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PLAIN LIVING
_A BUSH IDYLL_
[Illustration]
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PLAIN LIVING
_A BUSH IDYLL_
BY
ROLF BOLDREWOOD
AUTHOR OF “ROBBERY UNDER ARMS,” “THE MINER’S RIGHT,” ETC.
=London=
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1898
_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BUNGAY.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PLAIN LIVING
_A BUSH IDYLL_
CHAPTER I
Mr. Stamford was riding slowly, wearily homeward in the late autumnal
twilight along the dusty track which led to the Windāhgil station. The
life of a pastoral tenant of the Crown in Australia is, for the most
part, free, pleasant, and devoid of the cares which assail so mordantly
the heart of modern man in cities.
But striking exceptions to this rule are furnished periodically. “A dry
season,” in the bush vernacular, supervenes. In the drear months which
follow, “the flower fadeth, the grass withereth” as in the olden Pharaoh
days. The waters are “forgotten of the footstep”; the flocks and herds
which, in the years of plenty, afford so liberal an income, so
untrammelled an existence to their proprietor, are apt to perish if not
removed. Prudence and energy may serve to modify such a calamity. No
human foresight can avert it.
In such years, a revengeful person could desire his worst enemy to be an
Australian squatter. For he would then behold him hardly tried, sorely
tormented, a man doomed to watch his most cherished possessions daily
fading before his eyes; nightly to lay his head on his pillow with the
conviction that he was so much poorer since sunrise. He would mark him
day by day, compelled to await the slow-advancing march of
ruin—hopeless, irrevocable—which he was alike powerless to hasten or
evade.
If he were a husband and a father, his anxieties would be ingeniously
heightened and complicated. The privations of poverty, the social
indignities which his loved ones might be fated to undergo, would be
forever in his thoughts, before his eyes, darkening his melancholy days,
disturbing his too scanty rest.
Such was the present position, such were the prospects, of Harold
Stamford of Windāhgil. As he rode slowly along on a favourite
hackney—blood-like, but palpably low in condition—with bent head and
corrugated brow, it needed but little penetration to note that the “iron
had entered into his soul.”
Truth to tell, he had that morning received an important letter from his
banker in Sydney. Not wholly unexpected; still it had destroyed the
remnant of his last hope. Before its arrival he had been manfully
struggling against fate. He had hoped against hope. The season might
change. How magical an alteration would forty-eight hours of steady rain
produce! He might be able to tide over till next shearing. The station
was being worked with the strictest economy. How he grudged, indeed, the
payment of their wages to the men who performed the unthankful task of
cutting down the _Casuarina_ and _Acacia pendula_, upon which the
starving flocks were now in a great measure kept alive!
But for that abnormal expenditure, he and his boy Hubert, gallant,
high-hearted fellow that he was, might make shift to do the station work
themselves until next shearing. How they had worked, too, all of them!
Had not the girls turned themselves into cooks and laundresses for weeks
at a time! Had not his wife (delicate, refined Linda Carisforth—who
would have thought to see a broom in those hands?) worn herself
well-nigh to death, supplementing the details of household work, when
servants were inefficient, or, indeed, not to be procured! And was this
to be the end of all? Of the years of patient labour, of ungrudging
self-denial, of so much care and forethought, the fruit of which he had
seen in the distance, a modest competence, an assured position? A
well-improved freehold estate comprising the old homestead, and a
portion of the fertile lands of Windāhgil, once the crack station of the
district, which Hubert should inherit after him.
It was hard--very hard! As he came near the comfortable, roomy cottage,
and marked the orchard trees, the tiny vineyard green with trailing
streamers in despite of the weary, sickening, cruel drought, his heart
swelled nigh to bursting as he thought how soon this ark of their
fortunes might be reft from them.
Surely there must be some means of escape! Providence would never be so
hard! God’s mercy was above all. In it he would trust until the actual
moment of doom. And yet, as he marked the desolate, dusty waste across
which the melancholy flocks feebly paced; as he saw on every side the
carcases of animals that had succumbed to long remorseless famine; as he
watched the red sun sinking below the hard, unclouded sky, a sense of
despair fell like lead upon his heart, and he groaned aloud.
“Hallo, governor!” cried out a cheery voice from a clump of timber which
he had approached without observing, “you and old Sindbad look pretty
well told out! I thought you were going to ride over me and the team, in
your very brown study. But joking apart, dear old dad, you look awfully
down on it. Times are bad, and it’s never going to rain again, is it?
But we can’t afford to have you throwing up the sponge. _Fortuna favet
fortibus_, that’s our heraldic motto. Why, there are lots of chances,
and any amount of fortunes, going begging yet.”
“Would you point out one or two of them, Master Hubert?” said his
father, relaxing his features as he looked with an air of pride on the
well-built youngster, who stood with bare throat and sun-bronzed, sinewy
arms beside a dray upon which was a high-piled load of firewood.
“Well, let us see! if the worst comes to the worst, you and I must clear
out, governor, and take up this new Kimberley country. I’ve got ten
years’ work in me right off the reel.” Here the boy raised his head, and
stretched his wide, yet graceful shoulders; “and so have you, dad, if
you wouldn’t fret so over what can’t be helped. You’d better get home,
though, mother’s been expecting you this hour. I’ll be in as soon as
I’ve put on this last log. This load ought to keep them in firewood for
a month.”
“You’re a good boy, Hubert. I’ll ride on; don’t knock any more skin off
your hands than is absolutely necessary, though,” pointing to a bleeding
patch about half an inch square, from which the cuticle had been
recently removed. “A gentleman should consider his hands, even when he
is obliged to work. Besides, in this weather there is a little danger of
inflammation.”
“Oh, that!” said the youngster with the fine carelessness of early
manhood. “Scratches don’t count in the bush. I wish my clothes would
heal of themselves when they get torn. It would save poor mother’s
everlasting stitch, stitch, a little, and her eyes too, poor dear! Now,
you go on, dad, and have your bath, and make yourself comfortable before
I come in. A new magazine came by post to-day, and the last
_Australasian_. Laura’s got such a song too. We’re going to have no end
of an evening, if you’ll only pull yourself together a bit. Now you
won’t fret about this miserable season, will you? It’s bad enough, of
course, but it’s no use lying down to it—now, is it?”
“Right, my boy; we must all do our best, and trust in God’s mercy. He
has helped us hitherto. It is cowardly to despair. I thank Him that I
have children whom I can be proud of, whether good or ill fortune
betide.”
Mr. Stamford put spurs to his horse. The leg-weary brute threw up his
head gamely, and, true to his blood, made shift to cover the remaining
distance from the homestead at a brisk pace. As he rode into the stable
yard, a figure clad in a jersey, a pair of trousers, and a bathing
towel, which turned out to be an eager lad of twelve, ran up to him.
“Give me Sindbad, father; I’m just going down to the river for a swim,
and I’ll give him one too. It will freshen him up. I’ll scrape him up a
bit of lucerne, just a taste; his chaff and corn are in the manger all
ready.”
“Take him, Dick; but don’t stay in too long. It’s getting dark, and tea
will soon be ready.”
The boy sprang into the saddle, and, touching the old horse with his
bare heels, started off on a canter over the river meadow, now
comparatively cool in the growing twilight, towards a gravelly ford in
which the mountain water still ran strong and clear.
With a sigh of relief, his father walked slowly forward through the
garden gate and into the broad verandah of the cottage. Dropping
listlessly into a great Cingalese cane chair, he looked round with an
air of exhaustion and despondency. Below him was a well-grown orchard,
with rows of fruit trees, the size and spreading foliage of which showed
as well great age as the fertility of the soil. The murmuring sound of
the river over the rocky shallows was plainly audible. Dark-shadowed
eucalypti marked its winding course. As the wearied man lay motionless
on the couch, the night air from the meadow played freshly cool against
his temples. Stars arose of wondrous southern brilliancy. Dark blue and
cloudless, the sky was undimmed. Strange cries came from the woods. A
solemn hush fell over all things. It was an hour unspeakably calm and
solemn—restful to the spirit after the long, burdensome, heated day.
“Ah, me!” sighed he; “how many an evening I have enjoyed from this very
spot, at this self-same hour! Is it possible that we are to be driven
out even from this loved retreat?”
A sweet girlish voice suddenly awoke him from his reverie, as one of the
casement windows opened, and a slight, youthful figure stood at his
shoulder.
“No wonder you are ashamed, you mean old daddy! Here have mother and I
been exerting ourselves this hot afternoon to provide you with a
superior entertainment, quite a club dinner in its way; attired
ourselves, too, in the most attractive manner—look at me, for
instance—and what is our reward? Why, instead of going to dress
sensibly, you sit mooning here, and everything will be spoiled.”
“My darling! I am ready for my bath, I promise you; but I am tired, and
perhaps a little discouraged. I have had a long day, and seen nothing to
cheer me either.”
“Poor old father! So have we all; so has mother, so has Hubert, so have
I and Linda. But it’s no use giving in, is it? Now walk off, there’s a
dear! You’re not so very tired, unless your constitution has broken down
all of a sudden. It takes a good day to knock you up, that I know. But
we must all put a good face on it—mustn’t we?—till we’re _quite_ sure
that the battle’s lost. The Prussians may come up yet, you know!”
He drew the girl’s face over to his own, and kissed her fondly. Laura
Stamford was indeed a daughter that a father might proudly look upon,
that her mother might trust to be her best aid and comfort, loving in
prosperity, lightsome of heart as the bird that sings at dawn, brave in
adversity, and strong to suffer for those she loved.
All innocent she of the world’s hard ways, its lurid lights, its dread
shadows. Proud, pure, unselfish in every thought and feeling, all the
strength of her nature went out in fondness for those darlings of her
heart, the inmates of that cherished home, wherein they had never as yet
known sorrow. The fateful passion which makes or mars all womanhood was
for her as yet in the future. What prayers had ascended to Heaven that
her choice might be blessed, her happiness assured!
“This is the time for action, no more contemplation,” she said, with a
mock heroic air; “the shower bath is filled; your evening clothes are
ready in the dressing-room; mother is putting the last touch to her cap,
Andiamo!”
When the family met at the tea-table—a comprehensive meal which, though
not claiming the rank of dinner, furnished most of its requisites—Mr.
Stamford owned that life wore a brighter prospect.
His wife and daughters in tasteful, though not ostentatious, evening
attire would have graced a more brilliant entertainment. The boys, cool
and fresh after their swim in the river, were happy and cheerful.
Hubert, correctly attired, and much benefited by his bath and toilette,
had done justice to his manifest good looks.
The well-cooked, neatly served meal, with the aid of a few glasses of
sound Australian Reisling, was highly restorative. All these permissible
palliatives tended to recreate tone and allay nervous depression. “The
banker’s letter notwithstanding, things might not be so very bad,” the
squatter thought. He would go to town. He might make other arrangements.
It might even rain. If the worst came to the worst, he might be able to
change his account. If things altered for the better, there was no use
desponding. If, again, all were lost, it were better to confront fate
boldly.
* * * * *
“Shall I pull through, after all?” said Mr. Stamford to himself, for the
fiftieth time, as he looked over the morning papers at Batty’s Hotel,
about a week after the occurrences lately referred to. In a mechanical
way, his eyes and a subsection of his brain provided him with the
information that, in spite of his misfortunes, the progress of
Australian civilisation went on pretty much as usual. Floods in one
colony, fires in another. The Messageries steamer _Caledonien_ just in.
The _Carthage_ (P. and O.) just sailed with an aristocratic passenger
list. Burglars cleverly captured. Larrikins difficult of extinction. The
wheat crop fair, maize only so-so. These important items were registered
in the brooding man’s duplex-acting brain after a fashion. But in one
corner of that mysterious store-house, printing machine, signal-station,
whatnot, _one thought_ was steadily repeating itself with bell-like
regularity. “What if the bank’s ultimatum is, no further advance, no
further advance, no further ad—--”
After breakfast, sadly resolved, he wended his way to the palace of
finance, with the potentate of which he was to undergo so momentous an
interview.
Heart-sick and apprehensive as he was, he could not avoid noting with
quick appreciation the sights and sounds of civilisation which pressed
themselves on his senses as he walked in a leisurely manner towards the
Bank of New Guinea. “What wonders and miracles daily pass before one’s
eyes in a city,” he said to himself, “when one has been as long away
from town as I have! What a gallery of studies to a man, after a quiet
bush life, is comprised in the everyday life of a large city! What
processions of humanity—what light and colour! What models of art,
strength, industry! What endless romances in the faces of the very men
and women that pass and repass so ceaselessly! Strange and how wonderful
is all this! Glorious, too, the ocean breath that fans the pale faces of
the city dwellers! What would I not give for a month’s leisure and a
quiet heart in which to enjoy it all!”
The solemn chime of a turret clock struck ten. It aroused Stamford to a
sense of the beginning of the commercial day, and his urgent necessity
to face the enemy, whose outposts were so dangerously near his fortress.
The ponderously ornate outer door of the Bank of New Guinea had but just
swung open as he passed in, preceding but by a second a portly,
silk-coated personage, apparently equally anxious for an early
interview. He looked disappointed as he saw Stamford make his way to the
manager’s room.
For one moment he hesitated, then said: “If your business is not
important, sir, perhaps you won’t mind my going in first?”
“I’m sorry to say it _is_ important,” he replied, with his customary
frankness; “but I will promise you not to take up a minute more of Mr.
Merton’s valuable time than I can help.”
The capitalist bowed gravely as Harold Stamford passed into the fateful
reception-room, of which the very air seemed to him to be full of
impalpable tragedies.
The manager’s manner was pleasant and gentlemanlike. The weather, the
state of the country, and the political situation were glanced at
conversationally. There was no appearance of haste to approach the
purely financial topic which lay so near the thoughts of both. Then the
visitor took the initiative.
“I had your letter last week about my account, Mr. Merton. What is the
bank going to do in my case? I came down on purpose to see you.”
The banker’s face became grave. It was the crossing of swords, _en
garde_ as it were. And the financial duel began.
“I trust, Mr. Stamford, that we shall be able to make satisfactory
arrangements. You are an old constituent, and one in whom the bank has
reposed the fullest confidence; but,” here the banker pushed up his
hair, and his face assumed an altered expression, “the directors have
drawn my attention to the state of your account, and I feel called upon
to speak decidedly. It must be reduced.”
“But how am I to reduce it? You hold all my securities. It is idle to
talk thus; pardon me if I am a little brusque, but I must sell
Windāhgil—sell the old place, and clear out without a penny if I do not
get time—a few months of time—from the bank! You know as well as I do
that it is impossible to dispose of stations now at a reasonable price.
Why, you can hardly get the value of the sheep! Look at Wharton’s Bundah
Creek how it was given away the other day. Fifteen thousand good sheep,
run all fenced, good brick house, frontage to a navigable river. What
did it bring? Six and threepence a head. Six and threepence! With
everything given in, even to his furniture, poor devil! Why, the ewe
cost him twelve shillings, five years before. Sale! It was a murder, a
mockery! And is Windāhgil to go like that, after all my hard work? Am I
and my children to be turned out penniless because the bank refuses me
another year’s grace? The seasons are just as sure to change as we are
to have a new moon next month. I have always paid up the interest and
part of the principal regularly, have I not? I have lived upon so little
too! My poor wife and children for these last long years have been so
patient! Is there no mercy, not even ordinary consideration to be shown
me?”
“My dear Mr. Stamford,” said the manager kindly, “do not permit yourself
to be excited prematurely. Whatever happens you have my fullest
sympathy. If any one receives consideration from the bank, you will do
so. You have done everything that an energetic, honourable man could
have done. I wish I could say the same of all our constituents. But the
seasons have been against you, and you must understand that, although
personally I would run any fair mercantile risk for your sake, even to
the extent of straining my relations with the directors, I have not the
power; I must obey orders, and these are precise. If a certain policy is
decided upon by those who guide the affairs of this company, I must
simply carry out instructions. Yours is a hard case, a _very_ hard case;
but you are not alone, I can tell you in confidence.”
“Is there nothing I can do?” pleaded the ruined man, instinctively
beholding the last plank slipping from beneath his feet.
“Don’t give in yet,” said Merton kindly. “Get one of these newly-started
Mortgage and Agency Companies to take up your account. They have been
organised chiefly, I am informed, with a view to get a share of the
pastoral loan business, which is now assuming such gigantic proportions.
They are enabled to make easier terms than we can afford to do; though,
after all, this station pawn business is not legitimate banking. If you
have any friend who would join in the security it would, perhaps, smooth
the way.”
“I will try,” said Stamford, a ray of hope, slender but still definite,
illumining the darkness of his soul. “There may be a chance, and I thank
you, Mr. Merton, for the suggestion, and your wish to aid me. Good
morning!” He took his hat and passed through the waiting-room, somewhat
sternly regarded by the capitalist, who promptly arose as the inner door
opened. But Harold Stamford heeded him not, and threading the thronged
atrium, re-entered once more the city pageant, novel and attractive to
him in spite of his misery. To-day he mechanically took the seaward
direction, walking far and fast until he found himself among the smaller
shops and unmistakable “waterside characters” of Lower George Street.
Here he remembered that there were stone stairs at which, in his
boyhood’s days, he had so often watched the boats return or depart on
their tiny voyages. A low stone wall defended the street on that side,
while permitting a view of the buildings and operations of a wharf.
Beyond lay the harbour alive with sail and steam. In his face blew
freshly the salt odours of the deep, the murmuring voice of the sea wave
was in his ears, the magic of the ocean stole once more into his being.
In his youth he had delighted in boating, and many a day of careless,
unclouded joy could he recall, passed amid the very scenes and sounds
that now lay around him. Long, happy days spent in fishing when the fair
wind carried the boy sailors far away through the outer bays or even
through the grand portals where the sandstone pillars have borne the
fret of the South Pacific deep for uncounted centuries. The long beat
back against the wind, the joyous return, the pleasant evening, the
dreamless slumber. He remembered it all. What a heaven of bliss, had he
but known it; and what an inferno of debt, ruin, and despair seemed
yawning before him now!
He leaned over the old stone wall and watched mechanically the shadow of
a passing squall deepen the colour of the blue waters of the bay. After
a while, his spirits rose insensibly. He even took comfort from the fact
that after the sudden tempest had brooded ominously over the darkening
water, the clouds suddenly opened—the blue sky spread itself like an
azure mantle over the rejoicing firmament—the golden sun reappeared, and
Nature assumed the smile that is rarely far from her brow in the bright
lands of the South.
“I may have another chance yet,” Stamford said to himself. “Why should I
despair? Many a man now overladen with wealth has passed into a bank on
such an errand as mine, uncertain whether he should return (financially)
alive. Are not there Hobson, Walters, Adamson—ever so many others—who
have gone through that fiery trial? I must fight the battle to the end.
My Waterloo is not yet lost. ‘The Prussians may come up,’ as darling
Laura said.”
Although receiving the advice of Mr. Merton, whom he personally knew and
respected, mainly in good faith, he was sufficiently experienced in the
ways of the world to mingle distrust with his expectations. It was not
such an unknown thing with bankers to “shunt” a doubtful or unprofitable
constituent upon a less wary student of finance. Might it not be so in
this case? Or would not the manager of the agency company indicated
regard him in that light? How hard it was to decide! However, he would
try his fortune. He could do himself no more harm.
So he turned wearily from the dancing waters and the breezy bay, and
retracing his steps through the crowded thoroughfare, sought the
imposing freestone mansion in which were located the offices of the
Austral Agency Company.
“How these money-changing establishments house themselves!” he said.
“And we borrowers pay for it with our heart’s blood,” he added,
bitterly. “Here goes, however!”
He was not doomed on this occasion to any lingering preparatory torture,
for in that light he had come to regard all ante-chamber detentions. He
accepted it as a good omen that he was informed on sending in his card,
that Mr. Barrington Hope was disengaged, and would be found in his
private room.