastures.’
‘So it is—but this is a drought. “And the famine was sore in the land.”
You remember that in the Bible, don’t you? We are a good deal like
Palestine in our periodical lean years, except that they didn’t import
their flour from beyond sea, and we do.‘
‘But this looks so very bad!’ said she, putting up her eyeglass and
staring earnestly at the waste lands of the crown, which certainly
presented a striking contrast to the Buckinghamshire meadows or uplands
either. ‘Why, it seems all sand and these scrubby-looking bushes;
are you sure you haven’t made a mistake and bought inferior land? A
gentleman who came out with me said inexperienced persons often did.’
‘My dear Augusta,’ said Ernest, quelling a well-remembered feeling of
violent antagonism, ‘you must surely have forgotten that I have been
more than two years in Australia, and may be supposed to know the
difference between good country and bad by this time.’
‘Do you?’ said his fair cousin indifferently. ‘Well, you must have
improved. Courtenay says you are the most credulous person he knows;
and as for Aunt Ermengarde, she says that, of all the failures the
family has produced——’
‘Please to spare me the old lady’s review of my life and times,’ said
Ernest, waking up his bounding steeds. ‘We never did agree, and it can
serve no good purpose to further embitter my remembrance of her.’
‘Oh, but she did not wish to say anything really disparaging of you,
only that you were not of sufficiently coarse material to win success
in farming, or trade, or politics.’
‘Or colonisation, my dear Augusta. Perhaps she was not so far wrong,
after all; but somehow one doesn’t like to be told these things, and
I must ask you and Aunt Ermengarde to suspend your judgment until the
last scene of the third act. Then you will be able to applaud, or
otherwise, on correct grounds. I think you will find the country and
its ways by no means too easy to comprehend.’
‘I expect nothing, simply, so I cannot be disappointed. It seems to me
a sort of provincial England jumbled up with one’s ideas of Mexico.’
‘And the people?’
‘I haven’t noticed them much yet. I thought many of the women
ridiculously overdressed in Sydney, copying our English fashions in a
semi-tropical climate. I left everything behind except a few tourist
suits.’
‘And most extraordinary you look,’ thought Ernest to himself, though
he dared not say so, mentally contrasting the stern Augusta’s
dust-coloured tusser wrap, broad-leafed hat with green lining, rather
stout boots, short dress, and flattened down hair, with Antonia, cool,
glistening, delicately robed, and rose-fresh amid the bright-hued
shrubberies of Morahmee, or even the Misses Middleton, perfectly _comme
il faut_, on shipboard, in George Street, or at the station, as
everybody ought to be, thought Ernest—unless she is an eccentric
reformer, he was just about to say, but refrained. Was any one else of
his acquaintance going to do wonders in the alleviation and reformation
of the Australian world? and if so, what had _he_ accomplished? Had he
not been in scores of instances self-convicted of the most egregious
mistakes and miscalculations? After all his experience, was he not now
indebted almost for his financial existence to certain of these very
colonists whose intelligence he had formerly held so cheap?
These reflections were not suffered to proceed to an inconvenient
length, being routed by the clear and not particularly musical tones of
Miss Augusta’s voice.
‘I can’t say much for Australian horses, so far, Ernest. I expected to
see the fleet courser of the desert, and all that kind of thing. These
seem wretched underbred creatures, and miserably poor.’
‘Lives there the man, with soul so dead,’ who doesn’t mind hearing his
horses run down?
‘They are not bad horses, by any means, though low in condition, owing
to this dreadful season,’ answered Ernest, rather quickly. ‘This one,’
touching the off-side steed, ‘is as good and fast and high-couraged a
horse as ever was saddled or harnessed, but they have had nothing to
eat for six months, to speak of. So they quite surpass the experience
of the cabman’s horse in _Pickwick_; and I can’t afford to buy corn at
a pound a bushel.’
‘I forgot about the horse in _Pickwick_,’ said Augusta, who, a steady
reader in her own line, which she denominated ‘useful,’ had little
appreciation of humour, and never could be got to know the difference
between _Pickwick_ and _Nicholas Nickleby_, _Charles O’Malley_ and _The
Knight of Gwynne_. ‘But surely more neatness in harness and turn-out
might be managed,’ and she looked at the dusty American harness and
rusty bits.
‘You must remember, my dear Augusta, that you are not only in the
provinces, but in the far far Bush, now—akin to the Desert—in more ways
than one. I don’t suppose the Sheik Abdallah turns out with very bright
bits; but, if he does, he has the advantage of us in the labour supply.
We are compelled to economise rigidly in that way.’
‘You seem compelled to economise in every way that makes life worth
having,’ said his downright kinswoman. ‘Does any one ever make any
money at all here to compensate for the savage life you seem to lead?’
‘Well, a few people do,’ replied Ernest, half amused, half annoyed. ‘If
we had time to visit a little, not perhaps in this neighbourhood, I
could show you places well kept and pretty enough, and people who would
be voted fairly provided for even in England.’
‘I have seen none as yet,’ said Miss Neuchamp; ‘but I believe much of
the prosperity in the large towns is unreal. I met a very pleasant,
gentlemanlike man in Sydney, in fact one of the few gentlemen I did see
there—a Mr. Croker, I think, was his name—who said it was all outside
show, and that nobody had made any money in this colony, or ever would.’
‘Oh, Jermyn Croker,’ said Ernest, laughing; ‘you must not take him
literally; he is a profound cynic, and must have been sent into the
world expressly to counterbalance an equally pronounced optimist,
myself for instance. That’s his line of humour, and very amusing it
is—in its way.’
‘But does he not speak the truth?’ inquired the literal Augusta; ‘or is
it not considered necessary in a colony?’
‘Of course he _intends_ to do so, but like all men whose opinions are
very strongly coloured by their individualism, which again is dominated
by purely physical occurrences, such as bile, indigestion, and so
on, he unconsciously takes a gloomy, depreciatory view of matters in
general, which I, and perhaps others, think untrue and misleading.’
‘I believe in a right and a wrong about everything myself,’ said the
young lady, ‘but I must say I feel inclined to agree with him so far.’
Ernest was on the point of asking her how she could possibly know,
when the turrets of Rainbar appearing in sight, the conversation was
diverted to that ‘hold’ and its surroundings, the danger of arriving in
the midst of an altercation being thereby averted.
‘Allow me to welcome you to my poor home,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, driving
up to the door of the cottage, and assisting her to alight. ‘I wish I
had had notice of the honour of your visit, that we might have been
suitably prepared.’
‘Stuff!’ said Miss Augusta. ‘Then you would have written to prevent me
coming at all. I was determined to see how you were _really_ getting
on, and I never allow trifling discomforts to stand in the way of my
resolves.’
‘I am aware of _that_, my dear Augusta,’ replied Mr. Neuchamp, with a
slight mental shrug, in which he decided that the trifling discomforts
alluded to occasionally involved others besides the heroine herself.
‘But can you do without a maid? I am afraid there is not a woman on the
place.’
‘That’s a little awkward,’ confessed Miss Neuchamp. ‘I did not quite
anticipate such a barrack-room state of matters. But is there none at
the village, or whatever it is called, in the neighbourhood?’
‘I have a village on the run, I am sorry to say; but though we are at
feud with the villagers, I did attempt to procure you a handmaid, and I
will see what has been done.’
It was yet early in the day. Miss Neuchamp, being put into possession
of the best bedroom, hastily arranged for her use and benefit, was
told to consider herself as the sole occupant of the cottage for the
present. Mr. Neuchamp in the meanwhile having ordered lunch, went over
to the barracks to see if Mr. Banks had returned. He had been sent
upon an embassy of great importance and diplomatic delicacy: no less,
indeed, than to prevail upon Mrs. Abraham Freeman to permit her eldest
daughter, Tottie, a girl of seventeen, to come to Rainbar during the
period of Miss Neuchamp’s stay, to attend upon that lady as housemaid,
lady’s maid, and general attendant. He was empowered to make any
reasonable promises to provide the girl with everything she might want,
short of a husband, but to bring her up if it could possibly be done.
For, of course, Ernest was duly sensible of the extreme awkwardness
that would result from the presence of Miss Neuchamp—albeit a near
relative—as the sole representative of womanhood at such an essentially
bachelor settlement as Rainbar.
Tottie Freeman, who had commenced to bloom in the comparatively desert
air of Rainbar, was a damsel not altogether devoid of youthful charms.
True, the unfriendly sun, the scorching blasts, together with the
culpable disuse of veil or bonnet, had combined to embrown what ought
to have been her complexion, and, worse again, to implant such a crop
of freckles upon her face, neck, and arms, that she looked as if a
bran-bag had been shaken over her naturally fair skin.
Now that we have said the worst of her, it must be admitted that her
figure was very good, well developed, upright, and elastic. She could
run as fast as any of her brothers, carrying a tolerable weight,
and (when no one was looking) vault on her ambling mare, which she
could ride with or without a saddle over range or river, logs, scrub,
or reed-beds, just as well as they could. She could intimidate a
half-wild cow with a roping pole, and milk her afterwards; drive a
team on a pinch, and work all day in the hot sun. With all this there
was nothing unfeminine or unpleasing to the eye in the bush maiden.
Quite the contrary, indeed. She was a handsome young woman as regards
features, form, and carriage. Cool and self-possessed, she was by no
means as reckless of speech as many better educated persons of her
sex; and though she liked a little flirtation—‘which most every girl
expex’—there was not a word to be said to her detriment ‘up or down the
river,’ which comprehended the whole of her social system.
Such was the damsel whom Charley Banks had been despatched to capture
by force, fraud, or persuasion for the use and benefit of Miss Augusta
Neuchamp. A less suitable ambassador might have been selected.
Charley Banks was a very good-looking young fellow, and had always
risked a little badinage when brought into contact with Miss Tottie
and her family. War had been formally declared between the houses of
Neuchamp and Freeman, yet Ernest, as was his custom, had always been
unaffectedly polite and kindly to the women of the tribe, young and old.
Therefore Mrs. Freeman had no strong ill-feeling towards him, and Miss
Tottie was extremely sorry that they never saw Mr. Neuchamp riding
up to the door now, with a pleasant good-morrow, sometimes chatting
for a quarter of an hour, when the old people were out of the way.
When Charley Banks first asked Mrs. Freeman to let her daughter go
as a great favour to Mr. Neuchamp, and afterwards inflamed Tottie’s
curiosity by descriptions of the great wealth and high fashion of Miss
Neuchamp (who had a dray-load of dresses, straight from London and
Paris, coming up next week), he found the fort commencing to show signs
of capitulation. At first Mrs. Freeman ‘couldn’t spare Tottie if it was
ever so.’ Then Tottie ‘couldn’t think of going among a parcel of young
fellows, and only one lady in the place.’ Then Mrs. Freeman ‘might be
able to manage for a week or two, though what Abe would say when he
came home and found his girl gone to Rainbar, she couldn’t say.’ Then
Tottie ‘wouldn’t mind trying for a week or two.’ She supposed ‘nobody
would run away with her, and it must be awfully lonely for the lady all
by herself.’ Besides, ‘she hadn’t seen a soul lately, and was moped
to death; perhaps a little change would do her good.’ So the ‘treaty
of Rainbar,’ between the high contracting personages, resolved itself
into this, that Tottie was to have ten shillings a week for a month’s
service, if Miss Neuchamp stayed so long, was to obey all her lawful
commands, and to make herself ‘generally useful.’
‘So if you’ll be kind enough to run in the mare, Mr. Banks—she’s down
on the flat there, and not very flash, you may be sure—I’ll get my
habit on, and mother will send up my things with Billy in the evening.
Here’s my bridle.’
Having stated the case thus briefly, Miss Freeman retired into a
remarkably small bedroom which she shared with two younger sisters
and a baby-brother, to make the requisite change of raiment, while
Charley Banks ran into the stockyard and caught the varmint, ambling
black mare, which he knew very well by sight. As he led her up to the
hut Miss Tottie came out, carrying her saddle in one hand and holding
up her alpaca habit with the other. She promptly placed it upon the
black mare’s back, buckled the girths, and touching the stirrup with
her foot, gave a spring which seated her firmly in the saddle, and the
black mare dashed off at an amble which was considerably faster than a
medium trot.
‘What a brute that mare of yours is to amble, Tottie,’ said Mr. Banks,
slightly out of breath; ‘can’t you make her go a more Christian pace?
Come, let’s have a spin.’
‘All right,’ said the girl, going off at speed, and sitting down to her
work, ‘but it must be a very short one; my mare is as weak as a cat,
and I suppose your horse isn’t much better.’
‘He’s as strong as nothing to eat three times a day can make him. So
pull up as soon as you like. I say, Tottie, I’m awfully glad you’ve
come up this time to help us with our lady. It was firstrate of your
mother to let you come. Fancy Miss Neuchamp coming up in the coach by
herself from Sydney!’
‘Why shouldn’t she? I wish I had the chance of going down by
myself—wouldn’t I take it—quick? But I say, Mr. Banks, what am I to do
when I get there? I shall be so frightened of the lady. And I never was
in service before.’
‘Oh, you must take it easy, you know,’ commenced Mr. Banks, in a very
clear explanation-to-a-child sort of way. ‘Do everything she tells you,
always say “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am,” and be a good girl all round.
I’ve seen you _look_ awfully good sometimes, Tottie, you know.‘
‘Oh, nonsense, Mr. Banks,’ said the nut-brown maid, blushing through
her southern-tinted skin in a very visible manner. ‘I’m no more than
others, I expect. What shall I have to do, though?’
‘Well, a good deal of nothing, I should say. You’ll sleep in the room
I used to have, next to hers; for you’ll be in the cottage all by
yourselves all night. You’ll have to sweep and dust, and wash for Miss
Neuchamp, and wait at table. The rest of the time you’ll have to hang
it out the best way you can. You mustn’t quarrel with old Johnnie, the
cook, or else he’ll go away and leave us all in the bush. He’s a cross
old ruffian, but he _can_ cook.’
‘I wonder if it will be very dull—but it won’t be for long, will it,
Mr. Banks?’
‘Dull? don’t think of it. Won’t there be me and Jack Windsor, and an
odd traveller to talk to. Besides, Jack’s a great admirer of yours,
isn’t he, Tottie?’
‘Not he,’ quoth the damsel, with decision; ‘there’s some girl down the
country that he thinks no end of; besides, father and he don’t get on
well,’ added Miss Tottie, with much demureness.
‘Oh, that don’t signify,’ said Mr. Banks authoritatively. ‘Jack’s a
good fellow, and will be overseer here some day; you go in and cut down
the other girl. He said you were the best-looking girl on the river
last Sunday.’
‘Oh, you go on,’ said Tottie, playing with the bridle rein, and again
making her mare run up to the top of her exceptional pace, so that
further playful conversation by Mr. Banks was restricted by his lack of
breath.
As they approached the Rainbar homestead Tottie slackened this
aggravating pace (which resembles what Americans call ‘racking or
pacing’—it is natural to many Australian horses, though of course
capable of development by education), and in a somewhat awe-stricken
tone inquired, ‘Is she a _very_ grand lady, indeed, Mr. Banks?’
‘Well, she’ll be dressed plainly, of course,’ said Charley. ‘The dust’s
enough to spoil anything above a gunnybag after all this dry weather.
Her things are coming up, as I told you, but you never saw any one with
half the breeding before. You were a little girl when you came here,
Tottie; did you ever see a real lady in your life, now?’
‘I saw Mrs. Jones, of Yamboola, down the country,’ said Tottie
doubtfully. ‘Father sent me up one day with some fresh butter.’
‘I wish he’d send you up with some now,’ said Charley, who hadn’t
heard of butter or milk for six months. ‘Mrs. Jones is pretty well,
but think of Miss Neuchamp’s pedigree. Her great-grandmother’s
_great-grandmother_ was a grand lady, and lived in a castle, and so on,
for five hundred years back, and all the same for nearly a thousand. I
saw it all in an old book of Mr. Neuchamp’s one day, about the history
of their county.’
‘Lor!’ said Tottie, ‘how nice! Why, she must be like the imported filly
we saw at Wargan Races last year. Oh, wasn’t she a real beauty? such
legs! and such a sweet head on her!—I never saw the like of it!’
‘You’re a regular Currency lass, Tottie,’ laughed Mr. Banks; ‘always
thinking about horses. Don’t you tell Miss Neuchamp that she’s very
sweet about the head and has out-and-out legs: she mightn’t understand
it. Here we are—jump down. I’ll put the mare in the paddock.’
Miss Neuchamp, having had time to finish luncheon, had walked out into
the verandah with her cousin, when she was attracted by the trampling
of horses, and looked forth in time to see her proposed handmaid sail
up to the door at a pace which would have excited observation in Rotten
Row.
Mr. Banks awaited her dismounting, knowing full well that she required
no assistance. The active maiden swung herself sideways on the
saddle and dropped to the ground as lightly as the ‘hounding beauty
of Bessarabia,’ or any ordinary circus sawdust-treading celebrity.
Lifting her habit, she advanced to the verandah with a curious mixture
of shyness and self-possession. She successfully accomplished the
traditional courtesy to Miss Neuchamp, and then shook hands cordially
with Ernest, as she had been in the habit of doing. Miss Augusta put up
her eyeglass at this, and regarded the ‘young person’ with a fixed and
critical gaze.
‘I’m very much obliged to your mother for letting you come, Tottie, and
I am very glad to see you at Rainbar,’ said Mr. Neuchamp. ‘If you go
into the dining-room, you will find the lunch on the table; I daresay
you will have an appetite after your ride. You can clear it away by and
by, and Miss Neuchamp will tell you anything she wishes you to do. You
will live in the cottage, and you must help old Johnny as well as you
can, without quarrelling with him—you know his temper—or letting him
bully you.’
Tottie was about to say, ‘I’m not afraid of the old tinker,’ but,
remembering Mr. Banks’s advice, replied meekly, ‘Yes, sir; thank you,
Mr. Neuchamp,’ and retired to her lunch and duties.
‘I suppose that is a sample of your peasantry,’ said Miss Neuchamp,
with cold preciseness of tone. ‘Do you generally shake hands with
your housemaids in the colonies? I suppose it must be looked for in a
democracy.’
‘Well, Tottie Freeman isn’t exactly a peasant,’ explained Ernest
mildly. ‘We haven’t any of the breed here. She is a farmer’s daughter,
and her proud sire has or had an acreage that would make him a great
man at fair and market in England. You will find her a good-tempered,
honest girl, not afraid of work, as we say here, and as she is your
only possible attendant, you must make the best of her.’
‘Is she to join us at table?’ inquired Miss Neuchamp, with the same
fixed air of indifference. ‘Of course I only ask for information.’
‘She will fare as we do, but will take her refection after we have
completed ours. She cannot very well be sent to the kitchen.’
‘Why not?’ demanded Miss Augusta.
‘For reasons which will be apparent to you, my dear Augusta, after your
longer stay in Australia. But principally because there are only men
there at present, and our old cook is not a suitable companion for a
young girl.’
‘Very peculiar household arrangements,’ said Miss Neuchamp, ‘but I
suppose I shall comprehend in time.’