He is gone! he has left a void in my existence. I had grown to love
him so well; I had been so proud when men praised him. My love was a
sort of self-love--I had looked upon him in part as the work of my own
hands. I am a long time ere I can settle back, with good heart, to my
pastoral life. Before my cousin went, we cast up our gains, and settled
our shares. When he resigned the allowance which Roland had made him,
his father secretly gave to me, for his use, a sum equal to that which
I and Guy Bolding brought into the common stock. Roland had raised the
sum upon mortgage; and, while the interest was a trivial deduction
from his income, compared to the former allowance, the capital was
much more useful to his son than a mere yearly payment could have
been. Thus, between us, we had a considerable sum for Australian
settlers--£4500. For the first two years we made nothing; indeed, great
part of the first year was spent in learning our art, at the station of
an old settler. But, at the end of the third year, our flocks having
then become very considerable, we cleared a return beyond my most
sanguine expectations. And when my cousin left, just in the sixth year
of exile, our shares amounted to £4000 each, exclusive of the value of
the two stations. My cousin had, at first, wished that I should forward
his share to his father, but he soon saw that Roland would never take
it; and it was finally agreed that it should rest in my hands, for
me to manage for him, send him out interest at five per cent, and
devote the surplus profits to the increase of his capital. I had now,
therefore, the control of £12,000, and we might consider ourselves very
respectable capitalists. I kept on the cattle station, by the aid of
the Will-o'-the-Wisp, for about two years after Vivian's departure, (we
had then had it altogether for five.) At the end of that time, I sold
it and the stock to great advantage. And the sheep--for the "brand"
of which I had a high reputation--having wonderfully prospered in the
meanwhile, I thought we might safely extend our speculations into new
ventures. Glad, too, of a change of scene, I left Bolding in charge
of the flocks, and bent my course to Adelaide, for the fame of that
new settlement had already disturbed the peace of the Bush. I found
Uncle Jack residing near Adelaide, in a very handsome villa, with all
the signs and appurtenances of colonial opulence; and report, perhaps,
did not exaggerate the gains he had made:--so many strings to his
bow--and each arrow, this time, seemed to have gone straight to the
white of the butts! I now thought I had acquired knowledge and caution
sufficient to avail myself of Uncle Jack's ideas, without ruining
myself by following them out in his company; and I saw a kind of
retributive justice in making his brain minister to the fortunes which
his ideality and constructiveness, according to Squills, had served
so notably to impoverish. I must here gratefully acknowledge, that I
owed much to this irregular genius. The investigation of the supposed
mines had proved unsatisfactory to Mr Bullion; and they were not fairly
discovered till a few years after. But Jack had convinced himself
of their existence, and purchased, on his own account, "for an old
song," some barren land, which he was persuaded would prove to him a
Golconda, one day or other, under the euphonious title (which, indeed,
it ultimately established) of the "Tibbet's Wheal." The suspension of
the mines, however, fortunately suspended the existence of the Grog and
Store Depôt, and Uncle Jack was now assisting in the foundation of Port
Philip. Profiting by his advice, I adventured in that new settlement
some timid and wary purchases, which I resold to considerable
advantage. Meanwhile, I must not omit to state briefly what, since my
departure from England, had been the ministerial career of Trevanion.
That refining fastidiousness,--that scrupulosity of political
conscience, which had characterised him as an independent member,
and often served, in the opinion, both of friend and of foe, to
give the attribute of _general_ impracticability to a mind that, in
all _details_, was so essentially and laboriously practical--might
perhaps have founded Trevanion's reputation as a minister, if he could
have been a minister without colleagues--if, standing alone, and
from the necessary height, he could have placed, clear and single,
before the world, his exquisite honesty of purpose, and the width
of a statesmanship marvellously accomplished and comprehensive. But
Trevanion could not amalgamate with others, nor subscribe to the
discipline of a cabinet in which he was not the chief, especially in a
policy which must have been thoroughly abhorrent to such a nature--a
policy that, of late years, has distinguished not one faction alone,
but has seemed so forced upon the more eminent political leaders, on
either side, that they who take the more charitable view of things
may, perhaps, hold it to arise from the necessity of the age, fostered
by the temper of the public--I mean the policy of _Expediency_.
Certainly not in this book will I introduce the angry elements of party
politics; and how should I know much about them? All that I have to say
is, that, right or wrong, such a policy must have been at war, every
moment, with each principle of Trevanion's statesmanship, and fretted
each fibre of his moral constitution. The aristocratic combinations
which his alliance with the Castleton interest had brought to his aid,
served perhaps to fortify his position in the cabinet; yet aristocratic
combinations were of small avail against what seemed the atmospherical
epidemic of the age. I could see how his situation had preyed on his
mind, when I read a paragraph in the newspapers, "that it was reported,
on good authority, that Mr Trevanion had tendered his resignation,
but had been prevailed upon to withdraw it, as his retirement at that
moment would break up the government." Some months afterwards came
another paragraph, to the effect "that Mr Trevanion was taken suddenly
ill, and that it was feared his illness was of a nature to preclude
his resuming his official labours." Then parliament broke up. Before
it met again, Mr Trevanion was gazetted as Earl of Ulverstone, a title
that had been once in his family--and had left the administration,
unable to encounter the fatigues of office. To an ordinary man, the
elevation to an earldom, passing over the lesser honours in the
peerage, would have seemed no mean close to a political career; but
I felt what profound despair of striving against circumstance for
utility--what entanglements with his colleagues, whom he could neither
conscientiously support, nor, according to his high old-fashioned
notions of party honour and etiquette, energetically oppose--had
driven him to abandon that stormy scene in which his existence had
been passed. The House of Lords, to that active intellect, was as the
retirement of some warrior of old into the cloisters of a convent. The
gazette that chronicled the Earldom of Ulverstone was the proclamation
that Albert Trevanion lived no more for the world of public men. And,
indeed, from that date his career vanished out of sight. Trevanion
died--the Earl of Ulverstone made no sign.
I had hitherto written but twice to Lady Ellinor during my exile--once
upon the marriage of Fanny with Lord Castleton, which took place about
six months after I sailed from England, and again, when thanking her
husband for some rare animals, equine, pastoral, and bovine, which
he had sent as presents to Bolding and myself. I wrote again after
Trevanion's elevation to the peerage, and received in due time a reply,
confirming all my impressions--for it was full of bitterness and gall,
accusations of the world, fears for the country: Richelieu himself
could not have taken a gloomier view of things, when his levees were
deserted, and his power seemed annihilated before the "Day of Dupes."
Only one gleam of comfort appeared to visit Lady Ulverstone's breast,
and thence to settle prospectively over the future of the world--a
second son had been born to Lord Castleton; to that son the earldom
of Ulverstone, and the estates held in right of its countess, would
descend! Never was there a child of such promise! Not Virgil himself,
when he called on the Sicilian Muses to celebrate the advent of a son
to Pollio, ever sounded a loftier strain. Here was one, now perchance
engaged on words of two syllables, called--
"By labouring nature to sustain
The nodding frame of heaven, and earth, and main,
See to their base restored, earth, sea, and air,
And joyful ages from behind in crowding ranks appear!"
Happy dream which Heaven sends to grandparents! rebaptism of Hope in
the font whose drops sprinkle the grandchild!
Time flies on; affairs continue to prosper. I am just leaving the bank
at Adelaide with a satisfied air, when I am stopped in the street by
bowing acquaintances, who never shook me by the hand before. They shake
me by the hand now, and cry--"I wish you joy, sir. That brave fellow,
your namesake, is of course your near relation."
"What do you mean?"
"Have not you seen the papers? Here they are."
"Gallant conduct of Ensign de Caxton--promoted to a lieutenancy on the
field"--I wipe my eyes, and cry--"Thank Heaven--it is my cousin!" Then
new hand-shakings, new groups gather round. I feel taller by the head
than I was before! We grumbling English, always quarrelling with each
other--the world not wide enough to hold us; and yet, when in the far
land some bold deed is done by a countryman, how we feel that we are
brothers! how our hearts warm to each other! What a letter I wrote home
I and how joyously I went back to the Bush! The Will-o'-the Wisp has
attained to a cattle station of his own. I go fifty miles out of my way
to tell him the news and give him the newspaper; for he knows now that
his old master, Vivian, is a Cumberland man--a Caxton. Poor Will-o'-the
Wisp! The tea that night tasted uncommonly like whisky-punch! Father
Mathew forgive us!--but if you had been a Cumberland man, and heard the
Will-o'-the Wisp roaring out, "Blue bonnets over the Borders," I think
your tea, too, would not have come out of the caddy!