As Mr. Neuchamp turned, he saw an expression so fell and deadly upon
Jack’s changed face that he instinctively recalled the day when he
first stood before him with levelled weapon and the same stern brow.
‘What is the matter, John?’ said Ernest kindly. ‘Any had news?’
‘Bad enough,’ said the man gloomily. ‘Never mind me, sir, for a minute
or two. I’ll come to the house, and tell you all about it directly I’ve
saddled Ben Bolt.’
Then, repressing with an effort all trace of previous emotion, and
permitting his features to regain their usual expression, he proceeded
to catch and lead to the stable that determined animal, whose spirit
had by no means been permanently softened by adversity, as was
exhibited by his snorting and trembling as usual when the rein was
passed over his neck and the bridle put on. Having done this, Mr.
Windsor carefully saddled up, and shortly afterwards appearing in his
best suit of clothes, strapped a small roll to the saddle, and rode
quietly up to the verandah of the cottage.
‘I see that something unusual has happened,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, with
sympathy in his voice. ‘Tell me all about it.’
‘You’ll see it here,’ said his retainer, handing over a short and
simple letter from Carrie Walton, in which the impending tragedy of
a woman’s life-drama was briefly told. In a few sorrowful words the
girl told how that worked upon by the continuous persuasions and
reproaches of her parents, she had consented to marry Mr. Homminey on
the following Friday week. She had not heard from him, John Windsor,
for a long time—perhaps he had forgotten her. In a few days it would be
too late, etc. But she was always his sincere friend and well-wisher,
Caroline Walton.
‘You see, sir,’ began Mr. Windsor, with something of his old confidence
and cool calculation of difficulties in an emergency which required
instant bodily exertion, ‘it’s been this way. I’ve been so taken up
with these new cattle, and the way everything’s been changed lately,
since the weather broke, that I’ve forgot to write to the poor thing. I
was expecting to go down with the first lot of fat cattle next month,
and I laid it out to square the whole matter, and bring her back with
me, if you’ll give us the hut by the river bank to live in. I’ve been a
little late—or it looks like it—and they’ve persuaded her into marrying
that pumpkin-headed, corn-eating Hawkesbury hog, just because he’s got
a good farm and some money in the bank. But if I can get down before
the time, if it’s only half an hour, she’ll come to me, and I think I
can win the heat if Ben Bolt doesn’t crack up.’
‘What time have you to spare between this and the day of the wedding?’
inquired Ernest.
‘It’s to be on Friday week,’ said Jack.
‘You can never be there in time—it is impossible!’ cried Ernest in a
tone of voice which showed his sympathy with his faithful servant. ‘I
pity you sincerely, John!’
‘Pity be hanged, sir. You’ll excuse my way of talking. I’m a little off
my head, I know; what I mean to say is, I ain’t one of those chaps that
can grub upon pity, and the likes of it. But I _can_ do it, if the old
horse holds out, and luckily Joe’s been riding him regular since the
feed came, and he’s fit to race a mile, or travel a hundred, any day.’
‘Why, it is a hundred and eighty miles to the mail-coach station, and
unless you get there by to-morrow night, you can’t get down for another
week.’
‘I _shall_ get there,’ replied Jack slowly and with settled
determination. ‘Ben can do a hundred miles a day, for two days at a
pinch, and I have a good bit of the second night thrown in. The mail
don’t start until midnight. If we’re not there, I’ll turn shepherd
again, and sell Ben to a thrashing machine; we won’t have any call
to be thought horse or man again. I shall get to Mindai some time
to-night—that’s eighty miles—and save the old horse all I can; then
start about three in the morning, and polish off the hundred miles, if
he’s the horse I take him to be. He’ll have easy times after, if he
does it, for I’ll never sell him. Good-bye, sir.’
‘Good-bye, John; I wish you good fortune, as I really believe my young
friend Carry’s happiness is at stake. Here are some notes to take with
you—money is always handy in elopements, I am informed.’
‘You have my real thanks, sir,’ said Jack, pocketing the symbols of
power; ‘I’ve been a good servant to you, sir, though I say it. I
shan’t be any the worse if I’ve a good wife to keep me straight—that is
if I get her.’
Here Mr. Windsor gave a short groan, followed by an equally brief
imprecation, as he pictured the shining-faced giant, in a wondrous suit
of colonial tweed, leading Carry away captive to his Flemish farm,
evermore to languish, or grow unromantically plump, in a wilderness of
maize-field varied by mountains of pumpkins.
Ernest watched him as he mounted Ben Bolt, whose ears lay back, whose
white-cornered eyes stared, whose uneasy tail waved in the old feline
fashion, sufficient to scare any stranger about to mount. He saw him
take the long trail across the plain at a bounding canter, which was
not changed until horse and rider travelled out of the small Rainbar
world of vision, and were lost amid the mysteries of the far sky-line.
Much he marvelled at this Australian edition of ‘Young Lochinvar,’ only
convinced that if that enterprising gallant had been riding Ben Bolt,
when
On to his croupe the fair ladye he swung,
the layers of the odds might have confidently wagered on a very
different ending to the ballad. He did not anticipate that the reckless
bushman would attempt to ‘cut out’ his sweetheart from the assembled
company of friends and kinsfolk. Yet he could not clearly see how he
proposed, so close was the margin left, to possess himself of the fair
Carry. But that, if Ben Bolt did not break down, Jack Windsor would,
in some shape or form, effect his purpose, and defeat the intended
disposal of the Maid of the Inn, he was as certain as if he had
witnessed their arrival at Rainbar.
It is not placed beyond the reach of doubt whether or not this
matrimonial adventure in any way led Mr. Neuchamp to considerations
involving similar possibilities. It may, however, be looked upon as an
authenticated legend that although several letters of a congratulatory
nature had passed between Paul Frankston and Mr. Neuchamp, ‘since the
weather broke,’ the latter thought it necessary to write once more and
acquaint him with the fact that early next month he should commence to
send off fat cattle, and that he would come down himself in charge of
the first drove.
In the austere boreal regions of the Old World all nature, dormant
or pulsating, dumb or informed with speech, waits and hopes, prays
and fears, until the unseen relaxation of the grasp of the winter
god. Then the ice-fetters break, the river becomes once more a joyous
highway, echoing with boat and song, and gay with ensigns. Once more
the unlocked earth receives the plough; once more the leaf buds, the
flower all blushing steals forth in woodland and meadow; once more
the carol of bird, the whistle of the ploughman, the song of sturdy
raftsmen, proclaim that the war of Nature with man is ended. So beneath
the Southern Cross the unkind strife which Nature ever and anon wages
with her children is accented not by wintry blast and iron frost-chain,
but by burning heat and the long-protracted water famine. The windows
of heaven are locked fast. The thirsty earth looks anguished and
sorrow-stricken, daily, hourly, witnessing the torture, the death of
her perishing children.
Then, wafted by unseen, unheard messengers, as in the frozen North, the
fiat goes forth in the burning South. The soft touch of the Daughter of
the Mist is felt upon plant and soil, pool and streamlet. They listen
to the sound of softly-falling tear-drops from the sky, and, lo! they
arise, rejoicing, to regain life and vigour, as the sick from the
physician, as the babe from the mother’s tendance.
Once more was there joy in the broad Australian steppes and pastures,
from the apple orchards of the south to the boundless ocean-plains of
the far north-west, where the saltbush grows, and the myall and the
mulgah, where the willowy coubah weeps over the dying streamlet, where
the wild horse snorts at dawn on the lonely sandhill, where the emu
stalks stately through the golden clear moonlight.
Now had arisen in good sooth for Ernest Neuchamp a day of prosperity
and triumph. By every post came news of that uprising of prices
which Mr. Levison had foretold, in stock and stations, in horses and
in cattle, in land and in houses, in corn and in labour. This last
consideration, though serious enough to the owners of sheep, in the
comparatively unenlightened days which preceded the grand economy of
fencing runs, was not of much weight with Ernest. His adherents were
tried and trusty, and neither Charley Banks nor Jack Windsor would
have abandoned him for all the gold in Ballarat and all the silver in
Nevada. Piambook and Boinmaroo, incurious and taking no thought for the
morrow, with the characteristic childishness of their race, dreamed
of no adequate motive which should sever them from the light work and
regularly-dispensed tobacco of Misser Noochum. With his own assistance
they were amply sufficient for all the work of the establishment,
now that the ‘circle dot’ cattle, thoroughly broken to the run, had
taken up regular beats, and divided themselves by consent into mobs or
subdivisions, each with its own leader.
Many a pleasant ride had Ernest now that all things ‘had suffered,’
not ‘a sea-change,’ but none the less an astounding metamorphosis, into
‘something rich and strange.’
Daily he made long-disused excursions into the mysterious, half-unknown
land of ‘the Back,’ only to find, after each fresh day’s exploring,
richer pasture, fuller watercourses, stronger, more frolicsome cattle.
These last had grown and thriven on the over-abundant pasture, ‘out
of knowledge,’ as Charley Banks averred. Again were the old triumphs
and glories of a cattle-station re-enacted. Again he saw the heavy
rolling droves of bullocks come panting and teeming into camp. Again he
witnessed the reckless speed and practised wheel of the trained stock
horses. All things, indeed, were changed.
Charley Banks was never tired of sounding the praises of the glorious
season, and of the splendid fattening qualities of Rainbar, with its
extraordinary variety of plant-wealth, herbs, grasses, saltbushes,
clovers, every green thing, from wild carrots to crowsfoot, which the
heart of man, devoted to the welfare of his herd, could desire.
‘I never saw anything like those “circle dot” cattle for laying it on,‘
he would say. ‘They’re as big again as they were. And those crawlers of
Freemans’—they’ll pay out and out. We’ve branded as many calves from
’em as will come to half the purchase money, at present prices. It will
soon be time to move the fat cattle; in another month or two Rainbar
will be full of ’em.’
The only persons to whom the rain had not brought joy and gladness were
Freeman Brothers. These worthy yeomen began to consider that after
all this hard work, as they expressed it, they had been shamefully
outwitted and deceived. The travel-worn cattle-dealer, who had driven
so hard a bargain with them, had turned out to be the great Abstinens
Levison, no less. Their stock had been handed over to Mr. Neuchamp,
with whom, doubtless, he had been in league. Now they were growing and
fattening fast, prices rising faster, and not a shilling for _them_,
out of it all. Then they had to wait idle on their land till November,
or less lose the cash agreed on.
‘Then to hand everything over—most likely for the benefit of a young
fellow who knew nothing about the country—a —— blessed “new chum”—hang
him. The country was getting too full of the likes of him. It was
enough to make a man turn digger.‘
Abraham Freeman and his wife were the only contented individuals of
the once peaceful co-operative community. They would have secured
sufficient capital upon the payment of the coming instalments to
purchase a well-improved farm in their old neighbourhood, to which they
proposed immediately to return, and there spend the remainder of an
unambitious existence.
‘They had seen quite enough of this far-out life,’ they said.
‘Free-selecting here might be very well for some people; it didn’t suit
them. They liked a quiet place in a cool climate, where the crops grew,
and the cows gave them milk all the year round—not a feast or a famine.
If they had the chance, please God, they would know _next time_ when
they were well off.’
One afternoon Charley Banks came tearing in, displaying in triumph
a provincial journal, the _Parramatta Postboy_, directed to him
in unknown handwriting. Pointing to a column, headed ‘Elopement
extraordinary,’ he commenced with great difficulty, owing to the
frequency of his ejaculations and bursts of laughter, to read aloud to
Mr. Neuchamp the following extract, from which it may be gathered that
Mr. Windsor ‘was on time,’ in spite of all apparent obstacles:
It is seldom that we have to chronicle so dramatic an incident as
that which has just occurred in our midst, and which was fraught with
deep interest to one of our most respected residents of old standing
in the neighbourhood. We refer to the sudden and wholly unexpected
matrimonial arrangement made by Miss C—y W—n, the daughter of mine
host of the old-established well-known family hotel, the ‘Cheshire
Cheese.’ It would appear that Mr. Henry Homminey, the successful
Hawkesbury agriculturist, was about to lead the blushing fair one,
with the full consent of the family, to the hymeneal altar, on Friday
last. ‘All went merry as a marriage bell,’ till on Thursday evening
Mr. John Windsor, cattle manager at Rainbar for Ernest Neuchamp, Esq.,
appeared at the ‘Cheshire Cheese,’ and joined the family party. He had
been formerly acquainted with the bride-elect, but stated that he had
merely come to offer his congratulations, and pass a pleasant hour.
He was warmly welcomed, and the evening passed off successfully. At
the appointed hour next morning the happy bridegroom appeared with his
friends, who had mustered strongly for the occasion, but, to their
dismay and disappointment, they were informed by Mr. W—n that the
bride’s chamber was empty, and that she had not attended the family
matutinal repast. Mr. Homminey’s feelings may be imagined but cannot
be described. He at once started in pursuit of the fugitives, but
after riding a few miles at a furious pace, his horse showed signs of
distress, and he was persuaded by his personal friends to wend his
steps in the direction of Richmond. Much sympathy is felt for his loss
and disappointment. But, since the days of earliest classic records,
the man of solid worth has occasionally been eclipsed, in the eyes of
the fair, by the possessor of the more ornamental qualities with which
Mr. Windsor is credited.
‘Well done, Jack!’ shouted Mr. Banks, as he finished the concluding
editorial reflection; ‘and well done, Ben Bolt! He must have polished
off that hundred and eighty miles, or else Jack would never have been
up to time. It’s a good deal to depend on a horse’s legs. Well, Carry
Walton’s a stunning girl, and it will be the making of Jack. He’ll go
as straight as a die now.’
‘I must say I feel much gratified also,’ assented Ernest. ‘I should
have been afraid of some of the old reckless spirit prevailing over
him, if he had lost our friend Carry. How I feel assured of his future
prosperity. He is a fine, manly, intelligent fellow, and wants nothing
but a sufficient object in life to make him put out his best energies.’
‘Jack’s as smart an all-round man as ever stepped,’ said Mr. Banks,
‘and with a real good headpiece too, though there’s not much
book-learning in it. He’d fight for you to the last drop of his blood,
too. I know that.’
‘It is well to have a faithful retainer at times,’ said Mr. Neuchamp
thoughtfully. ‘It carries a mutual benefit, often lost sight of in
these days of selfish realism.
‘How shall we manage with the cattle without him?’ queried Mr. Banks.
‘I must take the two black boys,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, ‘and you must
do the best you can on the run by yourself; for business renders it
absolutely necessary that I should visit Sydney.’
‘I daresay I’ll manage, somehow,’ said Mr. Banks. ‘I must get Tottie
Freeman to help me, if I’m hard pushed. She’s the smartest hand with
cattle of the lot.’
‘I do not think that arrangement would quite answer,’ quoth Mr.
Neuchamp gravely.
* * * * *
Within a fortnight after this conversation Mr. Neuchamp and his sable
retainers might have been observed making the usual stages with a
most satisfactory drove of fat cattle in front of them. They were
not, perhaps, equal to the first lot he recollected despatching from
Rainbar; but ‘cattle were cattle’ now, in the language of the butchers.
There were plenty more coming on, and it was not thought advisable to
wait longer for the ultimate ‘topping up’ of the beeves. They were good
enough. The demand was prodigious; and purchasers did not make half the
critical objections that were used in the old days, when cattle were
not half the price.
In the appointed time the important draft reached Sydney, and before
Mr. Neuchamp could look round, it seemed to him, they were snapped up
at eight-pounds-ten a head, no allusions made to ‘rough cattle,’ or
‘very plain on the back,’ ‘old cows,‘ ‘light weights,’ or any of the
usual strong depreciations customary on former occasions. No; a new era
seemed to have set in. All was right as long as the count was accurate.
So satisfactory was the settling that Mr. Neuchamp at once wrote to
Charley Banks to muster and send down another draft, even if he _had_
to put Tottie Freeman in charge of Rainbar while he was on the road.
Then came the immediate rush to the office of Frankston and Co., and a
meeting with old Paul, that made up for much of enforced privation and
protracted self-denial.
‘My dear boy! most glad to see you, at last; thought that we should
never see your face again. Knew you couldn’t come before the rain did.
Can’t leave the ship until tide serves and the wind’s fair. But _now_
the voyage is over, first mate’s in charge of the ship, and the skipper
can put on his long-shore toggery and cruise for a spell. Of course
you’re on your way out to dine with us?’
Ernest mentioned that, presuming upon old acquaintance, such had been
his intention.
‘Antonia will be ever so glad to see you; but she must tell you all the
news herself. You will find your cousin at Morahmee. She and Antonia
are wonderful friends—that is——’
‘That is,’ said Ernest, completing Paul’s sentence, over which the
worthy merchant appeared to hesitate somewhat—‘that is, as close as two
people very widely dissimilar in taste and temperament can ever be.’
‘Perhaps there _may_ be a slightly different way of looking at things,
and so on,’ said his old friend cautiously; ‘but all crafts are not
built out of the same sort of timber, or on the same lines. Some are
oak, some of American pine, some of teak, some of white gum; some with
a smart shear, some with a good allowance of beam; and they can’t be
altered over much. As the keel’s laid down, so the boat’s bound to
float.’
‘H—m!’ replied Ernest thoughtfully, ‘that involves a large
question—several large questions, in fact. Good-bye for the present.’
How many memories crowded upon the brain of Ernest Neuchamp as he
once more trod the massive sandstone flags underneath the portico of
the verandah at Morahmee! The freshly raked gravel walks, the boscage
of glowing green which formed the living walls of the renovated
shrubberies, the well-remembered murmur of the low-toned restless
surge, the odour of the unchanged deep, all these sharply contrasted
sights and sounds after his weary sojourn in the desert composed for
him a page of Boccaccio, framed a panel of Watteau-painting. He was a
knight in an enchanted Armida garden. And as Antonia, freshly attired
in evening dress, radiant with unmistakable welcome, appeared to greet
him on the threshold of the open door, he felt as if the knight who
had done his devoir was about to receive the traditional guerdon, so
necessary to the perfect equilibrium of the world of chivalry and
romance.
‘Welcome from Palestine!’ she said, unconsciously following out his
train of thought, as she ran forward and clasped him by the hand. ‘I
don’t know whether one can call any part of the bush the Holy Land; but
you have been away quite long enough to have gone there. Had you vowed
a vow never to come back till rain fell? People may stay away too long
sometimes.’ Here she gazed at Ernest with a long, searching, humbled
gaze, which suddenly brightened as when the summer cloud catches the
partially obscured sun-ray. ‘But here is Augusta, coming to ask you if
Rainbar won’t be swallowed up in a second deluge now that the drought
has broken up, as she is credibly informed is always the case in
Australia!’ A mischievous twinkle in her mirthful eye informed Ernest
that his cousin’s peculiarities had been accurately measured by the
prepossessing reviewer before him.
As Miss Neuchamp, also attired in full evening costume, approached,
while not far behind, with the air of a confirmed _habitué_, sauntered
Mr. Jermyn Croker, Ernest thought he had never seen that young lady
look to greater advantage. Something had evidently occurred with
power to revive an attention to the details of dress which had been
suffered of late to lie in abeyance. There was also a novel expression
of not unbecoming doubt upon her resolute features which Ernest had
never observed before. It soon appeared, however, that her essential
characteristics were unchanged.
‘I am truly glad to see you, my dear Ernest,’ she said, offering him
her cheek with proper cousinly coolness. ‘I hear that a beneficial
change has taken place in your shocking climate. Mr. Croker says that
prices have risen to their outside limit, and cannot possibly last. Of
course you will sell out at once and go home?’
‘Of course I shall do no such thing,’ returned Ernest, with such
unusual animation that Antonia could not help smiling. ‘I should
consider it most ungrateful, as well as impolitic, to quit the land
which has already done much for me, and may possibly do more.’
‘Well done, Ernest, my boy!’ said Mr. Frankston, who had just joined
the party. ‘Never quit the ship that has weathered the storm with you
while a plank is left in her. Now that we have our country filled with
the sweepings of every port under the sun, we want the captain and
first officer to act like men, and show the stuff they’re made of.’
‘I take quite a different view of my duty to Jermyn Croker, about whom
I have felt much anxiety of late,’ drawled out that gentleman. ‘I see
before me a chance of selling out at an absurdly high price, and taking
my passage by next mail for one of the few countries that is worth
living in. A madman might neglect such an opportunity for the sake of a
few thousand roughs scrambling for gold at California, or Ballarat, but
not Jermyn Croker, if I know him.’
‘And suppose stock rise higher still?’ queried Mr. Frankston, smiling
at the magnificent dogmatism of his unsentimental friend.
‘My dear Frankston, how a man of your age and experience can so blind
himself to the real state of affairs is a marvel to me. Cattle _can’t_
rise. Five pounds all round for young and old on the station is a price
never before reached in Australia. You _must_ see the crash that is
coming. Really, now, without humbug, don’t you know that there will be
a change before Christmas?’
‘So there will,’ answered Paul, ‘but it will be for the better. We have
not half the stock in the country to feed the great multitude that are,
even now, on the sea. But if you _will_ sell, you might give me the
offer.’
‘Sold out of every hoof to Parklands this morning!’ answered Mr.
Croker, looking round with a triumphant air. ‘I was standing on the
club steps before breakfast when he came in from the northern steamer,
and made me an offer before he got out of his hansom.’
‘And you took it?’
‘Took it? of course. We went into the library, where he wrote me out a
cheque then and there for twenty thousand pounds, and I gave him the
delivery note. Booroo-booroo and Chatsworth, with four thousand head
of cattle, taken, without muster, by the book, everything given in.
Something like a sale, wasn’t it?’
‘First-rate for some one—I don’t say who. But I’ll take three to one
that Parklands knocks five thousand pounds profit out of it before the
year is over.’
‘I take you, provided he doesn’t sell to Neuchamp,’ answered Croker. ‘I
must say I think one bargain with him ought to satisfy any man, except
Selmore.’
‘I’ll bet you a level hundred,’ said Paul, a little quickly, ‘that in
five years Ernest here will be able to buy you up—horse, foot, and
dragoons—without feeling the amount.’
‘Particularly if he has the invaluable aid and counsel of Paul
Frankston,’ sneered Mr. Jermyn Croker. However, I shan’t be here to
see, as I never intend to cross the Nepean again, or to see Sydney
Heads except in an engraving.‘
‘We’ll all go and see you off,’ said Antonia, who with Ernest suddenly
appeared as if they had not been listening to the conversation, which
indeed they had not, but had taken a quiet walk down ‘an alley Titanic’
with glorious araucarias. ‘But whoever goes or stays, we must have
dinner. I really _do_ believe that it’s past seven o’clock.’
At this terrible announcement Paul’s ever robust punctuality asserted
itself with a rebound. Seizing upon the fair Augusta he hurried her to
the dining-room, where all conversation bordering upon business was
banished for the present.
After the ladies had retired, the fascinating topic of the changed
social aspect of the country since the gold crop had alternated with
those of wheat, maize, wool, and tallow, which formerly absorbed so
large a share of interest, again came uppermost. Upon this point Mr.
Croker was grandly didactic.
‘Mark my words, Frankston,’ said he, throwing himself back in his
chair, ‘in two years you will see this country a perfect hell upon
earth! What’s to hinder it? Even now there’s hardly a shepherd to be
got; people are talking of turning their sheep loose—that, of course,
means ruin to wool-growing. Cattle will soon overtake the temporary
demand; all the new buyers—nothing personal intended, Neuchamp—will
be ruined. Tallow will fall directly the Russians have settled their
difficulty. I know this from private sources. Flour will be a hundred
pounds a ton again; of course there will be no ploughing for want of
hands. These digger fellows will take to cutting their own throats
first, and when in good practice those of the propertied classes for a
change; and lastly, you’ll have universal suffrage. The scum will be
uppermost, and you’ll end suitably with an unparalleled Jacquerie.’
Mr. Croker, having completed this pleasing patriotic sketch, filled his
glass and looked round with the air of a man who had just demonstrated
to inquiring youth that two and two make four.
‘Australia was always a beastly hole,’ he continued; ‘but really, I
think, when—even before—it comes to what I have outlined, it will cease
to be fit for a gentleman to live in.’
‘You must pardon me for expressing a directly contrary opinion,’
replied Ernest, who had been gradually girding himself up to answer
Mr. Croker according to his humour. ‘I hold that this is precisely the
time, and these are the exact circumstances, which render it a point of
honour for every gentleman who has past or present interest in the land
to live in it, to stand by his colours and lead his regiment in the
battle which is so imminent. Now is the time for those who have felt
or asserted an interest in this glorious last-discovered Eldorado, far
down in the list of English provinces which have a way of changing into
nations, to uphold with all the manhood that is in them her righteous
laws, her goodly customs, her pure yet untrammelled liberty. In my
mind, he who takes advantage of the rise in prices to quit Australia
for ever at this hour of her social need, deserts his duty, abandons
his post, and confesses himself to be less a true colonist than a
sordid huckster!’
As Mr. Neuchamp delivered himself of this perhaps slightly coloured
estimate of the duty of a pastoral tenant, unheeding of the implied
rebuke to the last speaker, he raised his head and confronted the
company with the air of the captain of a sinking ship who has vowed to
stand by her while a plank floats.
Jermyn Croker coloured, but did not immediately reply, while the host
took occasion to interfere, as became his position of mediator between
over-hasty disputants.
‘I think you are both a little beyond the mark,’ he said; ‘if you will
allow me, who have lived here since Sydney was a small seaside village,
to give you my ideas. No doubt, as Croker says, we shall have a queer
crew, with every kind of lubber and every known sort of blackguard to
deal with. But what of that? Discipline has always been kept up in old
New South Wales,—in times, too, when matters looked black enough. The
same men, or their sons, are here now who showed themselves equal to
the occasion before. We have Old England at our backs; and though she
doesn’t bother us with much advice or short leading strings, she has a
ship or two and a regiment left which are at the service of any of her
colonies when need is.’
‘Every country where gold has been discovered up to this time has
gradually degenerated and come to grief,’ asserted Croker, recovering
from his dissatisfied silence; ‘not that much degeneration is possible
here.’
‘You are thinking of the Spaniards, the Mexicans, and so on,’ said
Paul. ‘I’ve been among them, and know all about their ways. They are
not so much worse than other people. But even so: English people have
always managed to govern themselves under all circumstances, and will
again, I venture to bet.’
‘I came out here thinking Australia a good place to make money. I
always knew England was a good place to spend it in,’ averred Mr.
Croker. ‘I’m a man of few ideas, I confess. But I have stuck to these
few, and I think I see my way.’
‘I suppose we all do,’ said Mr. Frankston; ‘but some have more luck or
better eyesight than others. Our friend Levison wouldn’t make a bad man
at the “look-out” in dirty weather, eh, Ernest? What do you think of
him, Croker?‘
‘Think? why, that he’s an immensely overrated man; he has made a few
hits by straightforward blundering and kept what he has got. I give him
credit for that. But who’s to know whether all this station property
that stands in his name is _really_ his? The banks may have the lion’s
share for all anybody knows.’
‘Highly probable,’ assented Ernest, with fierce sarcasm; ‘and Levison’s
steady prophecy that the season was going to break just before it did
was an accidental guess! His purchasing stock, stations, and town
property for the rise, which no one else believed in, was a chance hit!
His uniformly good sales when every one else was holding! His large
purchases when all the world was selling! His unostentatious gifts,
at the rate of two to a thousand pounds, to church buildings were
unredeemed parsimony! His advice to me to buy and his actual purchases
of stock for my benefit, every pound invested in which has furnished
a profit of ten, were selfish mistakes! You must excuse me, Croker,
for saying that I think you have reared a larger crop of prejudices in
Australia than any man I have seen here.’
‘It’s a fine climate!’ quoth Paul; ‘everything grows and develops;
even experience, like Madeira in the voyage round the Cape, ripens
twice as fast here as anywhere else. A whitewasher, Croker? I really
believe this is a bottle of the Manzanares you prefer, and we’ll join
the ladies, which means adjourn to the verandah.’
* * * * *
If happiness, at any period or season, did dwell upon the earth, she
must have sojourned, about the month of September 185—, so near to
the New Holland Club, so near to the person of Ernest Neuchamp, as
to have been occasionally visible to the naked eye. Had a company
of _savans_ been told off to view the goddess, as in the far less
important matter of the transit of Venus, success had been certain. But
society never recognises its real wonders—its absolute and imperious
miracles. Therefore for a little space that earthly maid glorified
the dwelling and precincts of the untrammelled, rejoicing, successful
proprietor. She sat by Mr. Neuchamp at the daintily prepared refections
of the club, and gave an added flavour to his moderate but intense
enjoyment of viand and vintage, so wondrous in variety, so miraculous
of aroma, after his long endurance of the unpalatable monotony of the
Rainbar cuisine. She whispered in the mystic tones of the many-voiced
sea-breezes, as they murmured around his steps when, with Antonia at
his side, he roamed through the mimic woods of Morahmee, or gazed with
never-ending contemplative joy on the pale moon’s silver tracery o’er
wave and strand. She rose with him in the joyous morn, telling him the
ever-welcome tale that all cause for anxiety had fled, that a new ukase
had gone forth, bringing unmixed joy to every man of his order, always
excepting the sheepholders and Jermyn Croker. She sat behind him, on
Osmund, displacing ‘the sad companion ghastly pale’ even ‘atra Cura,’
who had been the occupant of a croup seat on that gallant steed for
many a day. Once more the rattle of flying hoofs was heard upon the
sandy downs and red hill-roads which, near Bondi’s ceaseless surge,
overlook the city’s mingled mass, the ocean’s fresh eternal glory. In
this season of joy and pride—the natural and becoming pride of him who
has suffered and struggled, waited and warred for no mean reward, which
at length he has been permitted to grasp—the bright goddess smiled on
every act, thought, and hope of Ernest Neuchamp. In that fair brief
bygone day of unalloyed triumph, of unclouded hope, it is a truth most
absolute and indisputable that she stood by his side in serene and
awful beauty; but, like her austere sister of old who cried aloud in
the streets to a heedless generation, ‘no man regarded her.’
Through all this halcyon time no definite pledge or vow had passed
between him and the woman whom he had slowly, but with all the force
of an inflexibly tenacious nature, come to consider as the embodied
essence of that mysterious complement to man’s nature, at once the
vital necessity, the crowning glory, of this mortal state, the vision
of female perfection! Proud, fastidious, a searcher after ideals,
prone to postpone the irrevocable decision by which man’s fate here
below is for ever sealed, he was now face to face with Destiny. Even
now he felt so utterly fascinated, so supremely content, with the
graduated intimacies of which the daily process which draws two human
hearts together into indescribable union is composed, so charmed with
the undreamed-of treasures of mind and heart which each fresh casket
unlocked displayed to his gaze, that he felt no desire to change the
mode of bliss. Why hurry to an end this sojourn in the land of Faerye,
while the bridle-reins of the Queen of Elf-land and her troop were
ringing still through the haunted woods, while feast and tournament
still went merrily on, while stream and emerald turf and bosky glade
were still touched with the glory of successful love, while the glamour
still held sea and sky and far-enpurpled mounts, upon which, let but
once the knell of disenchantment sound, no mortal may again gaze _while
life endures_?
During all this time of joy and consolation Mr. Neuchamp had regular
advices from his lieutenant, Charley Banks. That young gentleman
complained piteously of his lonely state and solitary lodging in
the wilderness, for which nothing compensated, it would appear, but
the increasing beauty of the season (pastorally considered) and an
occasional gossip with Tottie Freeman.
Now that the rain had found out the way to saltbush land, there seemed
to be but little variety of weather. It rained every other day,
sometimes for nearly a week, incredible to relate, without stopping.
The creeks were full, the flats were soaked, spongy, and knee-deep in
clover. The river was high, had come down ‘a banker,’ and any further
rainfall at the head waters, or even the melting of the snow, might
bring down a flood such as the dwellers in those parts had not seen for
many a day. The Freemans were uncomfortable enough. They had found that
their huts and fencing had been placed on land too low for comfort in
a wet season, and even for safety if the threatened floods rose higher
than usual.
In November, the third spring month of the Australians, another
despatch of greater weight and importance reached Mr. Neuchamp, who
apparently was not hasting to quit the land of French cooks and Italian
singers, of pleasant day saunterings, of cheerful lunch parties, and
moonlight rambles by the murmuring sea. Mr. Banks had the distinguished
honour of entertaining Mr. Levison, but lately returned from Melbourne,
and engaged in starting two or three thousand head of fat cattle for
that market. He had come round by Rainbar, he said, on purpose to take
delivery of the Freemans‘land, but he, Charley Banks, thought it more
likely that he wanted to see old ‘BI’ (who looked splendid, with a
crest like a lion), and whom he rode away in triumph. He handed over
the deeds of all the Freemans‘conditional purchases to him to give to
Mr. Neuchamp, saying that he hoped he wouldn’t do that sort of thing
again, as he might not come out of it right another time.
Mr. Banks further related that he had volunteered as his deliberate
opinion, from what he had noticed about the Victorian gold mines,
that the yield of gold would last many years, during which time stock
would continue to be high in price, although there might be temporary
depressions. As a consequence of which state of things, the sooner
every one bought all the store stock they could lay hands on the
better. ‘“My word,” he said, “it was a lucky drop-in—not for them
though—that I picked you up those Freeman cattle, not to speak of the
‘circle dots.’ There will be no more eight-and-sixpenny store cattle,
or fifteen-bob ones either—two pounds for cows, and fifty shillings
and three pounds for good steers and bullocks will be more like it,
and they will pay at that price too. But what I want you to tell Mr.
Neuchamp is this. I’d write to him, but I’m in a hurry off, and you can
do it quite as well, if you’re careful and attend to what I tell you.
‘“I’ve just had information that the Sydney people who have got the
agency of the Mildool run, that joins you, are going to sell. They’ve
got it into their wise heads that cattle have seen their top, because
they’re worth five pounds all round, that is, with stations; and
because they’re old-fashioned Sydney-siders that never heard of such a
price since the days when they used to bring buffaloes from India.
‘“They believe that Victoria is choke-full of Yankees and diggers,
stowaways and emigrants, and that the whole thing will ‘bust up’
directly, and let down prices everywhere to what they were before the
gold.
‘“People that travel, and keep their eyes open, know what foolishness
all this sort of thing is. A regular Sydney man thinks all Victorians
are blowers and speculators. A regular Victorian thinks all Sydney
men are old-fashioned, slow prigs who wouldn’t spend a guinea to save
five pounds. The truth is pretty near the middle. Don’t you stick at
home all your life, like a mallee scrubber, that has only one dart, on
the plain and back to his scrub, and then you won’t run away with the
notion that because a man is born on one side of a river and not on the
other, he ain’t as clever, or as sensible, or as good a hand at making
money or saving it, as you are. It’s only country-bred, country-reared
folks that think that way.
‘“What I want you to tell the boss is this. He’d better set old Paul
Frankston to get a quiet offer of this Mildool with four thousand
odd head—it will carry about seven or eight—and if they’ll take
four-fifteen or five pound all round, ram ’em with it at once. Tell
Neuchamp he can send that native chap to manage it, and it will be the
best day’s work he’s done for some time. Tell him Ab. Levison said
so. Good-bye. You take a run down to Melbourne next chance you get
of a holiday, and don’t stay out here till you get the Darling rot.
Good-bye.”
‘And so he cantered off on old “BI.” Levison don’t go in for much talk
in a general way, but when he once begins he don’t leave off so easy.
I thought he was going to talk all night, and so lose a day. But catch
him at that. I think I’ve told you every word he said, for I went and
wrote it down as soon as he went away.‘
So far Mr. Banks. Upon the receipt of his artless missive, Ernest went
at once to Paul Frankston, and communicated to him the substance of the
message of Mr. Levison.
‘This is putting on the pot, my dear boy,’ said he. ‘If anything
happens to shake stock, Rainbar and Mildool will tumble down like a
house of cards. But now the wind is dead fair, and we may venture on
studding-sails—crowd on below and aloft. I back Levison’s opinion that
it is the right time to buy before Sticker and Pugsley’s notion that it
is the right time to sell.’
‘What sort of terms do you think they will require?’ asked Ernest, who
was fired with the idea of consolidating into one magnificent property
the two crack cattle runs of Rainbar and Mildool, the latter a grandly
watered, splendidly grassed station, but wofully mismanaged according
to old custom.
‘Half cash at least, and not very long dated bills either,’ said Paul,
‘but we can manage the cash on your security, as your name now stands
high in the money market. As to the bills, tell them that I will
endorse them. They won’t make any objection then.’
‘How much heavier is the load of my obligations to you to become?’
asked Ernest. ‘I feel as if I should never live to free myself from
the debt I owe you already.’
‘Don’t trouble yourself, my dear boy,’ said the liberal endorser. ‘If
things go well, nothing’s easier for you than to clear off every stiver
of debt. See how you have been able to pay off Levison, principal
and interest, out of that last lot of cattle, without a shade of
difficulty. If the rise takes place which Levison and I and some more
of us anticipate, why you, I, and he stand to win something very
respectable. You can then give us all a cheque for the amount advanced,
and the whole thing is over and finished. Until the drought broke up, I
don’t deny that we all had to be very close-hauled, and lay-to a good
deal from time to time; but now, with bullocks eight pounds a head, and
fat sheep ten shillings—wool up too, and real property rising,—not to
mention the shipping trade doubling every month,—why, if we can’t clap
on sail, my boy, we never can, and what the ship can’t carry she may
drag.’
The old man looked so thoroughly convinced of the truth of his
convictions as he spoke, with the kindling eye and elevated visage of
one resolved upon a hazardous but honourable enterprise, that Ernest
Neuchamp, always prone to be influenced by contagious exaltation of
sentiment, caught fire from his ardent mien and tone.
‘Well, so be it,’ he said; ‘I am content to sink or swim in the same
boat with you and yours. We have Ab. Levison for a pilot, and he knows
all the rocks and soundings of the pastoral deep sea from Penrith to
Carpentaria, I should say. As you say there’s a time for all things, I
think this is the time to back one’s opinion in reason and moderation.
I will go and confront the agents for Mildool.’
Messrs. Sticker and Pugsley were steady-going, precise men of business
of the old school. As stock and station agents they had always steadily
set their faces against all outlay except for the merest necessaries
of life. Bred to their business in the old times when stock were
plentiful, labour cheap, and cash extremely hard to lay hold of in any
shape or form, they struggled desperately against these new-fangled
notions of ‘throwing away money uselessly,’ as they termed the
comparatively large outlay which they occasionally heard of upon dams,
wells, fencing, woolsheds, and washpens. Large profits had been made in
the good old times, when such speculations would have gone nigh to have
furnished a warrant _de lunatico inquirendo_. They did not see how it
was all to be repaid. They doubted the management which comprehended
such sinful extravagance; and they proposed to continue their
time-honoured system, which made it imperative upon all stockholders
who were unlucky enough to be in debt to them, to spend nothing, to
live upon shepherds‘wages, and not to think of coming to town until
times improved.
One wonders if it ever occurred to these snug-comfort loving cits, as
daily they drove home to pleasant villas and luxurious surroundings—did
it ever occur to them, after the second glass of old port, to what a
life of wretchedness, solitude, and sordid surroundings their griping
parsimony was condemning the unlucky exile from civilisation, who
was hopelessly chained to their ledger? For him no beeswing port, no
claret of Bordeaux. He drank his ‘Jack the Painter’ tea milkless, most
probably, and flavoured with blackest sugar, occasionally stimulating
his ideality with ration rum or villainous dark brandy. Though his the
brain that planned, the hand that carried out long desert wayfarings
of exploration—long, toilsome drudgeries of stock travelling to lone
untrodden wilds; his the frame that withered, the eye that dimmed,
the health that failed, the blood that flowed, ere the process of
colonising, progression, and commercial extension was complete.
Thus land was occupied, villages sprang up, inter-communication was
established, and the wilderness subdued. All the magnificent results of
civilisation were brought about over territories of incredible area by
the intelligence, enterprise, and energy of one individual. And he, too
often, when the battle was won, the standard hoisted, and the multitude
pouring over the breach, found himself a beggared and a broken man.
Mr. Neuchamp, after due preliminaries, entered the office of Messrs.
Sticker and Pugsley, with whom he had an interview by no means of a
disagreeable character. The senior partner, an elderly, gray-haired
personage, showed much of the formal politeness which is commonly
thought to distinguish the gentleman of ‘the old school.’ He received
Ernest courteously, begged that he would take a chair, alluded to the
weather, deplored the arrival of the mosquitoes, to which the rain
and the spring in conjunction had been jointly favourable, requested
to know whom he had the honour of receiving, and finally desired
information as to the particular mode in which he could be of service
to him.
‘I have been informed,’ said Ernest, ‘that your firm are agents for the
Mildool station, and that it is in the market. I have come to request
that you will put it under offer to me, as I have some intention of
purchasing a property of that sort.’
‘We have not as yet advertised it,’ replied Mr. Sticker; ‘still, you
have been rightly informed that the station and stock are for sale. But
we do not think of offering it upon the usual terms; our own opinion
is, I do not disguise it from you, that present prices will not last. I
have been many years in the colony, and such is my belief. Mr. Pugsley,
whose opinion of the permanence of present high rates is better than
mine, also believes that, with the properties entrusted to us, it is as
well to be safe, and to take advantage of an opportunity that may never
occur again. Our terms for Mildool are briefly these: We offer four
thousand head of mixed cattle, above six months old, with, of course,
the M[Ḋ] brand, at five pounds per head, everything given in. I am
informed that the improvements are scanty and in bad repair; there are
twenty stock horses, and a team of bullocks and dray, two huts, and a
stockyard. But, perhaps, you know the property, and the appearance of
the buildings.’
‘The huts _are_ old and bad,’ said Ernest, smiling; ‘and as for the
stockyard, the Mildool stockmen have for the last few years brought
their cattle to our yard for safety, as you could kick down the Mildool
yard anywhere. But what is your idea of terms?’
‘Half cash, and the balance in approved bills, at one and two years,
secured upon the stock and station.’
‘Rather stiff,’ said Ernest; ‘but will you put the offer in writing,
and leave it open for a week? I will before that time give you a
decided answer.’
Mr. Sticker would have much pleasure in doing so. As Ernest preferred
to wait for the important document, it was soon prepared, and he
finally marched away with a fortune, as it turned out (fate and
opportunity are queer things), in his waistcoat pocket. He was not too
quick in his conditional annexation of this desirable territory. Ten
minutes afterwards Mr. Hardy Baldacre dashed into the office on the
same errand, quitting it with a curse which shocked Mr. Sticker, and
provoked Mr. Pugsley, who was young and athletic, to inform him that
he must not suppose that his money provided him the permission to be
rude, though it did procure him consideration far beyond his deserts.
Altogether, Mr. Baldacre felt as if his brandy-and-soda had been
scarcely so efficacious as usual that morning.
When Mr. Neuchamp produced this small but important document to Paul
Frankston, that commercial mentor rubbed his hands with unconcealed
satisfaction.
‘You’ve got ’em, Ernest, my boy, hard and fast. I believe you might
make a pound a head, say four thousand pounds out of it, in a month.
Sticker is a good man, according to his light, and Pug’s a sharp
fellow. But they don’t see, and won’t see, the signs of the times.
They’re always remembering the old boiling-down days, and they fancy
that the least change in markets will send us back to it. You did right
to get the offer in writing, and for a deferred time. We’ll keep it a
day or two, and then you shall go and accept the terms like a man.’
‘But how about the money?’ inquired Mr. Neuchamp with a shade of
natural anxiety. ‘Twenty thousand pounds are no nutshells, however
little it may sound in these extravagant days.’
‘Look here,’ said Paul, ‘find this ten thousand down; any agent will
give you five thousand on the security of your year’s draft of fat
stock from the two runs; it will come to more, I daresay, but we must
be as careful as we can. I think that you will have to give a mortgage
over Rainbar and Mildool—a second one—and then you may draw a cheque
for the ten thousand as soon as you like.’
‘And what about the “approved” bills?‘
‘Well, the day after to-morrow you can go to old Sticker and pay him
the half cash. I’ll put the cash part of it through; ask him to make
out the bills, with interest added at 8 per cent; bring them to me,
and I will put a name on the back which will render them legal tender,
whatever may come of them after.’
‘The old story since I came to Australia,’ said Ernest. ‘It seems that
I can do nothing without your advice; and that your help follows me as
a natural consequence—whatever I do, and whatever I buy.’
‘Well, if this shot turns out badly,’ said Paul, ‘I’ll promise not
to _back your bills any more_. Will that satisfy you? But Levison
seems quite determined, “just this once,” as the children say, and I
generally take his tip if I see a chance. I think our money is on the
right horse.‘
‘I hope so,’ said Ernest, thinking, respectfully, of the lovely
condition of Rainbar at the moment, and fearing lest, by any financial
legerdemain, it might be taken away from him in time to come.
Before the week was ended, during which the offer of Mildool was open
for his acceptance, Mr. Neuchamp had the satisfaction of handing Mr.
Sticker a cheque for ten thousand pounds, which he had been obligingly
permitted by his banker to draw against certain securities, and also
two bills, with interest added at the rate of 8 per cent, for the
balance. Upon which somewhat important documents being well scanned
and examined, and further submitted to Mr. Pugsley, who was on that
occasion introduced, Ernest received an order to obtain delivery of
the Mildool station, having twenty-four miles frontage to the river,
and going thirty miles back, with four thousand head of cattle, more or
less, depasturing thereon, the same to be mustered and counted over in
six weeks; any cattle deficient to be paid for by Sticker and Pugsley,
at the rate of two-pounds-ten per head, and all cattle in excess to
be taken by the purchaser at that price. When this transaction was
concluded—on paper, Mr. Neuchamp began to realise that he was having
pastoral greatness thrust upon him.
Speculation is a grandly exciting occupation, when all goes well.
When the bark is launched, mayhap with tremulous hope, perchance
with the reckless pride of youth, there is a wondrously intoxicating
triumph in noting the gradual, ever-deep, engine-flowing tide, the
steady, favourable gale before which the galley which carried Cæsar
and his fortunes ‘walks the waters like a thing of life,’ and finally
conveys the illustrious freight to one of the fair havens of the
gracious goddess Success. A triumph is decreed to Cæsar. Immediately
Cæsar’s critics become bland, his enemies fangless, his friends are
pacified—_they_ are always the most difficult personages to assuage;
his detractors go and detract from others; his creditors burn incense
before him; his feminine acquaintances dress at him, talk at him, sing
at him, and _look_ at him—oh! so differently.
Cæsar needs all of his unusually powerful mental attributes if he does
not become abominably conceited, and straightway refer the kindness of
circumstance to his own inherent talent for calculation and brilliant
combination. Let him haste to place yet higher stakes upon the tables,
and after the usual fluctuation and flattery of the Fiend, he arises
one day ruined, undone, and despised by himself, neglected by others.
The fate of Ernest Neuchamp could never thus be told. Naturally too
prudent in pecuniary matters to go much further than he had good
warrant for, he was even alarmed at his present comparatively risky
position. But he had adopted the advice of his best friend, whose
former counsels had been accurately borne out in successful practice.
He had taken time to consider. Wiser heads than his own were committed
to the same results; and he was according to his custom, prepared to
dismiss anxiety, and to await the issue.
Nor was he minded on this account to cut short his stay in Sydney.
He determined, in accordance with his own feelings and Mr. Levison’s
suggestion, to give the management of the new station to his faithful
henchman Jack Windsor, who, now that he was married and settled, would
be all the better fitted to undertake a position of responsibility. As
for Charley Banks, he should retain him as general manager of Rainbar.
He ought not even to live there always himself. If it kept on raining
and elevating the fat cattle market _ad infinitum_, the place could be
managed with a ‘long arm.’ No reason to bury himself there for ever. He
might even run home to England for a year or so.
Meanwhile it was not unpleasant to be congratulated at the club upon
his improved prospects, and his spirited purchase of so extensive and
well-known a property as Mildool. He commenced to divide the honour of
rapid operation with Mr. Parklands, and found from day to day offers
awaiting him of desirable properties situated north, south, east, and
west, with any quantity and variety of stock, and of every sort and
description of climate and ‘country.’ Mr. Parklands, to the ineffable
disgust of Jermyn Croker, had already sold Booroo-booroo and Chatsworth
at a profit of six thousand pounds, which Mr. Croker said he regarded
as being taken out of his pocket, so to speak. Parklands had, moreover,
the coolness to say that, if it had been worth his while to keep two
such small stations on hand for a longer time, he could have made ten
thousand as easily as the six. Mr. Croker objected to the claret and
cookery more pointedly than usual that day, and the committee and the
house steward had an evil time of it; that is, as far as contemptuous
reference may have affected them.
Mr. Parklands, now truly in his element, indulged his fancy for
unlimited speculation and locomotion to the fullest extent. He filled
the Melbourne markets with store stock and fat stock, horses and
sheep, working bullocks and milch cows, every possible variety of
animal, except goats and swine. It was asserted that he _did_ consider
the nanny question, and calculated roughly whether a steamer-load
of those miniature milchers would not pay decently. He ransacked
Tasmania for oats, palings, and jam, and, no doubt, would have largely
imported that other interesting product, of which the sister island
has always yielded so bounteous a supply, could he have seen his way
to a clearing-off sale when he landed the cargo. Finally, he dashed
off to Adelaide for a slap at copper, and having taken a contract for
‘ship cattle’ for New Zealand, paused, like another Alexander, awaiting
the discovery of fresh colonies in which he might revel in still more
colossal operations.