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<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 54366 ***</div>
<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Colonial Reformer, Vol. III (of 3), by Rolf
Boldrewood</h1>
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<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54067/54067-h/54067-h.htm">Volume I</a>: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54067/54067-h/54067-h.htm<br />
<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55652/55652-h/55652-h.htm">Volume II</a>: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55652/55652-h/55652-h.htm
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<div class="transnote">
<p>Note: The table of contents has been added by the transcriber.</p>
</div>
<p class="toc">
<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV</a><br />
<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV</a><br />
<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI</a><br />
<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII</a><br />
<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII</a><br />
<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX</a><br />
<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX</a><br />
</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="half-title spaced">A COLONIAL REFORMER</p>
<div class="figcenter" >
<img src="images/i_002.jpg" alt="colophon" />
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<h1><small>A</small><br />
COLONIAL REFORMER</h1></div>
<p class="center"><small>BY</small><br />
ROLF BOLDREWOOD<br />
<span class="xs">AUTHOR OF ‘ROBBERY UNDER ARMS,’ ‘THE SQUATTER’S DREAM,’<br />
‘THE MINER’S RIGHT,’ ETC.</span></p>
<p class="center space-above"><i><small>IN THREE VOLUMES</small></i></p>
<p class="center space-below"><small>VOL. III</small></p>
<p class="center">London<br />
MACMILLAN AND CO.<br />
<small>AND NEW YORK</small><br />
1890</p>
<p class="center xs"><i>All rights reserved</i>
</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">1</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV</a></h2>
</div>
<p>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
<i>bien-venu</i> 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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">2</span>
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 <i>decides</i>. I go for the judge myself.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I camped on the river,’ said Mr. Levison, attacking
the corned beef in a deliberate but determined manner;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">3</span>
‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘A deal?’ said Ernest, with some surprise; ‘and how
did you get on? I shouldn’t have thought they had much
to sell.’</p>
<p>‘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.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">4</span></p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘Of course I made <i>that</i> 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.’</p>
<p>‘What did you give for the cattle?’ asked Ernest,
with melancholy interest.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘And does your friend propose to come and live here?’</p>
<p>‘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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">5</span>
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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Well, I don’t say but what it <i>might</i> 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?’</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">6</span>
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!’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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—</p>
<p>‘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 <i>then</i> he can wire in and haul out any man,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">7</span>
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?’</p>
<p>Mr. Levison’s illustrations were homely, but they had
a force and application which Ernest fully recognised.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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 <i>right thing at
the right time</i>. That’s where the hardship all lies. If
the thing’s right and the time’s wrong, <i>that’s</i> 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.‘</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">8</span>
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?’</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘I can never sufficiently thank you,’ he said; ‘but
where’s the money to come from? The station will
never pay it.’</p>
<p>‘That’s more than you can know,’ answered the
Changer of Destinies; ‘It’s more than I know, too. I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">9</span>
don’t mind telling you—as I said before—you’re not
likely to interfere much with any man’s profits. But
cattle are <i>going to rise</i>, 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.’</p>
<p>These last words he uttered with great solemnity, and
Mr. Neuchamp perceived that he was fully imbued with
faith in his own vaticinations.</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘Because the <i>yield of gold</i> 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!’</p>
<p>Here he produced from one of his capacious pockets a
much worn and closely printed Melbourne <i>Argus</i>, 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!’</p>
<p>‘Now,’ he continued, receiving the journal from
Ernest, and carefully refolding and returning it to its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">10</span>
place of safety, ‘do you see what all this gold breaking
out here and there and all about means?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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. <i>But they can’t import beef and mutton.</i>
No; not if meat rose to a shilling a pound. Live stock<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">11</span>
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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>But the <i>genius loci</i>, 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.</p>
<p>‘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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">12</span>
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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘Well, I don’t say Johnny would <i>steal</i> 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 <i>have</i> 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.’</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">13</span>
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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘He is <i>very</i> 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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Are you going to walk to Wood-duck Lagoon, sir?’
inquired Jack respectfully.</p>
<p>‘Yes, I am, and no great matter either,’ returned the
exceptionally wiry capitalist. ‘<i>I’m</i> 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.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">14</span></p>
<p>Here Mr. Windsor gave a leap off the ground, and cast
his cabbage-tree hat violently from his curly brown locks
in another direction.</p>
<p>‘Yes, I’ve bought ’em pretty right; they didn’t know
me, or they’d have stuck it on—bought ’em <i>for a friend</i>!
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.’</p>
<p>‘It would be for the first time; so they all used to
say at Boocalthra,’ answered Jack.</p>
<p>‘<i>You</i> were there, then?’ said Mr. Levison, bending
his extremely discriminating gaze upon the bronzed,
resolute face. ‘<i>Now</i> 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!’</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">15</span></p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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
<i>would</i> 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.</p>
<p>‘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
<i>worth twenty thousand pounds</i>! 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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Well, you’re not sold up yet, and won’t be if you’ll
be careful and take my advice and Paul Frankston’s.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">16</span>
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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">17</span>
refreshed and invigorated, free once more to turn his
brow erect and undaunted towards the Mecca of his
dreams.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">18</span>
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:</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="psig">
<span class="smcap">Neuchampstead</span>, <i>6th March 18—</i>.<br />
</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Dear Ernest</span>—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 <i>any one</i> 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.</p>
<p>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 <i>alone</i>
Neuchampstead is celebrated, that your experiment had full justice.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">19</span>
It is only the bourgeois who leaves the table before his ‘system’ is
fairly tried.—Good-bye, my dear brother. Yours sincerely,</p>
<p class="psig">
<span class="smcap">Courtenay Neuchamp</span>.<br />
</p>
<p><i>P.S.</i>—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.</p></blockquote>
<p>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 <i>here</i>, 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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">20</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Had his cousin, Miss Augusta Neuchamp, really sailed
and arrived in Sydney, as would appear? If so, where<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">21</span>
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.</p>
<p>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 <i>she</i> 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,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">22</span>
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.</p>
<p>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 <i>not</i> 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.</p>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">23</span>
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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>No such preparatory process was possible. A letter
arrived from the fair emigrant which left no doubt of her
immediate intentions. It ran thus:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><span class="smcap">Dear Cousin Ernest</span>—I have dared the perils of the deep,
not the least for your sake, but <i>me voici</i>. 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 <i>cafés</i> and shabby
Frenchmen playing at dominoes. I had no lady acquaintances.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">24</span>
There <i>are</i> 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,</p>
<p class="psig">
<span class="smcap">Augusta Neuchamp</span>.<br />
</p></blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘What is it, Piambook?’ at length demanded Ernest,
so decidedly, almost fiercely, that his sable retainer
capitulated.</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘Well, what did you see?’ pursued his master. ‘You
can yabber fast enough when you like.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Well, what then? the coach broke down; that’s not
wonderful—passengers walked, I suppose.’</p>
<p>‘Me seeum that one white-fellow gin,’ quoth Piambook,
in a low, mysterious voice. Then, bursting into<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">25</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘Anybody in the coach, Piambook?’</p>
<p>‘One fellow Chinaman,’ returned the messenger, with
cool indifference.</p>
<p>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 <i>vis-à-vis</i>. 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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">26</span>
pace from that of Mr. Parklands, when he rattled up
Ernest to the Rainbar door, on the occasion of their first
memorable drive.</p>
<p>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 <i>impatience</i>, 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.</p>
<p>When Mr. Neuchamp rumbled up in his useful but
not imposing vehicle, a slight shade of satisfaction overspread
her features.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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
<i>whatever</i> induced you to come up into this wild place
without writing to me first? Have you not suffered all
kinds of hardship and disagreeables?’</p>
<p>‘Well, perhaps a few; but I knew all about the
country from some books I read on the voyage out. I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">27</span>
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.’</p>
<p>‘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.‘</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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——’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Oh, but she did not wish to say anything really
disparaging of you, only that you were not of sufficiently<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">28</span>
coarse material to win success in farming, or trade, or
politics.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘And the people?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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 <i>comme il faut</i>, 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 <i>he</i> accomplished? Had he not been
in scores of instances self-convicted of the most egregious<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">29</span>
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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Lives there the man, with soul so dead,’ who doesn’t
mind hearing his horses run down?</p>
<p>‘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
<i>Pickwick</i>; and I can’t afford to buy corn at a pound a
bushel.’</p>
<p>‘I forgot about the horse in <i>Pickwick</i>,’ 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
<i>Pickwick</i> and <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, <i>Charles O’Malley</i> and <i>The
Knight of Gwynne</i>. ‘But surely more neatness in
harness and turn-out might be managed,’ and she looked
at the dusty American harness and rusty bits.</p>
<p>‘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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">30</span>
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.’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘But does he not speak the truth?’ inquired the
literal Augusta; ‘or is it not considered necessary in a
colony?’</p>
<p>‘Of course he <i>intends</i> 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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">31</span>
unconsciously takes a gloomy, depreciatory view of matters
in general, which I, and perhaps others, think untrue
and misleading.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Stuff!’ said Miss Augusta. ‘Then you would have
written to prevent me coming at all. I was determined
to see how you were <i>really</i> getting on, and I never
allow trifling discomforts to stand in the way of my
resolves.’</p>
<p>‘I am aware of <i>that</i>, 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.’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘I have a village on the run, I am sorry to say; but
though we are at feud with the villagers, I did attempt<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">32</span>
to procure you a handmaid, and I will see what has been
done.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Now that we have said the worst of her, it must be
admitted that her figure was very good, well developed,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">33</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">34</span>
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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">35</span>
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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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!’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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 <i>look</i> awfully good sometimes, Tottie, you
know.‘</p>
<p>‘Oh, nonsense, Mr. Banks,’ said the nut-brown maid,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">36</span>
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?’</p>
<p>‘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 <i>can</i> cook.’</p>
<p>‘I wonder if it will be very dull—but it won’t be
for long, will it, Mr. Banks?’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>As they approached the Rainbar homestead Tottie
slackened this aggravating pace (which resembles what<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">37</span>
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 <i>very</i> grand lady, indeed,
Mr. Banks?’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘I saw Mrs. Jones, of Yamboola, down the country,’
said Tottie doubtfully. ‘Father sent me up one day
with some fresh butter.’</p>
<p>‘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 <i>great-grandmother</i>
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.’</p>
<p>‘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!’</p>
<p>‘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.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">38</span></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">39</span></p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Is she to join us at table?’ inquired Miss
Neuchamp, with the same fixed air of indifference. ‘Of
course I only ask for information.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Why not?’ demanded Miss Augusta.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Very peculiar household arrangements,’ said Miss
Neuchamp, ‘but I suppose I shall comprehend in time.’</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">40</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV</a></h2>
</div>
<p>Having communicated this sentiment in a tone which
did not conduce to the lighter graces of conversation,
Miss Neuchamp resumed her reading. Silence, the
ominous oppressive silence of those who do not wish to
speak, reigned unbroken for a while.</p>
<p>At length, lifting her head as if the thought had
suddenly struck her, she said, ‘I cannot think why you
did not buy a station nearer to town, where you might
have lived in a comparatively civilised way.’</p>
<p>‘For the very sufficient reasons that there is never so
much money to be made at comfortable, highly improved
stations, and the areas of land are invariably smaller.’</p>
<p>‘Then you have come to regard money as everything?
Is this the end of the burning philanthropy, and all that
sort of thing?’</p>
<p>‘You are too quick in your conclusions, my dear
Augusta,’ replied Mr. Neuchamp, somewhat hurt. ‘It is
necessary, I find, to make some money to ensure the
needful independence of position without which philanthropical
or other projects can scarcely be carried
out.’</p>
<p>‘I daresay you will end in becoming a mere colonist,
and marrying a colonial girl, after all your fine ideas. I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">41</span>
suppose there are some a shade more refined than this
one.’</p>
<p>Mr. Neuchamp stood aghast—words failed him.
Augusta went on quietly reading her book. She failed
to perceive the avalanche which was gathering above her
head.</p>
<p>‘My dear Augusta,’ he said at length, with studied
calmness, ‘it is time that some of your misconceptions
should be cleared away. Let me recall to you that you
were only a few days in a hotel in Sydney before you
started on your journey to this distant and comparatively
rude district. If you had acted reasonably, and remained
in Sydney to take advantage of introductions to my
friends, you would have had some means of making
comparisons after seeing Australian ladies. But with
your present total ignorance of the premises, I wonder
that a well-educated woman should be so illogical as to
state a conclusion.’</p>
<p>‘Well, perhaps I am a little premature,’ conceded
Miss Augusta, whose temper was much under command.
‘I suppose there is a wonderful young lady at the back
of all this indignation. Mr. Croker said as much. I
must wait and make her acquaintance. I wish you all
sorts of happiness, Ernest. Now I must go and look
after the <i>other</i> young lady.’</p>
<p>When Miss Neuchamp returned to the dining-room
she perceived that the damsel whose social status was so
difficult to define had finished her mid-day meal, and
had also completed the clearing off and washing up of
the various articles of the service. She had discovered
for herself the small room used as a pantry, had ferreted
out the requisite cloths and towels, and procured hot
water from the irascible Johnny. She had extemporised<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">42</span>
a table in the passage, and was just placing the last of
the articles on their allotted shelves with much deftness
and celerity, when Miss Neuchamp entered. Her riding-skirt
lay on a chair, and she had donned a neat print
frock, which she had brought strapped to the saddle.</p>
<p>‘I was coming to give you instructions,’ said Miss
Neuchamp, ‘but I see you have anticipated me by doing
everything which I should have asked you to do, and
very nicely too. What is your name?’</p>
<p>‘Mary Anne Freeman,’ said Tottie demurely.</p>
<p>‘I thought I heard Mr. Neuchamp address you by
some other Christian name,’ said Miss Neuchamp, with
slight severity of aspect.</p>
<p>‘Oh, Tottie,’ said the girl carelessly; ‘every one calls
me Tottie, or Tot; suppose it’s for shortness.’</p>
<p>‘I shall call you Mary Anne,’ said Miss Neuchamp
with quiet decision; ‘and now, Mary Anne, are you
accustomed to the use of the needle? do you like
sewing?’</p>
<p>‘Well, I don’t <i>like</i> it,’ she replied ingenuously, ‘but of
course I can sew a little; we have to make our own
frocks and the children’s things at home.’</p>
<p>‘Very proper and necessary,’ affirmed Augusta; ‘if
we can get the material I will superintend your making
a couple of dresses for yourself, which perhaps you will
think an improvement in pattern on the one you wear.’</p>
<p>‘Oh, I should <i>so</i> like to have a new pattern,’ said
Tottie, with feminine satisfaction. ‘There’s plenty of nice
prints in the store; I’ll speak to Mr. Banks about it,
mem.’</p>
<p>‘I will arrange that part of it,’ said Miss Neuchamp.
‘In the meanwhile I’ll point out your bedroom, which
you can put in order as well as mine for the night.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">43</span></p>
<p>After the first day or two Miss Neuchamp, though
occasionally shocked at the Australian girl’s ignorance of
that portion of the Church Catechism which exhorts
people to behave ‘lowly and reverently to all their
betters,’ was pleased with the intelligence and artless
good-humour of her attendant. She was sufficiently
acute to discriminate between the genuine respect which
the girl exhibited to her, ‘a real lady,’ and the mere lip
service and servility too often yielded by the English
poor, from direct compulsion of grinding poverty and
sore need. She discovered that Tottie was quick and
teachable in the matter of needlework, so that, having
been stimulated by the alluring expectation of ‘patterns,’
she worked readily and creditably.</p>
<p>For a few days Miss Neuchamp managed to employ
and interest herself not altogether unpleasantly. Ernest,
of course, betook himself off to some manner of station
work immediately after breakfast, returning, if possible,
to lunch. This interval Miss Neuchamp filled up in
great measure by means of her correspondence, which was
voluminous and various of direction, ranging from her
Aunt Ermengarde, a conscientious but ruthless conservative,
to philosophical acquaintances whom she had met
in her travels, and who, like her, had much ado to fill
up those leisure hours of which their lives were chiefly
composed. This portion of the day also witnessed Tottie’s
most arduous labours, to which she addressed herself
with great zeal and got through her work, as she termed
it, so as to attire herself becomingly and wait at table.</p>
<p>In the afternoon Ernest went out for walking excursions
to such points of interest, neither many nor picturesque,
as the neighbourhood supplied. There was a
certain ‘bend’ or curving reach of the river where, from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">44</span>
a lofty bluff, the red walls of which the rushing tide
had channelled for ages, a striking and uncommon view
was obtained. The vast plain, here diversified by the
giant eucalypti which fringed the winding watercourse,
stretched limitless to the horizon. But all was apparently
barren from Dan to Beersheba. The reed-beds
were trampled and eaten down to the last cane. The
soft rich alluvium in which they grew was cracked, yet
hard as a brickfield. How different from the swaying
emerald billows with feathered tasselled crests which
other summers had seen there! Something of this sort
had Ernest endeavoured to explain to Miss Neuchamp
when she spoke disrespectfully of the trodden cloddy
waste, contrasting it scornfully with the velvet meads
which bordered English rivers. But Augusta, defective
in imagination, never believed in anything she did not
see. Therefore a reed-bed appeared to her mental
vision till the day of her death always as a species of
abnormal dismal swamp, lacking the traditional element
of moisture.</p>
<p>Other explorations were made in the cool hours of
the evening, but gradually Miss Neuchamp tired of the
monotonous aspect of matters. The dusty tracts were
not pleasant to her feet. The mosquitoes assailed her
with savage virulence, whether she walked at sunrise,
mid-day, or darkening eve. If she sat down on the
river bank and watched the shallow but still pure and
gleaming waters, ants of every conceivable degree of
curiosity or ferocity discomposed her. There was no
rest, no variety, no beauty, no ‘proper’ wood, valley,
mountain, or brook. She could not imagine human
beings living constantly in such a hateful wilderness. If
Ernest had not all his life, and now most of all, developed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">45</span>
a talent for useless and incomprehensible self-sacrifice, he
would abandon such a spot for ever.</p>
<p>Mr. Neuchamp felt himself pressed to his last entrenchments
to defend his position; Fate seemed to have
arrived personally, masked, not for the first time in man’s
strange story, in the guise of a woman. That woman,
too, his persistent, inexorable cousin Augusta. ‘The
stars in their courses fought against Sisera.’ The heavens,—dead
to the dumb, imploring looks of the great armies
of perishing brutes, to the prayers of ruined men; the
earth, with withered herb and drying streamlet gasping
and faint, breathless, under the burning noon and the
pitiless dry moon rays,—alike conspired against
him!</p>
<p>And now his cousin, who, with all her faults and
defects, was stanchly devoted to her kindred and what
she believed to be their welfare, came here to madden
him with recollections of the wonderland of his birth,
and to fill him with ignoble longings to purchase
present relief by the ruinous sacrifice of purpose and
principle.</p>
<p>‘I don’t know,’ he said, at the end of a closely contested
argument, ‘whether all women are incapable of
comprehending the adherence to a fixed purpose, to the
unquestioned end and climax. But you must forgive
me, my dear Augusta, for saying that you appear to me
to be in the position of a passenger who urges the captain
of a vessel to alter his course because the gale is wild
and the waves rough. Suppose you had made a suggestion
to the captain of the <i>Rohilla</i>, in which noble steamer
you made your memorable voyage to these hapless isles.
The officers of the great company are polished gentlemen
as well as seamen of the first order, but I am afraid<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">46</span>
Gordon Anderson would have been more curt than
explanatory on <i>that</i> occasion.’</p>
<p>‘And you are like the man in Sinbad the Sailor, as
you like marine similes,’ retorted Augusta; ‘you will see
your vessel gradually drawn toward the loadstone island
till all the nails and rivets fly out by attraction of ruin,
and you will sink in the waters of oblivion, unhonoured
and unsung.’</p>
<p>‘But not “unloved,” I trust,‘ rejoined Ernest; ‘don’t
think that matters, even in Australia, will be quite so
bad as that. By the way, let me congratulate you upon
your facility of quotation. Your memory must have
improved amazingly of late.’</p>
<p>This unfair taunt closed the conversation abruptly.
But like some squabbles between very near and dear
friends, there was a tacit agreement not to refer to it.
Subsequently all went on as usual.</p>
<p>Miss Neuchamp was a very fair horsewoman, having
hunted without coming very signally to grief, by dint of
a wonderfully broken hunter, who was first cousin to a
rocking-horse—after this wise: he would on no account
run away; he was easy, he was safe; you could not
throw him down over any species of leap,—hedge, ditch,
brook, or bulfinch. It was all alike to Negotiator.
After a couple of seasons and the aid of this accomplished
palfrey, Miss Neuchamp, with some reason, came to the
conclusion that she could ride fairly well. So, having
broached the idea at breakfast one morning, Ernest joyfully
suggested Osmund as the type of ease and elegance,
and of such a nerve that an organ and monkey might,
were the consideration sufficient, be placed on his short
back to-morrow without risk of casualty.</p>
<p>Miss Neuchamp thought that she should like to ride<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">47</span>
down and visit the Freeman encampment, when Tottie,
who would of course attend her, might have the opportunity
of seeing her mother and other kinsfolk.</p>
<p>The side-saddle was the next difficulty; but Tottie
proffered hers at once, saying that she could ride in a
man’s saddle, which she could borrow from Mr. Banks.</p>
<p>‘But you cannot ride in a man’s saddle, Mary Anne;
at any rate with me,’ said Miss Neuchamp decisively,
while a maidenly blush overspread her features.</p>
<p>‘Why not?’ inquired Tottie, with much surprise.
‘I can ride in one just as well as the other. You have
only to throw the off-side stirrup over the pommel, sit
square and straight, and there you are. You didn’t think
I was going to ride boy-fashion, did you?’</p>
<p>‘I was not sure,’ conceded Miss Neuchamp. However,
your explanation has satisfied me. If you like, we
will ride down to your father’s place this afternoon.‘</p>
<p>So Osmund being brought round, and Tottie’s side-saddle
upon him placed, that temperate charger walked
off with Miss Neuchamp as if he had carried a ‘pretty
horsebreaker’ up Rotten Row before the eyes of an
envious aristocracy, while Tottie disposed herself upon a
station saddle and ambled off so erect and free of seat
that few could have known that she was crutchless and
self-balanced. Mr. Windsor followed at a respectful
distance, in case of any <i>contretemps</i> requiring a groom’s
assistance.</p>
<p>Miss Neuchamp was perhaps never more favourably
impressed with the South Land, in which she was
sojourning, than when she felt herself borne along by
Osmund, a hackney of rare excellence—free, elastic, safe,
fast, easy! How many horses of whom so much can be
said does one come across in a lifetime?<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">48</span></p>
<p>‘This seems to be an exceedingly nice horse of my
cousin’s,’ said she to Tottie. ‘I had no idea that such
riding horses could be found in the interior. He must
have been very carefully trained.’</p>
<p>‘He’s a plum, that’s what he is!’ affirmed Tottie with
decision. ‘He’s the best horse in these parts, by long
chalks. Mr. Neuchamp let me have a spirt on him one
day. My word! didn’t I put him along?’</p>
<p>‘I am surprised that he should have let you ride him,’
replied Miss Neuchamp with dignity; ‘but my cousin is
very eccentric, and does not, in my opinion, always keep
his proper position.’</p>
<p>‘I don’t know about his proper position,’ said Tottie
with great spirit, ‘but before our people had the row
with him—and that was Uncle Joe’s fault—there was
no one within fifty mile of Rainbar that wouldn’t have
gone on their knees to serve Mr. Neuchamp. <i>As a
gentleman he can’t be beat</i>; and many a one besides me
thinks that.’</p>
<p>‘Oh well, if you have that sort of respectful feeling
towards my cousin, Mary Anne, I have nothing to say,’
said Miss Augusta. ‘No one can possibly have better
intentions, and I am glad to see them so well appreciated,
even in the bush. Suppose we canter.’</p>
<p>She drew the curb rein as she spoke, and Osmund
sailed off at a long, bounding, deerlike canter over the
smooth dusty track, which convinced Miss Neuchamp
that she had not left all the good horses in England.
The scant provender had impaired his personal appearance,
but had not deprived him of that courage which
he would retain as long as he possessed strength to stand
on his legs.</p>
<p>‘I have not enjoyed a ride like this for many a day,’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">40</span>
she said with unusual heartiness. ‘This is a very comfortable
saddle of yours, though I miss the third pommel.
How do you manage, Mary Anne, to ride so squarely and
easily upon that uncomfortable saddle?’</p>
<p>‘I’ve ridden many a mile without a saddle at all—that
is, with nothing but an old gunny-bag to sit on,’
said Tottie, ‘and jumped over logs too. Of course I was
a kid then.’</p>
<p>‘A what?’ said Miss Neuchamp anxiously.</p>
<p>‘Oh, a little child,’ explained Tottie. ‘I often used
to go out at daylight to fetch in the cows and the working
bullocks when we lived down the country. Bitter
cold it was, too, in the winter; such hard frosts.’</p>
<p>‘Frosts?’ asked Miss Augusta. ‘Do you ever have
frosts? Why, I supposed they were unknown here.’</p>
<p>‘You don’t suppose the whole country is like this,
miss?’ said Tottie. ‘Why, near the mountains there’s
snow and ice, and it rains every winter, and the floods
are enough to drownd you.’</p>
<p>‘Are there floods too? It does not look as if they
could ever come.’</p>
<p>‘Do you see that hut, miss? That’s our place. I
heard Piambook, the black boy, tell father it would be
swep’ away some day. Father laughed at him.‘</p>
<p>Here they arrived at the abode of Freeman <i>père</i>, at
which Miss Neuchamp gazed with much curiosity.</p>
<p>In the language of architecture, the construction had
been but little decorated. A plain and roughly-built
abode, composed of round saplings nailed vertically to
the wall-plate, and plastered insufficiently with mud.
The roof was thatched with reeds, put on in a very ineffectual
and chance-medley manner. The hut or cottage
contained two large and three small rooms. There was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">50</span>
no garden whatever, or any attempt at the cultivation of
the baked and hopelessly-looking clay soil. Close to the
side of the house was a stockyard, comprising the ‘gallows’
of the colonists, a rough, rude contrivance, consisting of
two uprights and a crosspiece, for elevating slaughtered
cattle. Upon this structure was at present hanging the
carcass of a fine six-months-old calf. No other enclosure
was visible, the only attempt at the preservation of neatness
being the sweeping of the earth immediately around
the front and back doors.</p>
<p>Tottie immediately clattered up to the hut door, the
black mare putting her head so far in that she obstructed
the egress of a middle-aged woman, who made haste to
come forth and receive the guests.</p>
<p>‘Mother,’ said the girl, ‘here’s Miss Neuchamp come
to see you; bring a chair for her to get off by.’</p>
<p>This article of furniture having been supplied, Augusta
was fain to descend upon it with as much dignity as she
could manage, not being confident of her ability to drop
down, like the agile Tottie, from a tallish horse, as was
Osmund. Tottie, having given the horses in charge of a
small brown-faced brother, who spent his whole time in
considering Osmund, and apparently learning him by heart,
welcomed Miss Neuchamp into her home. That young
lady found herself for the first time under the roof of an
Australian free-selector, and felt that she had acquired a
new experience.</p>
<p>‘Come in, miss; I’m very glad to see you, I’m sure;
please to sit down,’ was the salutation Augusta received,
in tones that spoke a hearty welcome, in very pure unaccented
English.</p>
<p>Miss Neuchamp selected the most ‘reliable’ looking
of the wooden-seated American chairs, and depositing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">51</span>
herself thereon, looked around. The dwelling was, she
thought, more prepossessing than the outside had led her
to imagine. Though everything was plain to ugliness,
there was yet nothing squalid or repulsive. All things
were very clean. The room in which they sat was
evidently only used as a parlour or ‘living room.’ It
was fairly large and commodious. The earthen floor was
hard, even, and well swept. A large table occupied the
centre. The fireplace was wide and capacious, the mantelpiece
so high that it was not easy to reach. There was
a wooden sofa covered with faded chintz, and an American
clock. Half a dozen cheap chairs, a shelf well filled with
indifferently bound books, a few unframed woodcuts hung
upon the walls, made up the furniture and ornamentation.
Opening from this apartment laterally was evidently a
bedroom. At the back a skilling, a lower roofed portion
of the building, contained several smaller rooms. A
detached two-roomed building, in what would have been
the back-yard had any enclosure been made, was probably
the kitchen and laundry.</p>
<p>Mrs. Freeman insisted upon putting down the kettle
to boil, in order that she might make a cup of tea for
her distinguished visitor, evidently under the opinion
that every one naturally desired to drink tea whenever
they could get it.</p>
<p>‘And how have you been behaving yourself, Tottie?’
said she, addressing her daughter, as a convenient mode
of opening the conversation. ‘I hope and trust you’ve
been a help to Miss Neuchamp. Has she, miss?’</p>
<p>‘Oh, certainly,’ answered Augusta; ‘Mary Anne has
been a very good girl indeed. I don’t know how I should get
on without her. And I have borrowed her side-saddle too.
How long will it be before Mr. Freeman comes home?’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">52</span></p>
<p>‘Oh, he won’t be home much before dark. He’s
always out on the run all day long. He hates coming in
before the day is done.’</p>
<p>‘Why is that, Mrs. Freeman?’</p>
<p>‘“Because,” he says, “what can a man do after his
day’s work but sit down and twirl his thumbs.” He
haven’t got any garden here to fiddle about in, and he
can’t sit still and smoke, like some people.‘</p>
<p>‘But why don’t you have a garden?’ promptly inquired
Augusta. ‘I suppose there’s no reason why you
shouldn’t have one?’</p>
<p>‘You see, miss,’ said Mrs. Freeman, casting about for
a mode of explaining to her young lady visitor that she
didn’t know what she was talking about, ‘the ground
ain’t very good just here; and though it’s so dry and
baked just now, they say the floods come all over it;
and perhaps we mightn’t be here altogether that long.
And Freeman, he’s had a deal of trouble with the stock
lately. I don’t say but what a garden would look pretty
enough; but who’s to work in it? It ain’t like our
place down the country. There we had a garden—lots
of peaches and grapes, and more plums, apples, and quinces
than we could use and give away, besides early potatoes
and all kinds of vegetables.’</p>
<p>‘I suppose you regretted leaving such a home,’ said
Miss Neuchamp, rather impressed by the hothouse profusion
of the fruits mentioned.</p>
<p>‘Well, I’d rather live there on a pound a week,’ said
Mrs. Freeman, ‘than here on riches. Freeman thought
the stock would make up for all, but I didn’t, and I’m
always sorry for the day we ever left the old farm.’</p>
<p>As the good woman spoke the tears stood in her eyes,
and Miss Neuchamp much marvelled that any spot in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">53</span>
the desolate region of Australia should have power to
attract the affection even of hard-worked, unrelieved Mrs.
Freeman.</p>
<p>‘Mother’s always fretting about that old place at
Bowning,’ said Tottie. ‘I don’t believe it was any great
things either. It was a deal colder than this, and we
had lots of milk and butter always; but bread and butter’s
not worth caring about.’</p>
<p>‘You don’t recollect it, Tottie,’ said her mother, ‘or
you would not talk in that way. Don’t you remember
going into the garden to pick the peaches? How cool
and shady it was in the mornings, to be sure, without
scores of mosquitoes to sting and eat us up! Then there
was always grass enough for the cows, and we had plenty
of milk and butter and cheese, except, perhaps, in the
dead of winter. It was better for all of us in other
ways too, and that’s more.’</p>
<p>‘I don’t see that, mother,’ said Tottie.</p>
<p>‘But I do,’ said Mrs. Freeman, ‘and more than me
knows it. There’s your father isn’t the same man, without
his regular work at the farm, and the carrying and
the other jobs, that used to fill up his time from daylight
to dark. Now he’s nothing but the cattle to look after;
and such weather as this there’s nothing to do from
month’s end to month’s end, unless to pull them out of
the waterholes. And I <i>know</i> he had a “burst” at that
wretched <i>Stockman’s Arms</i> the last time he was down
the river. He that was that sober before you could not
tell him from a Son of Temperance.‘</p>
<p>‘I feel sorry that you should have so much reason to
complain of your lot,’ said Miss Neuchamp. ‘The poor,
I am aware, are never contented, at least none that I
ever saw in England. Yet it seems a pity, indeed, that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">54</span>
want of patience and trust in Providence should have led
to your moving to this unsuitable and, I am afraid, ill-fated
locality.’</p>
<p>‘We’re not altogether so poor, miss,’ said the worthy
matron, recovering herself. ‘Abe will have over five
hundred pounds in the bank when he’s delivered up the
land and the stock to this Mr. Levison, that’s bought
us all out. But what’s a little money, one way or the
other, if your life’s miserable, and your husband takes to
idle ways and worse, and your children grow up duffers
and planters, and perhaps end in sticking up people?’</p>
<p>‘Oh, mother, shut up!’ ejaculated Tottie, with more
kindliness in her tone than the words would have indicated.
‘Things won’t be as had as that. Don’t I teach
Poll and Sally and Ned and Billy? Besides, what does
Miss Neuchamp know about duffing and sticking up?
We’ll be all right when we clear out next year, and you
can go back to Bowning and buy Book’s farm, and set
father splitting stringy-bark rails for the rest of his life,
if that’s what keeps him good. I expect the tea is
ready. Won’t you give Miss Neuchamp a cup?’</p>
<p>Mrs. Freeman made haste to fill up a cup of tea, and
a small jug of milk being produced, Miss Augusta found
herself in possession of the best cup of tea she had tasted
at Rainbar. She felt a sincere compassion for her hostess
as a woman of properly submissive turn of mind, who
had sense enough to regret her improper and irreligious
departure from the lowly state in which Providence had
placed her.</p>
<p>Promising to call again, and comforting the low-spirited
matron as far as in her lay, she remounted
Osmund with some difficulty by means of the chair,
and rode homewards, followed by Mr. Windsor, who had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">55</span>
solaced his leisure by extracting from the younger girls,
whom he had descried fishing, the latest news of the
cattle operations of the family generally.</p>
<p>‘Your mother seems to be very much of my opinion,
Mary Anne,’ said Miss Augusta as soon as they were
fairly on the sandy home-station track, ‘that this is a
most undesirable place to live in.’</p>
<p>‘Mother’s as good a woman as ever was,’ said Tottie,
‘but she don’t “savey.” She’s always fretting about
our old farm; and it certainly was cooler—that’s about
all the pull there was in it. Father’s made more money
here in two or three years than he’d have got together
in twenty there. I should have been hoeing corn all
day with a pair of thick boots on, and grown up as wild
as a scrub filly. I don’t want to go back.‘</p>
<p>‘Your mother seems a person of excellent sense,
Mary Anne, and I must say that I <i>fully agree with her</i>,’
said Miss Neuchamp, with her most unbending expression,
designed to modify her attendant’s lightness of tone.
‘Depend upon it, unhappiness and misfortune invariably
follow the attempt to quit an allotted station in life.’</p>
<p>‘Oh, that be hanged for a yarn! Oh, I beg your
pardon, miss,’ said Tottie confusedly, for she was on the
point of relapsing into the Rainbar vernacular. ‘But
surely every one ain’t bound to stop where they’re planted,
good soil or bad, water or no water, like a corn-seed in a
cow track or a pumpkin in a tree stump! Men and
women have it in ’em to forage about a bit, else how do
some people get on so wonderfully. I’ve read about self-help,
and all that, and heaps of people beginning with
half-a-crown and making fortunes. Ought they to have
thrown the half-crown away or the fortune after they
had made it?’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">56</span></p>
<p>‘No doubt some people are apparently favoured,’ said
Miss Augusta, regarding Tottie’s argument as another
result of the over-education of ‘these sort of persons.’
‘In the end it is often the worst thing that can befall
them. Now let us canter.‘</p>
<p>When Augusta Neuchamp had remained for a fortnight
at Rainbar she began to perceive that the monotonous
existence likely to be unreasonably prolonged
would serve no object either of pleasure or profit. No
amount of residence would teach her an iota more of the
nature of such an establishment as Rainbar than she
knew already. What was there to learn? The plains
within sight of the cottage needed but to be indefinitely
multiplied; and what then? An area of country equally
arid, barren, unspeakably desolate. Other droves and
herds of cattle equally emaciated. Nothing possibly
could be in her eyes more hopeless and horrible than
these endless death-stricken, famine-haunted wastes.
Why did Ernest stay here? She had tried her utmost
to induce him to abandon the whole miserable delusion,
quoting the arguments of Mr. Jermyn Croker until he
spoke angrily about that gentleman and closed the
debate.</p>
<p>The obvious thing to do was to return to Sydney, but
even this comparatively simple step was difficult to carry
out. Miss Neuchamp did not desire again to tempt the
perils of the road unattended. She had taken it for
granted that Ernest, the most complying and good-natured
of men ordinarily, would return to Sydney with
her; and she had trusted to the influence of civilisation
and her steady persuasion to prevail upon him to return
to England to his friends, and to what she deemed to be
his fixed and unalterable position in life.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">57</span></p>
<p>On this occasion she met with unexpected opposition.
Ernest positively declined to quit his station at present.</p>
<p>‘My dear Augusta,’ said he, ‘you do not know what
you are asking. I have a number of very important
duties to perform here. My financial state is an extremely
critical one. I cannot with any decency appear
in Sydney when everything points to the ruin of myself
and my whole order. I am sincerely sorry that you
should feel life here to be so extremely <i>ennuyant</i>, but I
should never, if consulted, have advised you to come;
and now I am afraid you must wait until a proper escort
turns up or until I can accompany you.’</p>
<p>‘And when will that be?’</p>
<p>‘When the rain comes, certainly not before.’</p>
<p>Miss Augusta said that this last contingency was as
probable as the near advent of the millennium. She
would wait a given time, and, that expired, would go
down to Sydney as she had come up by herself.</p>
<p>A fortnight, even three weeks, passed away. Augusta
had mentioned a month as the outside limit of her forbearance.
She read over and over ‘Mariana in the
Moated Grange’ and ‘Mariana in the South’ with quite
a new appreciation of their peculiar accuracy as well as
poetic sentiment.</p>
<p>Daily she worked and read, and walked and rode, and
alternately was hopeful or otherwise about the ultimate
conversion of Tottie to the true faith of proper English
village lowliness and reverence. Daily Ernest went forth
‘out on the run’ immediately after breakfast, reappearing
only at or after sunset. Insensibly Miss Neuchamp became
alarmed to find creeping over her a kind of provincial
interest in the affairs of the ‘burghers of this
desert city.’ She listened almost with excitement to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">58</span>
account of a lot of the new cattle having been followed
twenty miles over the boundary and recovered by Charley
Banks. She heard of a bushranger being captured about
fifty miles off—this was Jack Windsor’s story; of the
mail coming in twelve hours late in consequence of the
horses being exhausted. Ernest gathered this from the
overseer of the last lot of travelling sheep that passed
through, having been locked up in Wargan Gaol for disobeying
a summons. ‘Such a handsome young fellow,
miss.’ This was Tottie’s contribution.</p>
<p>What with the reading, the sewing, the teaching of
Tottie, the daily cousinly walks and talks, the hitherto
uncompromising Augusta became partially converted to
station life, and finally admitted in conversation with
Ernest that, other things being equal, she <i>could</i> imagine a
woman enduring such privation for a few years, always
assuming that she had the companionship of the one man
to whom alone she could freely devote every waking
thought, every pulsation of the heart.</p>
<p>‘Do you think there’s any man born, miss,’ inquired
Tottie, who was laying the cloth for dinner, but who
stopped deliberately and listened with qualified approval
to the sentence with which Miss Neuchamp concluded
her statement—‘any man born—except in a book—like
that? I don’t. They most of ’em seem to me to take it
very easy, smoking and riding about, and drinking at odd
times. It’s the women that all the real pull comes on.’</p>
<p>‘I was not addressing myself to you, Mary Anne,’ replied
Miss Augusta with dignity; ‘I was speaking to
Mr. Neuchamp only. I should hardly think your experience
entitled you to offer an opinion.’</p>
<p>‘H—m,’ said Tottie, proceeding with the plates.
‘I’m young, and I suppose I don’t know much. But I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">59</span>
hear what’s going on. Don’t you think I’d better go
down to Sydney, to take care of you on the road, miss, in
case there’s a Chinaman to knock over? I think I could
do that, if I was drove to it.’</p>
<p>On the next day an unusual occurrence took place in
that land where events and novelties seemed to have
perished like the grass, under the slow calcining of the
deadly season—a dray arrived from town.</p>
<p>Miss Neuchamp, in her sore need of change and occupation,
could have cheerfully witnessed the unpacking of
ordinary station stores, in which, as usual, a little drapery
would be comprised. But here again disappointment. It
was merely a load of flour.</p>
<p>Depressed and discouraged, Miss Neuchamp had condescended
to watch the unloading of the unromantic
freight, deriving a faint interest in noting with what
apparent ease Jack Windsor and Charley Banks placed
the heavy bags upon their shoulders and deposited them
in the store.</p>
<p>Rarely was Miss Augusta so lowered in spirit as not
to be able to talk. On this occasion she had informed
Tottie, with some relish, that English country girls were
much ruddier and more healthy looking, as well as, she
doubted not, stronger and more capable of endurance, than
those born in Australia could possibly be.</p>
<p>‘Why so?’ inquired Tottie with animation.</p>
<p>‘Why?’ said Miss Neuchamp with asperity; ‘because
of the cool, beautiful climate they live in, the regular,
wholesome labour they are born to, the superiority of the
whole land and people to this dull, deceitful country, all
sand and sun-glare.’</p>
<p>‘Well, I can’t say, miss,’ replied Tottie, plotting a
surprise, with characteristic coolness, ‘about English<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">60</span>
girls’ looks, because I’ve hardly ever seen any; but as for
health, I’ve a middling appetite, I never was a day ill
since I was born, and as to being strong—look here.‘</p>
<p>Before the horrified Augusta could forbid her rapid
motion, she bounded over to the dray, from which Mr.
Windsor had just borne his two hundred pounds of
farina. She placed her back beneath the lessening load,
and stretching her arms upward in the way proper to
grasp the tied corner of the bag, said imperiously, ‘Here,
Mr. Carrier, just you lower that bag steady; I want to
show the English lady what a Currency girl can walk
away with.’</p>
<p>The tall sunburned driver entered into the joke, and
winking at Charley Banks, who stood by laughing, he
placed the heavy bag fairly and square upon Tottie’s
plump shoulders. Miss Neuchamp’s gaze was riveted
upon the erratic ‘help’ as if she had been about to commit
suicide.</p>
<p>‘Oh! don’t—don’t,’ she gasped; ‘are you mad, Mary
Anne? You will break your back, or cripple yourself
for life. Mr. Banks, pray interfere! I am sure my
cousin will be angry—pray stop her!’</p>
<p>Charley Banks was not afraid that anything dreadful
would happen. He had seen the bush girls perform
feats of strength and activity ere now which proved to
him that very little cause for apprehension existed in the
present case.</p>
<p>And there was not much time. For one moment the
girl stood, with her arms raised above her head, her
figure, in its natural and classic grace, proving the unspeakable
advantage of the free, open-air life, with fullest
liberty for varied exercise, which she had had from her
birth. The next she had moved forward with firm,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">61</span>
elastic tread, under a load which a city man out of training
would have found no joke, and, walking into the
store, permitted it to fall accurately beside the others
which had been shot from the backs of Jack Windsor
and Mr. Banks into their appointed corner.</p>
<p>There was a slight cheer, and an exclamation of,
‘Well done, Tottie,’ as she returned with a heightened
colour and half-triumphant, half-confused air to Miss
Neuchamp, who, relieved at her safe return from the
dangerous feat, did not administer so severe a rebuke as
might have been expected.</p>
<p>‘You may be thankful, Mary Anne, if you do not
hereafter discover that this day’s folly has laid the foundation
of lifelong ill-health. But come into the house,
child. You <i>have</i> some colour for once. Let me see no
more pranks of this sort again, while <i>I</i> am here.’</p>
<p>‘Lor, miss,’ said Tottie, ‘that’s not the first bag of
flour I’ve carried. And father says there was a girl he
knew at the Hawkesbury that took one—and <i>him a-top
of it</i>—around her father’s barn. He was only a boy
then.’</p>
<p>‘I think you may lay the tea, Mary Anne,’ said Miss
Neuchamp, not requiring any more Hawkesbury anecdotes.
‘I feel unusually fatigued to-day.’</p>
<p>Fortunately for all parties, before the extreme limit of
Miss Neuchamp’s patience and the resources of Rainbar
had been reached, a welcome auxiliary arrived in the
person of Mr. Middleton. That worthy paterfamilias had
been compelled to visit his outlying stations, in order to
ascertain the precise amount of death and destruction
that was taking place, and was returning to his usual
residence nearer the settled districts. He travelled in a
light buggy with one horse, being thus enabled to carry<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">62</span>
a supply of forage, and even water, with him. This, the
only known plan for crossing ‘dry country’ in a bad
season, and at the same time maintaining a horse in
tolerable condition, was not ornamental in detail. The
buggy, with two bags of chaff secured behind, a bushel of
maize in front, and a large water bag and bucket swung
from the axle, had a striking and unusual effect. But
the active, upstanding roadster was in better condition
than any horse which had passed Rainbar for many a
day, and Mr. Neuchamp at once saw his way to a
transfer of responsibility, as far as Miss Augusta was
concerned.</p>
<p>‘Well, Neuchamp, what do you think of Australia
now?’ said the old gentleman, in a jolly voice, as, sunburned
and dusty, with a great straw hat, a curtain and
a net veil, a canvas hood to his buggy, and the fodder
previously referred to picturesquely disposed about his
travelling carriage, he drove up to the verandah, causing
Augusta to put up her eyeglass with amazement. ‘Made
any striking alterations for our good? Wish you’d try
your hand at the weather, if that’s in your line.’</p>
<p>‘Come in, and we’ll talk it over,’ replied Ernest.
‘I’m charmed to see you in any kind of weather. Permit
me to present you to my cousin, Miss Neuchamp, who
doesn’t approve of your country at all. I must inform
you, Augusta, this is Mr. Middleton, my fellow-passenger,
whom you have heard me mention. I hope the ladies
are all well.’</p>
<p>‘Pretty well when they wrote last; but, like all ladies,
I fancy, they are terribly tired of the present state of the
season—and no wonder. I can only recollect one
worse drought during the thirty years I have been out
here.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">63</span></p>
<p>‘Worse!’ ejaculated Augusta, ‘I should have thought
that impossible. How did you contrive to exist?’</p>
<p>‘We <i>did</i> manage to keep alive, as I am here to
testify,’ laughed the old gentleman, whose proportions
were upon an ample and generous scale; ‘but of course
it was a serious matter in every aspect. However, we
weathered that famine, and we shall get over this, with
patience and God’s blessing.’</p>
<p>That evening it was definitely arranged that Mr.
Middleton should give Miss Neuchamp a seat in his encumbered
but not overladen buggy as far as his own
home station, which he trusted to reach in a week; after
which he would undertake, when she was tired of Mrs.
Middleton and the girls, to deposit her safely in Sydney.</p>
<p>This was an unlooked-for piece of good fortune.
Ernest was much relieved in mind at being freed from
the dilemma of returning Augusta as a kind of captive
princess of Rainbar, or undertaking an expensive and
inopportune journey for the sole purpose of accompanying
her to a place which she never should have quitted.</p>
<p>Mr. Middleton, confident of securing provender, now
that he had commenced to approach the confines of
civilisation, was not sorry to be provided with a young
lady companion, having had of late much of his own
unrelieved society; and Augusta was more pleased than
she cared to show at the prospect of escape from this
Sahara existence, without the prestige of the desert or
the novelty of Arabs. That night her portmanteau was
packed, Tottie coming in for the reversion of as much
raiment as constituted her an authority in fashions ‘on
the river’ ever after, and such a <i>douceur</i> as confirmed
her in Mr. Bank’s high estimate of Miss Neuchamp as a
‘real lady.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">64</span></p>
<p>At six o’clock next morning Augusta Neuchamp bade
farewell for ever to the abode of the Australian representative
of her ancient house.</p>
<p>‘When shall I see you in Sydney, Ernest?’ she said,
as a last inquiry. ‘I daresay they will wish to know at
Morahmee.’</p>
<p>‘When the rain comes,’ said Ernest resolutely.
‘Good-bye, Middleton; take great care of her. Remember
me to the ladies.’ And they were off.</p>
<p>It has been more than once remarked by those of our
species who rely for their intellectual recreation less
upon action than observation, that great events are apt
to be produced by inconsiderable causes. The sighing
summer breeze sets free the mountain avalanche. The
spark creates the red ruin of a conflagration. The rat in
Holland perforates a dam and floods a province.</p>
<p>Mr. Neuchamp sat in his apartment at Rainbar contrasting,
doubtfully, his regret at the departure of his
cousin with his recovered sense of freedom and independence.
True, she was the sole link which in Australia
connected him with the thousand spells of home.</p>
<p>But, ever angular in mind, she had proved herself
to be so incapable of accommodation to the necessarily
altered conditions of a new land, that he had despaired
of her acclimatisation. She had even failed to comprehend
them.</p>
<p>‘This is the result,’ he would assert to himself, ‘of
her deficiency in the faculty of imagination. It may be
there are other reasons, but I trace her special failure in
<i>camaraderie</i> to this neglect of her fairy godmother.’</p>
<p>A person with deficient ideality is necessarily imprisoned
by the present. Unable to portray for themselves
a presentment of unaccustomed conditions on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">65</span>
mental canvas, such as is traced by Fancy, coloured by
Hope, yet corrected by Prudence, they are wholly precluded
from the prevision, even in part, of the living
wonders, the breathing enchantments, of the future. To
them no city of rest, glorious and beautiful, arises from
the dull vulgarities of life and endeavour; all with
them is of the earth, earthy. A gospel of hard-eyed
economy, grudging gain, unrelieved toil, for the poor; for
the sordid aspirant, by endless thrift and striving, ‘property,
property, property;’ for the rich, a message of
selfish enjoyment, grasping monopoly, ungenial ease.</p>
<p>‘Such would the world be were the human mind
divested of the sublime attributes of Faith and Imagination!’
exclaimed Ernest, borne away from his present
cares. ‘There may be perils for the glad mariner on the
sun-bright, flashing wave; but he has the possible glory
of descrying purple isles, undiscovered continents. Dying,
he falls as a hero; living, he may survive to be hailed as
the world’s benefactor.’</p>
<p>Much comforted by these bright-hued imaginings and
illuminings of the path in which he knew himself to be
an ardent traveller, Mr. Neuchamp awaited his mail-bag
with more than usual serenity.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">66</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI</a></h2>
</div>
<p>The untoward season had not been without its effect
upon the thousand and one gardens that paint, in each
vivid delicate hue, with flower tracery and plant glory,
the rocky steeps and fairy nooks which engirdle Sydney.
The undulating lawns were dimmer, the plant masses less
profuse, the showery blooms less dazzling, the trailers less
gorgeous, than in other years. Yet were not the shores
of the fair, wondrous haven, beloved by Ocean for many a
long-past æon of lonely joy, before the bold scion of a
sea-roving race invaded its giant portals, without some
tokens of his favour. In the long, throbbing, burning
days, when the sun beat blistering upon the heated roof,
the white pavement, the dusty streets, he summoned
from beyond the misty blue horizon the rushing wind-sisters
fresh from the ice-galleries, the snow-peaks, the
frozen colonnades of that lone land where sits enthroned
in dazzling splendour, during days that die not or nights
that never end, the sorceress of the Southern Pole. From
their wings, frost-jewelled, dripped gentlest showers, refreshing
the shore, though they passed not the great
mountain range which so long guarded the hidden
treasure-lands of the central waste. Hot and parched,
compared with former seasons, the autumn seemed endless,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">67</span>
yet were the gardens and shrubberies of Morahmee
so comparatively verdant and fresh, from their proximity
to the sea, that Ernest would have hailed it as an Eden of
greenest glory, in comparison with the ‘sun-scorched desert
brown and bare’ which Rainbar had long resembled.</p>
<p>Among the inhabitants of Sydney who made daily
moan against the slow severity of the hopeless season
(and who had in some cases good cause, in diminished
incomes and receding trade, for such murmurings), Paul
Frankston, to his great surprise, found his daughter to be
enrolled.</p>
<p>This occurrence, involving as he thought a radical
change of disposition, if not of character, much alarmed
the worthy merchant. Calm and resolute, if occasionally
variant of mood, Antonia Frankston had hitherto
been one of the least querulous of mortals. Sufficiently
cultured to comprehend that the stupendous laws of the
universe were not controlled by the fancied woe or weal
of feeble man, she had never sympathised with the unmeaning
deprecation of climatic occurrences.</p>
<p>‘The wind and the weather are in God’s hands,’ she
had once answered to some shallow complainer. ‘What
are we that we should dare to blame or praise? Besides,
I am a sailor’s daughter, and at sea they take the
weather as it comes.’</p>
<p>In other matters, which could be set right by personal
supervision or self-denial, she held it to be most
unworthy weakness to make bitter outcry or vain
lamentation. ‘If the evil can be repaired, why not
at once commence the task? If hopeless, then bear
it with firmness. Provide against its recurrence, if
you like; but, in any case, what possible good can
talking or, more correctly, whining do? That is the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">68</span>
reason why men so often despise women, so often suffer
from them. Look at <i>them</i> when anything goes wrong,—how
hard they work, how little they talk! Perhaps
they smoke the more. But even that has the virtue
of silence, and therefore of wisdom. Talk is a very good
thing in the right place, but when things go wrong, it is
<i>not</i> in its right place.’</p>
<p>In former days of autumn, when the rains came not,
when the flowers drooped, when bad news came from
Paul Frankston’s pastoral constituents, and that worthy
financier was troubled in mind, or smoked more than his
proper allowance of cigars over the consideration of the
state of trade, it was Antonia who invariably cheered
and consoled him. She pointed out the triumphs of the
past; she steadfastly counselled trust in the future; she
soothed the night with her songs; she cheered the day
with unfailing ministration to his comfort and habitudes.</p>
<p>Now, curiously, the old man thought his darling was
different from what he had ever recollected. She suffered
repinings to escape her as to the weary rainless season.
She did not deny or controvert his occasional grumbling
assertions, after a hot day in the city, that the whole
country was going to the bad. She was, wonder of
wonders, occasionally irritable with the servants, and
impatient of their shortcomings. She kept her books
unchanged and apparently unread for a time unprecedented
in Mr. Shaddock’s experience.</p>
<p>Mr. Frankston could not by any means comprehend
this deflection of his daughter’s equable mental constitution.
After much consideration he came to the conclusion
that she wanted change of air—that the depressing hot
season was telling upon her health for the first time in
his recollection; and he cast about for an eligible chance<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">69</span>
to send her to some friends in Tasmania, where the
keener air, the somewhat more bracing island climate,
might restore her to the animation which he feared she
was losing day by day.</p>
<p>He thought also, amid his loving plans and plottings
for his daughter’s welfare, that possibly she needed the
stimulus of additional society. They had been living
quietly at Morahmee of late, and the season of comparative
gaiety, which in Sydney generally dates from the
birthnight of the Empress of Anglo-Saxondom, had not
as yet arrived.</p>
<p>‘We want a little rousing up,’ thought poor Paul;
‘we have had no little dinners lately, no one in the evenings.
I have been thinking over this confounded season
and these bothering bills till I have forgotten my own
darling, but for whose sake the whole country might be
swallowed up in Mauna Loa, for all old Paul cares. I
shouldn’t say that either; but it seems hard that anything
should ail the poor darling that care might have
prevented. If her mother had lived—ah!’ and here
Paul fell a-thinking, until the wheels of the dogcart grated
against the pavement near the office door.</p>
<p>Thus it so chanced that, towards the end of the week,
occurred one of the little dinners for which Morahmee
was famous, with a ‘whip’ of certain musical celebrities
of the neighbourhood, and as many ordinary guests as
made a successful compromise between all ‘music,’ which
sometimes hath not ‘charms’ for the masculine breast,
and a regulation evening party, which would have been
an anachronism.</p>
<p>Among the guests for whom Paul, in his anxiety for
a healthful distraction for Antonia, had swept the clubs
and the hotels, were Mr. Hardy Baldacre and Jermyn<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">70</span>
Croker. Squatters were scarce in Sydney beyond
previous experience. They were all at home on their
stations attending to their stock, except those who were
in town attending to their bills. These last were
chiefly indisposed to society. They dined at their clubs
or hotels after half a day’s waiting in the manager’s
ante-chamber, and felt more inclined for the repose of
the smoking-room than for the excitement of the society.</p>
<p>Mr. Hardy Baldacre had managed to come to town,
however, without such anxieties of a pecuniary nature
as interfered with his amusements. Of these he partook
of as full measure of every kind and description as he
could procure cheaply. He had early developed a taste
for pleasure, controlled only by considerations of caution
and economy. Those who knew him well disliked him
thoroughly, and with cause. Those who met him occasionally,
as did Mr. Neuchamp and Paul Frankston, saw in
him a well-dressed, good-looking man, with an affectation
of good-humour and liberality by no means without
attraction. Paul <i>had</i> heard assertions made to his disadvantage,
but not having bestowed much thought upon
the matter, had not gone the length of excluding him
from his invitation list; on this occasion he had been
rather glad to fill up his table.</p>
<p>Mr. Jermyn Croker, as usual, had constituted himself
an exception to ordinary humanity by remaining at
his club during the terrible season which sent the most
ardent lovers of the metropolis to their distant duties.
In explanation he stated that either the whole country
would be ruined or it would not. He frankly admitted
that he inclined to the first belief. If the former state
of matters prevailed, what was the use of living in the
desert till the last camel died and the last well was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">71</span>
choked? No human effort could avert the final simoom,
which was evidently on its way to engulf pastoral
Australia. Now, here at the club (though the wines were
beastly, as usual, and the committee ought to be sacked)
there would be a little claret and ice available to the
last. He should remain and perish, where, at least, a
club waiter could see to your interment.</p>
<p>Such was Mr. Jermyn Croker’s faith, openly professed
in club and counting-house. But those who knew him
averred that he took good care to have one of the best
overseers in the country at his head station, whose
management he kept up to the mark by weekly letters
of so consistently depreciatory a nature that nobody
expected <i>he</i> would survive the season, whatever the
issue to others. ‘Died of a bad season and Jermyn
Croker’ had, indeed, been an epitaph written in advance
and forwarded to him by a provincial humorist.</p>
<p>Hartley Selmore had also been found available. He,
indeed, could not very well remain away from financial
headquarters. So many of his unpaid orders and acceptances,
with the ominous superscription ‘Refer to drawer,’
found their way to bank and office by every mail from
the interior, that a residence in the metropolis was vitally
necessary. In good sooth, his unflagging energy and
great powers of resource, under the presence of constant
emergency, were equal to the demand made upon them.
With the aid of every device of discount and hypothecation
known to the children of finance, he managed to
keep afloat. His day’s work, neither light nor easy of
grasp, once over, the philosophical Hartley enjoyed his
dinner, his cigar, his whist or billiards, as genuinely as
if he had not a debt in the world, and was always ready
for a <i>petit dîner</i> if he distrusted not the wine.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">72</span></p>
<p>This dinner was, as usual, perfect in its way. The
cooking at Morahmee was proverbial; the wines were too
good for even Jermyn Croker to grumble at—had he done
so he would have imperilled his reputation as connoisseur,
of which he was careful; the conversation of the guests, at
first guarded and unsympathetic, rose into liveliness with
the conclusion of the first course, and, simultaneously
with the circulation of Paul’s unrivalled well-iced vintage,
became more adventurous and brilliant.</p>
<p>‘Where is our young friend Neuchamp?’ inquired
Hartley Selmore. ‘I haven’t seen him for an age.’</p>
<p>‘Gone to the bad long ago, hasn’t he?’ replied
Croker, with an air of pleasing certainty.</p>
<p>‘Heard he had bought a terribly overrated place on
the Darling,’ said Selmore. ‘Very sharp practice of
Parklands. Too bad of him—too bad, wasn’t it, now?’</p>
<p>‘Was it as good a bargain as Gammon Downs, Mr.
Selmore?’ inquired Antonia, with a faint resemblance to
former archness that lit up her melancholy features.
‘I am afraid there is not much to choose between you
hardened pioneers when there is a newly-landed purchaser
signalled.’</p>
<p>‘Really, Miss Frankston, really!’ replied Selmore,
with a fine imitation of the chivalrous and disinterested;
‘you do some of us injustice. In all this dreadful
season, I assure you, the creeks at Gammon Downs are
running like English brooks, and the grass is green—absolutely
green!’</p>
<p>‘Why, what colour should it be, Mr. Selmore—blue
or magenta? But you know that I am an Australian,
and therefore must have learned in the many conversations
which have passed in my hearing about station
matters that “green grass country” is generally spoken<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">73</span>
disrespectfully of, and “permanent water” is not everything.
But we will not continue the rather worn
subject.‘</p>
<p>‘I fancy Neuchamp can’t be doing so badly,’ cut in
Hardy Baldacre, with his customary assurance, ‘for I
hear he is going to be married.’</p>
<p>‘Married!’ echoed Antonia, as she felt the tide of
life arrested in her veins for one moment, and, with the
next, course wildly back to her beating heart. ‘Married,
Mr. Baldacre, and why not? But papa often hears from
him, don’t you, pappy, and he never mentioned it.’</p>
<p>‘Mentioned it! I should think not,’ growled Paul,
with a leonine accent, as scenting danger. ‘I heard
from him, let me see, a month or two back. I don’t
believe a word of it. Who to?’</p>
<p>‘Well, <i>I saw the young lady</i>,’ persisted Baldacre,
wholly unabashed, while he noted Antonia’s pale and
unmoved features. ‘I went up in the coach with her,
half way to Rainbar. She’s a cousin of his own; same
name. Just out from England, and ever so rich.’</p>
<p>‘How the deuce should she go alone up to Rainbar?’
said Paul, full of doubt and dread. ‘Surely <i>we</i> should
have heard of her, when she landed.’</p>
<p>‘She told me that she made up her mind suddenly
to come out to him—did not let him know, and only
stayed a week in Sydney, at Petty’s.’</p>
<p>‘Most romantic!’ said Antonia, driving the unseen
dagger more deeply into her heart, after the fashion of
her sex, but smiling and forcing a piteous and unreal
gaiety; ‘and was she fair to look upon—a blonde or
brunette? Mr. Baldacre, you were evidently in her
confidence; you cannot escape a description.’</p>
<p>‘She was very good-looking indeed,’ said the ruthless<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">74</span>
Hardy, who had been struck with Augusta’s fresh complexion
and insular manner. ‘She wore a gold eyeglass,
which looked odd; but she was very clever, and
all that kind of thing, as any one could see.’</p>
<p>‘Even Mr. Baldacre,’ said Antonia, with a sarcastic
acknowledgment. ‘You must have had a delightful
journey. You will tell me any other particulars that
occur to you in the drawing-room. I feel quite interested.’</p>
<p>Here the faint signal passed which proclaims the
withdrawal of the lady <i>convives</i> and the temporary
separation of the sexes. What mysterious rites are
celebrated above by the assembled maids and matrons,
freed awhile from the disturbing influence of the male
element? Does a wholly unaffected, perhaps unamused
expression possess those lovely features, erst so full of
every virtue showing forth in every look? Do they
exchange confidences? Do they <i>trust</i> each other? Do
they doff their uniforms, and appear unarmed, save with
truth, innocence, simplicity? <i>Quien sabe?</i></p>
<p>It may not have been apparent to the lady guests, to
whose comfort and enlivenment Antonia was so assiduous,
so delicately, yet so unfailingly attentive in her <i>rôle</i>
of hostess, that Miss Frankston’s heart was beating, her
head aching, her temples throbbing, her pulse quickened,
to a degree which rendered the severest mental effort
necessary to avoid collapse. They heeded not the faint
smile, the piteous quivering lip, the sad eyes, while words
of mirth, of compliment, of entreaty, flowed rapidly forth,
as she played her part in the game we call society. But
when the small pageant was over and the last carriage
rolled away she threw her arms round old Paul’s neck,
and resting her head upon that breast which had cherished
her, with all a woman’s love, and but little short<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">75</span>
of a woman’s tenderness, since her baby days of broken
doll and lost toy, she lay in his clasp and sobbed as if
her heart—poor overburdened, loving, despairing heart—was
in verity, then and there, about to break.</p>
<p>‘My darling, my darling! my own precious pet,
Antonia!’ said the old man, kissing her forehead, and
wiping the tears from her eyes, as he had done many a
time and oft in the days of her childish grief. ‘I know
your sorrow and its cause; but do not be too hasty.
We do not know if this loose report be true. It is most
unlikely and improbable to me; though, if it be true,
Paul Frankston is not the man to suffer this wrong to
lie a day without—without claiming his right. But do
not take it for proved truth till further tidings come.’</p>
<p>‘It <i>is</i> true—it is true,’ moaned Antonia. ‘I had a
foreboding. I have been so wretched of late—so unlike
your daughter, my dearest father. How could Hardy
Baldacre have invented such a story? Why did he not
give his—his betrothed—our address, if he had no—no—reason
to do otherwise?’ sobbed poor Antonia.</p>
<p>‘I can’t say—I don’t know—hang her and her eyeglass—and
the day I first saw him enter this house!
But, no, I cannot hate the boy, whose pleasant face so
often made a second youth for me. I hate taking things
for granted; I must have proof before I—and then—Go
to bed, my darling, go to bed; I will tell you what I
think in the morning.’</p>
<p>It was well for Miss Frankston, perhaps, that the
intense pain towards which her headache had gradually
culminated rendered her for a while unable to frame any
mental processes. As she threw herself upon the couch
she was conscious of a crushing feeling of utter darkness
and blank despair, which simulated a swoon.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">76</span></p>
<p>She awoke to a state of mind to her previously unknown.
In her breast conflicting emotions passionately
contended. Chief among them was the bitter disappointment,
the indignant sense of slight and betrayal, endured
by every woman who, conscious that each inmost sacred
feeling of her heart has been given to the hero of her
choice, has been deliberately forsaken for another.</p>
<p>True, no word of love, no promise, no seeking of
favour on one side, no half denial, half granting of precious
gifts, had passed between them. In one sense, the
world would have held him harmless, while friends and
companions of her own sex, prone always to decry and
distrust all feminine victims, would most certainly hint at
mistaken feelings, delusive hopes, on her part—would be
ready to welcome and to tempt the successful purloiner
of a sister’s heart, the unpunished wrecker of a sister’s
happiness.</p>
<p>But was there no tacit agreement, no unwritten bond,
no fixed and changeless contract, slowly but imperceptibly
traced in characters faint and pale, then clearer, fuller,
deepening daily to indelible imprint on her heart—upon
his, surely upon his? Were the outpourings of the
hitherto sacred thoughts, feelings, emotions, from the
innermost receptacles of an unworn, untempted nature,
to be reckoned as the idle, meaningless badinage of
society? Were the friendly counsels, the deep, unaffected
interest, the frank brotherly intercourse, all to
pass for nothing—to be translated into the careless
courtesy affected by every formal visitor?</p>
<p>And yet, again, did not such things happen every
day? Her own experience was not so limited but that
she had known more than one pale maiden, weary of life,
sick unto death for a season, unable as a fever patient to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">77</span>
simulate ordinary cheerfulness because of the acted, if not
spoken, falsehood of man. Had she pitied these too
confiding victims, these hopeless, uncomplaining invalids,
maimed in the battle of life, hiding the mortal wound
from human gaze, bearing up with trembling steps the
burden of premature age and sorrow?</p>
<p>Had not her pity savoured of contempt—her kindness
of toleration? and now, lo! it was her own case.
But could it be <i>herself</i>—Antonia Frankston, who from
childhood had felt no want that wealth and opportunity
could supply? who had never known a slight or felt an
injury since childhood’s hour? to whom all sorrow and
sufferings incidental to what books and fanciful persons
called ‘love’ were as practically unknown as snow blindness
to an inhabitant of the Sahara? Was she a wronged,
insulted, deserted woman like those others? It was inconceivable!
it was phantasmal! it was impossible! She
would sleep, and with the dawn the ghastly fear would
be fled. Perhaps this dull pain in her throbbing temples,
this darksome mysterious heart-agony, would leave her.
Who knows?</p>
<p>It is wonderful how much is taken for granted every
day in this world, more especially in the interest of evil
devices.</p>
<p>Mr. Hardy Baldacre would have been sorely puzzled
by a cross-examination, but no one had presence of mind
to put it to the proof. He was rapid in conceiving his
plans, wonderfully accurate and thoughtful in carrying
them through. His endowments were exceptional in
their way. Bold, even to audacity, he never hesitated;
cunning and unscrupulous, he pursued his schemes,
whether for money-making or for personal aggrandisement
of the lower sort, with a swift and sure directness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">78</span>
worthy of more exalted aim. Undaunted by failure, he
was careless of partial loss of reputation. He was known
by the superficial crowd as a successful operator whenever
there was a bargain to be had in stock or station
property. He was shunned and disliked by those better
informed and more scrupulous in their acknowledgment
of friends, as a gambler, a niggard, and a crafty profligate.</p>
<p>Such was the man who had succeeded, by a lying
device, in working present evil—it may be, incalculable
future misery—to two persons who had never injured
him. In this deliberate fabrication he had two ends in
view. He secretly envied and disliked Ernest Neuchamp
for qualities and attainments which he could never hope
to rival. He was one of a class of Australians who
cherish an ignorant prejudice against Englishmen, regarding
them as conceited and prone to be contemptuous of the
provincial magnate. With characteristic cunning he had
kept this feeling to himself, always treating Mr. Neuchamp
with apparent friendliness. But he was none the
less determined to deal him an effectual blow when an
opportunity should offer. The time had come, and he
had struck a felon blow, which had pierced deeply the
pure, passionate heart of Antonia Frankston.</p>
<p>He had for some time past honoured that young lady
with his very questionable approbation. He admired
her personally after his fashion; but he thoroughly
appreciated and heartily desired to possess himself of
what constituted in his eyes her crowning charm and
attribute—the large fortune which Paul Frankston’s
heiress must, in spite of all changes of season and fluctuation
of securities, inevitably inherit.</p>
<p>Not unskilled in the ways of women, with whom his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">79</span>
undeniable good looks and his prestige of wealth gave
him a certain popularity, he thought he saw his way
during her period of anger and mortification to a dash at
the lady and the money, which needed but promptness
and resolution to ensure a strong chance of success.</p>
<p>He saw by her change of countenance, by her forced
gaiety, by her every look and tone, that the barbed
arrow had sped far and been surely lodged.</p>
<p>‘Neuchamp, like a fool as he was, had evidently not
written lately. The cousin (and a deuced fine girl, too,
with pots of money of her own) had been staying up at
Rainbar—a queer thing to do. Old Middleton, when
bringing her to his place, had told every one that she
was his friend Neuchamp’s cousin. It would be some
time before Frankston or his daughter would find out the
untruth of the report. In the meantime he would butter
up the old man, humbug him with regret for his occasional
“wildness,” promise all kinds of amendment and
square behaviour for the future; then go straight to the
girl, who, of course, could know nothing of his life and
time, and say, “Here am I, Hardy Baldacre, with a half
share in Baredown, Gogeldra, and No-good-damper (hang
it; I must change that)—anyway, three of the best
cattle properties of the south; here am I, not the worst-looking
fellow going, at your service. Take me, and
we’re off to Melbourne or Tasmania for a wedding-trip,
and that stuck-up beggar Neuchamp may marry his
cousin, and go up King Street the next week for all we
care.” I shan’t say the last bit. But it will occur to
her. Women always think of everything, though they
don’t say it. That might fetch her. Anyhow, the odds
are right. I’m on!’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">80</span></p>
<p>This exceedingly practical soliloquy having been
transacted at his hotel during the performance of his
toilette, Mr. Baldacre partook of the matutinal soda-and-brandy
generally necessary for the perfect restoration of
his nerves, and breakfasted, with a settled resolution to
call at Morahmee that afternoon.</p>
<p>This intention he carried out. He found Antonia
apparently not unwilling to receive him upon a more
intimate conversational footing than he ever recollected
having been accorded to him. She was in that state
of anxiety, unhappiness, and nervous irritability which
makes the patient only too willing to fly to the relief
afforded by a certainty even of evil. The climber upon
Alpine heights, with shuddering death-cry, ever and anon
casts himself into the awful chasm on the verge of which
his limbs trembled and his overwrought brain reeled.
The overtaxed sufferer under the pangs of mortal disease
chooses death rather than the continuance of the pitiless
torment. So the agonised heart, poised on the dread
pinnacle of doubt, flees to the Lethean peace of despair.</p>
<p>Having not unskilfully brought the conversation
round to the subject of Miss Neuchamp, Mr. Baldacre
touched, with more or less humour, on certain unguarded
remarks of that inexperienced but decided traveller.
He enlarged, as if accidentally, upon her good looks and
apparent cleverness, giving her the benefit of a tremendous
reputation for learning of the abstrusest kind, and
generally exaggerating all the circumstances which might
render probable the admiration of an ultra-refined
aristocrat.</p>
<p>Much of this delicate finesse, as Mr. Baldacre considered
it to be, was transparent and despicable in the
eyes of his listener. But, difficult as it may be to
account for, otherwise than by ignoring all known rules<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">81</span>
and maxims for the comprehension of that mysterious
mechanism, the feminine heart, there was, nevertheless,
something not wholly disagreeable in the outspoken
admiration of the bold-eyed, eager admirer who now
pressed his suit.</p>
<p>With one of the sudden, tempestuously capricious
changes of mind, common to the calmest as to the most
impulsive individual of the irresponsible sex, a vague,
morbid desire for finality at all hazards arose in her
brain. She had listened and loved, and waited and
dreamed, and dedicated her leisure, her mental power,
her <i>life</i>, to the path of habit and culture which would
render her every thought and speech and act more harmonious
with his ideal. She had thought but of him.
He had his plans, his projects, a man’s career, his return
to England—a thousand things to distract him—all
these might delay the declaration of his love. But she
had never thought of <i>this</i>! She had never in wildest
flight of conjecture conjured up a <i>fiancée</i>, a cousin loved
from earliest child-betrothals, to whom he doubtless
had written pages of minute description of all their
well-intended kindness and provincial oddities at
Morahmee.</p>
<p>And was she to sigh and droop, and pale and wither,
beneath the unexplained, unshared burden of betrayed
love? Had she not seen the colour fade from the fair
cheek, leaving a cold ashen-gray tint where once was
bright-hued joy, eager mirth, and laughter? Had she
not seen the light die out of the pleading, wistful eyes,
once so deeply glowing, so tender bright, the step fall
heavy, the voice lose its ring, the <i>woman</i> quit the
haunted dwelling where a dead heart lay buried and a
still, gray-hued, hard-toned tenant sat therein, for evermore<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">82</span>
resignedly indifferent to all things beneath the sky?
Was this her near inexorable fate?</p>
<p>No! a thousand times, no! Had she not in her
veins the bold blood of Paul Frankston, the fearless sea-rover,
who had more than once awed a desperate crew
by the promptness of his weapon and the terror of his
name? And was she to sink into social insignificance,
and tacitly sue for the pity of <i>him</i> and others, because
she had mistaken his feelings and he had with masculine
cruelty omitted to consider hers?</p>
<p>No! again, no! The rebellious blood rushed to her
brow, as she vowed to forget, to despise, to trample
under foot, the memory, false as a broken idol, to which
she had been so long, so blindly faithful. And as all
men save one—for even in that hour of her wrath and
misery she could not find it in her heart to include her
father among the reprobate or despicable of his sex—were
alike unworthy of a maiden’s trust, a maiden’s
prayers, why not confide herself and her blighted heart
to the custody of this one, who, at least, was frank and
unhesitating in proffering his love and demanding her
own?</p>
<p>Mr Hardy Baldacre had not thought it expedient to
delay bringing matters to a climax, fearing that highly
inconvenient truth, with respect to the fair Augusta,
might arrive at any moment. With well-acted bluntness
of sincerity he had adjured Miss Frankston to forgive his
sudden, his unpremeditated avowal of affection.</p>
<p>‘He was a rough bushman,’ he confessed, ‘not in the
habit of hiding his feelings. On such a subject as this
he could not bear the agony of anxiety or delay. He
must know his fate, even if the doom of banishment, of
just anger at his imprudence, went forth against him.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">83</span>
He expected nothing else. But if, before condemning
him to go back to his far-off home (little she knew of its
peculiar characteristics) a lonely, despairing man, she
would only give consideration to his claims, rashly but
respectfully urged, she might deign to accept a manly
heart, the devotion of a life that henceforth, in good or
had fortune, was hers, and hers only.’</p>
<p>Mr. Hardy Baldacre had an imposing, stalwart figure,
by no means unfashionably attired, and Nature, while
unsolicitous about his moral endowments, had gifted him
with a handsome face. If not in the bloom of youth, he
had not passed by a day the matured vigour of early
manhood. As he bent his dark eyes upon Antonia and
poured forth his not entirely original address, but which,
heard in the tones of a pleading flesh-and-blood lover,
sounded a deal better than it reads, Antonia felt a species
of mesmeric attraction to the fatal and irrevocable ‘yes,’
which should open a new phase of life to her and obliterate
the maddening, hopeless, endless past. <i>For one
moment</i>, for one only, the fate of Antonia Frankston
wavered on the dread eternal balance. She fluttered,
birdlike, under the fascination of his serpentine gaze.
Her words of regret and courteous dismissal refused to
find utterance. At length she said, ‘I must have time
to consider your flattering but quite unexpected offer.
You will, I am sure, not press for an immediate answer.
I will see you again. Meanwhile let me tell you that I
value your good opinion, and shall always recall with
pleasure your very kind intention of to-day.’</p>
<p>But, with that still hour of evening meditation in
which Antonia was wont to indulge before retiring, came
calmer, humbler, more tranquillising thoughts. As she
sat at her chamber window, looking out over the wide<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">84</span>
waters of the bay, in which a crescent moon caused the
endless bright expanse of tremulous silver, the frowning
headlands, the garden slopes, to be all clearly, delicately
visible,—as she heard the rhythmical, solemn cadence of
the deep-toned eternal surge,—she recalled the moon-lighted
eves, the soul-to-soul communing, of ‘that lost
time.’</p>
<p>A strong reactionary feeling occupied her heart. It
seemed as if, like the rushing of the tide, the stormy
sway of the ocean she loved so well, her heart had surged
in rising tempest and with passion’s flow, to ebb with yet
fuller retrogression. Surely such were the words of this
murmuring sea-song on the white midnight strand, which
calmed, as with a magic anodyne, her restless, rebellious
mood.</p>
<p>‘I have been wayward and wicked,’ she half sighed to
herself, ‘false to my better self, to the teaching of a life,
unmindful of my duty to my father, who loves me better
than life, of my duty to One above, who has shielded and
cherished me, all undeserving as I am, up to this hour.
I will repent of my sin. I will abase myself, and by
prayer and penitence seek strength where alone it can be
found.’</p>
<p>It was long ere Antonia Frankston sought her couch;
but she slept for the first time that night, since a serpent
trail had passed over the Eden flowers of her trusting
love, with an untroubled slumber and a resolved purpose.</p>
<p>Pale, but changed in voice and mien, was she when
she joined her father at breakfast.</p>
<p>‘I see my little girl’s own face again,’ said Paul, as he
embraced her, with tenderest solicitude in every line of
his weather-beaten countenance. ‘I thought I had lost<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">85</span>
her. She must not be hasty; she was never so before.
All may come right in the end.’</p>
<p>‘I have been a very naughty girl,’ said she, with a
quiet sob, ‘ungrateful, too, and wicked. I have come to
my senses again. It must have been the dreadful
drought, I think, which is going to be the ruin of us all,
body and mind. Fancy losing one’s daughter, as well as
one’s money, because of a dry season!’</p>
<p>This small pleasantry did not excite Paul’s risible
muscles much, but he was more pleased with it than
with a volume of epigrams. It showed that experienced
mariner, accustomed to slightest indications of wind and
wave, that a change of weather had set in. His soul
rejoiced as he took his daughter in his arms and exclaimed,
‘My darling, my darling, your mother is with
the angels, but she watches over you still. Think of her
when your old father is too far off or too dull to advise
you. If she had lived——’ But here there were tears
in the old man’s eyes, and the rugged features worked in
such wise as to fashion a mask upon which no living
man had ever gazed. There was a long confession.
Once more every thought of Antonia Frankston’s heart
lay unfolded before her parent.</p>
<p>That morning, before driving, as usual, to the counting-house,
Mr Frankston sought the Royal Hotel, and, upon
business of importance, obtained an interview with Mr.
Hardy Baldacre ere that ‘talented but unscrupulous’
aspirant had completed his breakfast.</p>
<p>So decided was the assurance imparted by his visitor
that, with all possible appreciation of the honour conferred,
Miss Frankston felt herself compelled to decline
his very flattering offer, that Mr. Baldacre knew instinctively
that any further investment of the Morahmee<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">86</span>
fortress was vain, if not dangerous. He condoled with
his early visitor about the state of the season, congratulating
himself audibly that his runs were understocked,
and that he had no bills to meet like some people; and
finally accompanied Mr. Frankston to the door, with a
friendly leave-taking, to be succeeded by a bitter oath as
he lighted a cigar and paced the well-known balcony.</p>
<p>‘She has told her father. I saw the old boy was
down to every move I had made. Knowing old shot,
too, in spite of his politeness and humbug. I’d have
hacked myself, too, at a short price, if I had had
only another week’s innings. They may have heard
something, or that fool Neuchamp is coming down and
leaving everything to go to the devil. I had a good
show, too. I thought I held trumps. Never mind,
there are lots of women everywhere. One more or less
don’t make much difference. Of course, it was the
“tin” that fetched me, but I don’t see that I need care
so much about that. I think that I shall make tracks
to-morrow.‘</p>
<p>On the morning following that of Mr. Baldacre’s
unlucky piece of information Paul Frankston lost no
time in applying to headquarters for information. He,
‘with spirit proud and prompt to ire,’ would, a quarter of
a century before, probably have smote first and inquired
after. ‘But age had tamed the Douglas blood,’ and even
if its current still coursed hotly on occasion, the experience
of later manhood called loudly for plain proof and
full evidence before he adopted the strange tale which
had been told at his board.</p>
<p>Suspending all thought of what he might chance if
<i>any man</i> were proved to have trifled with his darling’s
heart, he simply wrote as follows:<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">87</span></p>
<blockquote>
<p class="psig">
<span class="smcap">Sydney</span>, <i>10th April 18—</i>.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Dear Ernest</span>—We have heard a report down here—brought
to our table, in fact, by Hardy Baldacre, a man you know a
little—that you are engaged and about to be married shortly to a
young lady, a cousin of your own, just arrived from England. Also
that Miss Neuchamp left Sydney for Rainbar, after a week’s stay,
and was seen by him on the way there in a coach.</p>
<p>For reasons which can be hereafter explained, I wish you to
send me a specific admission or denial of this statement. I will
write you again upon receipt of your reply to this letter. I am,
always yours sincerely,</p>
<p class="psig">
<span class="smcap">Paul Frankston</span>.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">E. Neuchamp</span>, Esq.</p></blockquote>
<p>On the following evening, after sending this, the most
laconic epistle which had ever passed between them, Paul
no sooner beheld his daughter’s face than he saw shining
in her eyes the light of recovered trust, of renewed hope,
of restored belief in happiness.</p>
<p>‘She must have received a letter,’ mused the sagacious
parent. ‘Where is it, my darling?’ said he aloud.</p>
<p>‘Where is what?’ she replied, with a sweet air of
embarrassment, pride, and mystery commingled.</p>
<p>‘Of course you have had a letter, or heard some news.
I took the chance of the little bird’s whisper coming by
post. I think I am right.’</p>
<p>‘Here it is, you wicked magician. Antonia will never
have another secret from her dear old father. What
agonies I suffered for my hard-heartedness! And oh,
what have I escaped!’</p>
<p>Here was the letter, with a mere stamp thereon,
which contained such a fortune in happiness as should
have entitled the Government to a round sum on the
principle of legacy duty:</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="psig">
<span class="smcap">Rainbar</span>, <i>4th April 18—</i>.<br />
</p>
<p><span class="smcap">My dear Antonia</span>—This letter will probably reach Sydney
some days, or weeks even, before a young lady, for whom I entreat<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">88</span>
your friendship and kind offices. [H—m.] When I say that she is
Augusta Neuchamp, my cousin, and my only relation in Australia,
I feel certain that I need not further recommend her to you and
the best of fathers and friends. [H—m.]</p>
<p>You will acknowledge her to be a refined and intelligent woman,
that goes <i>sans phrase</i>, I should hope, and no truer heart, with more
thoroughly conscientious acceptance of duty, ever dwelt in one of
her sex. [H—m.]</p>
<p>But, writing to you with the confidence of old and tender
friendship, I may as well state, delicately but decidedly, that
Augusta and I have been utterly unsympathetic from our childhood,
and must so remain to the end of the chapter. [Oh dear!
surely I can’t have read aright.]</p>
<p>Even at Rainbar, to which rude retreat she posted with her
usual impetuosity, without giving me the opportunity of forbidding
her, we had our old difficulty about preserving the peace
(conversationally), and once or twice I thought we should have
come to blows, as in our childish days. [Thank Heaven! Oh,
oh!]</p>
<p>You know I am not given to dealing hardly with your sex,
whatever may be their demerits, and of course I am not going to
abuse my cousin in a strange land; but I am again trusting to
your perfect comprehension of my real meaning, when I say that,
companionably, Augusta appears to me to be the <i>only woman</i> in
the world I cannot get on with. [Blessed girl, dear, charming
Augusta—I love you already!]</p>
<p>Of course, as soon as she left Rainbar (we were on very short
commons of politeness by that time) I resolved to write and ask
you to take her in at Morahmee, and show her Sydney and our
<i>monde</i>, in the existence of which she disbelieves. You must be
prepared for her abusing everything and everybody. But I know
no one who can more gently and effectually refute her prejudices
than yourself, my dear Antonia. You even subjugated Jermyn
Croker, I remember. By the bye, have him out to meet Augusta.
She admires his file-firing style of attack. Perhaps they may
neutralise each other’s ‘arms of precision.’ [Do anything for her—ask
the Duke to meet her, if she would like!]</p>
<p>I feel that I am writing a most indefensibly long letter. But
I am very lonely, and rather melancholy, with ruin taking the
place of rain—only one letter of difference—and advancing daily.
Were it not so, I would, as the Irishman said, bring this letter<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">89</span>
myself. Oh, for an hour again in the Morahmee verandah, with
your father smoking, the stars, the sea, the soft tones of the music,
of a voice always musical in my ear! Ah me! it will not bear
thinking of. It is midnight now, yet I can see a cloud of dust
rising, as my men bring an outlying lot of cattle to the yard.
[‘Poor fellow! poor, poor Ernest!’ sighed the voice referred to.]</p>
<p>I know you will be kind and <i>forbearing</i> with Augusta. She
will not remain long in Australia. I think you will appreciate
the unquestionably strong points in her character. Of these she
has many—too many, in fact. Apparently it is time to close this
scrawl—the paper says so. ‘Pray for me, Gabrielle,’ your song
says, and always trust me as your sincere friend,</p>
<p class="psig">
<span class="smcap">Ernest Neuchamp</span>.</p></blockquote>
<p>[Bless him, poor dear!‘]</p>
<p>‘So we are to have the honour of entertaining Ernest’s
cousin, and not his future wife, it seems?’ said Mr.
Frankston, also cheered up.</p>
<p>‘Never had the slightest thought of it, poor fellow,’
said Antonia, radiant with appreciation of the antipathetic
Augusta. ‘How I could have been such a
goose as to believe that wicked Hardy Baldacre, I can’t
think. And, papa dear, I <i>might</i> have found myself
pledged to marry him, doomed to endless misery, in my
folly and madness. I shall never condemn other foolish
girls again, whatever they may do.’</p>
<p>‘All’s well that ends well, darling,’ said the old man,
with a grateful ring in his voice; ‘Paul Frankston and
his own pet daughter are one in heart again. We don’t
know what may happen when the rain comes.’</p>
<p>How joyous the world seemed after the explanation
which Mr. Neuchamp’s letter indirectly afforded! Life
was not a mistake after all. There was still interest
in new books, pleasure in new music. A halo of dim
wondrous glory was ever present during her nightly contemplation
of sea and sky, in the lovely, all-cloudless<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">90</span>
autumn nights. The moan of the restless surge-voices
had again the friendly tone she had heard in them from
childhood. The sea was again splendid with possible
heroes and argosies; it was again the realm of danger,
discovery, enchantment—not a storm-haunted, boding
terror, with buried treasures and drowned seamen, with
treacherous, fateful wastes into which the barque, freighted
with Antonia Frankston’s hopes, had been wafted forth to
return no more.</p>
<p>It was during this enviably serene state of her mind
that a note from the innocent cause of the first tragic
scene which had invaded the idyl of Antonia Frankston’s
life appeared on the breakfast-table at Morahmee.</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="psig">
<span class="smcap">Middleham</span>, <i>20th April</i>.<br />
</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Dear Miss Frankston</span>—My cousin Ernest, with whom I
believe you are acquainted, made me promise to inform you of my
proposed arrival in Sydney, on the conclusion of my visit to Mr.
and Mrs. Middleton. That gentleman has kindly promised to
accompany me to Sydney, which we shall reach (<i>D.V.</i>) by the five
o’clock train on Friday next. I purpose taking up my abode at
Petty’s Hotel.—Permit me to remain, dear Miss Frankston, yours
very truly,</p>
<p class="psig">
<span class="smcap">Augusta Neuchamp</span>.</p></blockquote>
<p>Of course nothing would content Antonia short of
meeting at the station and carrying off to Morahmee, bag
and baggage, this inestimable cousin, who had behaved so
honourably, so perfectly.</p>
<p>Any other woman, with the mildest average of good
looks, shut up in such a raft of a place as Rainbar metaphorically
was, would have carried off Ernest, or any man
of his age, easily and triumphantly. All the pleasant
freedom of a cousin, all the provocation of a possible,
unforbidden bride, the magic of old memories, the bond
of perfect social equality as to rank and
habitudes,—<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">91</span>what
stupendous advantages! And yet she was so
happily and delightfully constituted by nature that, in
spite of dangerous proximity and all other advantages,
she was, it was plain from his letter, the very last woman
in the world whom he could have thought of marrying.
O most excellent Augusta!</p>
<p>Paul, of course, after a show of deep consideration,
came to the conclusion that Antonia’s plan was the
kindest, wisest, ‘onliest’ thing, under the circumstances.
‘Take her home straight from the train. Bother Petty’s—what’s
the use of her moping there, and spending her
money? I don’t think another girl for you to have a
few talks with, and drives, and shopping, and Botanical
Gardens, and Dorcas work together, could do you any
harm, pet. So have her home quietly to-night. We
must have a little dinner for her.’</p>
<p>Accordingly, when the punctual train arrived bearing
Miss Neuchamp and her fortunes, she was astonished to
hear Mr. Middleton exclaim, ‘Why, there is Miss Frankston
come to meet us! How do you do, Antonia, my
dear? Allow me to make known Miss Neuchamp; probably
you are already acquainted with one another by
description.’</p>
<p>Miss Neuchamp’s expectations can only be a matter of
conjecture, but she was unaffectedly surprised at the
apparition of this distinguished-looking girl, perfectly
dressed and appointed, who stood on the platform, flanked
by a liveried servant of London solidity of form and
severe respectability of manner.</p>
<p>‘Very, <i>very</i> happy to welcome you to Sydney, Miss
Neuchamp,’ said Antonia. ‘Papa and I were so disappointed
that we did not know of your address before
you left for the bush. He won’t hear of your going anywhere<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">92</span>
but to our house for the present. And, Mr.
Middleton, I am pledged to bring you, as papa says we
young ladies will be wrapped up in each other and leave
him in solitude. I can command you, I know. Pray
say you’ll come, Miss Neuchamp.’</p>
<p>‘If I may add my persuasion,’ said Mr. Middleton, ‘I
could tell Miss Neuchamp that she could not act more
discreetly for the present. I shall be delighted to wash
all the dust out of my throat with some of your father’s
claret, Antonia. I’m your humble admirer, you know,
when I’m away from home.’</p>
<p>‘I shall be very happy to accept your hospitality, so
kindly offered, for the present,’ said Augusta, overpowered
by briskness of attack and defection of allies.</p>
<p>The grave servant immediately addressed himself to
the luggage and, handing the strange lady’s nearest and
dearest light weights into the carriage, remained behind
to deposit one of Mr. Middleton’s portmanteaus at the
club, and to convey the remaining impedimenta to Morahmee
per cab. As Miss Neuchamp ensconced herself in
the yielding, ample cushions of the Morahmee carriage
beside Antonia, and was borne along at a rapid pace, the
mere rattling of the wheels upon the macadamised road
was grateful and refreshing to her soul, as a reminiscence
of the unquestioned proper and utterly befitting, from
which she had hitherto considered herself to be hopelessly
sundered by the whole breadth of ocean.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">93</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII</a></h2>
</div>
<p>When Miss Neuchamp found herself installed in a large,
cool upper chamber at Morahmee with a glorious view of
the harbour, while on her table stood a great rapturous
bouquet all freshly gathered, roses intermingled with
delicate greenhouse buds, she commenced to wonder
whether all her previously formed ideas of Australia were
about to be seriously modified.</p>
<p>A good sound reserve of prejudice reassured her, and
she bided her time. She had tasted the fullest measure
of comfort perceivable in Australian country life at the
house of Mr. Middleton, where she had sojourned several
weeks. Now she was about to experience whatever best
and pleasantest the metropolis could afford.</p>
<p>Mr. Frankston had brought home with him Count von
Schätterheims and Mr. Jermyn Croker, so that he and
Mr. Middleton, having endless semi-stock and station lore
to interchange, each of the ladies was provided with a
cavalier.</p>
<p>The Count, who had been informed by Paul that Miss
Neuchamp was an English heiress of vast wealth, travelling
to indulge her eccentric insular taste, paid great
attention to that young lady, cutting in from time to
time, to the speechless wrath and exasperation of Jermyn<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">94</span>
Croker, who renewed his former acquaintance with great
success.</p>
<p>The fair Augusta was entertained, and not wholly
displeased, with their manifest admiration.</p>
<p>As the verandah was voted by far the pleasantest
place after dinner, the whole party adjourned to this
invaluable retreat, where Paul and his friend were permitted
to light their cigars, and all joined in conversation
with unaffected freedom impossible in a drawing-room.</p>
<p>‘Sing something, my darling,’ said the old man, ‘and
then, perhaps, the Count will give us that new song of
his, which I hear all Sydney is raving about.’</p>
<p>As the rich tones of the grand Erard came forth to
them, luxuriously softened by the intervening distance,
Miss Neuchamp tasted a pleasure from which she had for
an age, it would seem, been debarred. She did not herself
perform with more than the moderate degree of
success which can be attained by those who, without
natural talent, have received thoroughly good teaching.
But her training, at least, enabled her to appreciate the
delicacy of Miss Frankston’s touch, her finished and rare
execution, and the true yet deep feeling with which she
rendered the most simple melodies as well as the most
complicated operatic triumphs.</p>
<p>Somewhat to the discomposure of the Count, who had
commenced to believe the opportunity favourable, she
rose, and with an expression of delight passed on to
Antonia’s side. Miss Neuchamp had seen too many
counts to attach importance to that particular grade of
continental rank; and this particular specimen of the
order she held in fixed distrust, derived from the recollection
of comments to which she had listened at Rainbar.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">95</span></p>
<p>‘<i>La belle Anglaise</i> prefers music to your compliments,
Count,’ said Mr. Croker.</p>
<p>‘<i>Chacun à son tour</i>,’ replied the injured diplomatist.
‘Dey are both ver good in dere vay.’</p>
<p>Whatever might be the Count’s shortcomings, a deficiency
of self-control could hardly be reckoned among
them. He twirled his enormous moustache, condoled
with Paul and Mr. Middleton, and explained that his
steward in Silesia had written him accounts of an unusually
wet season.</p>
<p>‘Ah, dat is de condrey! You should see him, my
dear Monsieur Paul: such grops, such pasdures, such
vool, so vine as de zilks.’</p>
<p>‘How about labour?’ said Mr. Middleton. ‘I suppose
you are not bothered as we are every now and then
with a short supply, and half of that bad?’</p>
<p>‘De bauer—vat you call “beasand” in my condrey—he
vork for you all de yahres of his live, and pray Gott
for your brosperity—it is his brivilech to be receive
wid joys and danks. De bauer, oh, de bauer is goot
man!‘</p>
<p>‘I wish our fellows received their lot with joy and
thanks; half of my Steam Plains shepherds have gone
off to these confounded diggings. But don’t your men
emigrate to America now and then? I thought half
Germany went there.’</p>
<p>‘I vill dell you one dale,’ said the Count earnestly.
‘I had one hauptman, overzeer, grand laboureur, ver goot
man—he is of lofdy indelligence, he reat, he dinks mooch,
he vill go to Amerika. I consoolt mit my stewart, he say
Carl Steiger is ver goot, he is so goot as no oder mans
what we have not got. I say, “Ingrease his vages, once,
twyei, dree dime—he reach de vonderful som of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">96</span>
<i>fivedeen bount</i> per yahr. He go no more. De golten demdadion
is doo crade; he abandon his shpirit-dask to leat mankint,
he glass my vools now dill his lives is ofer.”‘</p>
<p>‘Ha! he wanted a summer on the wallaby track to
open his mind,’ said Mr. Middleton; ‘that would have
been a “wanderyahr” with different results, I am afraid.
But I really think many of our fellows would do better
if they had more of the thrift and steady resolve of your
countrymen, Count. I remember when wages were much
lower than now in the colony, and when the men really
saved something worth while, besides working more cheerfully.
Don’t you, Croker’ But Mr. Croker had departed
in the midst of the Count’s story, and was charming Miss
Neuchamp with such delightful depreciation of the Australias,
and all that in them is, that she became rapidly
confirmed in her first opinion, formed soon after her
arrival, that he was the best style of man she had as yet
met in the colony. Mr. Croker, on his side, declared
himself to be encouraged and refreshed by thus meeting
with a genuine English lady not afraid to speak out her
mind with respect to this confounded country, and its
ways, means, and inhabitants.</p>
<p>The Count, fearing that the evening would be an
unprofitable investment of his talents and graces, particularly
in the matter of Miss Neuchamp, by whom he was
treated with studied coldness, departed after having sung
his song. This effort merely recalled to Augusta some
occasion when she had heard it very much better performed
in the Grand Opera at Paris. Jermyn Croker,
who had never heard it before, openly depreciated the air,
the words, the expression, and execution. With more
than one household languishing for his presence, this was
a state of matters not to be continued, so the Count, with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">97</span>
graceful apologies and vows of pressing engagements,
took his departure.</p>
<p>‘You and I, Middleton, can go home to the club
together, now that the <i>chevalier d’industrie</i>—beg your
pardon, Frankston—I mean, of the Order of the Legion
of Honour, Kaiser Fritz, and all his other orders, medals,
and decorations—— But I daresay the first represents
his truest claim.’</p>
<p>‘You are always charitably well informed, we know
that, Croker,’ said Mr. Middleton. ‘Mind, I don’t put my
trust in princes or counts of <i>his</i> sort. I wonder how he
gets along. Still swimmingly?’</p>
<p>‘Don’t think the fellow has a shilling in the world
myself—never did,’ replied Croker, with cheerful disbelief.
‘But from what I heard the other day, he will have to
make his grand <i>coup</i> soon, now that it’s known his chance
of marrying Harriet Folleton is all up.’</p>
<p>‘Is it finally unsettled, then, Mr. Croker?’ said Antonia.
‘Every one said she admired him so much.’</p>
<p>‘She is quite equal to that or any other madness, I
believe,’ said the well-informed Jermyn; ‘and, with her
mother’s extraordinary folly to back her, there is no limit
to the insanity she is capable of. But the old man <i>has</i> a
little sense—people who have made a pot of money often
have—and he stopped the whole affair last week.’</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>Mr. Neuchamp was, perhaps, more disturbed in mind
than he had ever been since his arrival in Australia
when he received the unusually laconic letter referred to
from Paul Frankston. Surprise, anger, uncertainty by
turns took possession of his soul. A wholly new and
strangely mingled sensation arose in his mind. Had he
misinterpreted his own emotions as well as those of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">98</span>
Antonia? That such was the case as to his own feeling
was evidenced by his sudden and unreasonable rage when
he thought of Hardy Baldacre in the character of an
accepted suitor for the hand of the unconventional, innocent
girl whose half-childish, half-womanly expressions of
wonder, admiration, dislike, or approval, called forth by
incidents in their daily studies, he could <i>now</i> so clearly
remember.</p>
<p>Had he, then, won that priceless gem, the unbought
love of a pure and loving heart—no fleeting fancy, born
of vanity or caprice, but the deeply-rooted, sacred, lifelong
devotion of an untarnished virgin-soul, of a cultured
and lofty intellect?</p>
<p>This heavenly jewel had been suspended by a crowned
angel above his head, and had he not, with sordid indifference,
bent earthward, all unheeding, save of hard and
anxious travail? He had narrowed his mind to beeves
and kine, dry seasons and wet, all the merest workaday
vulgarities of short-sighted mortals, resolute only in the
pursuit of dross.</p>
<p>Had he, from neglect, heedlessness, absence, however
indispensable, chilled the fond ardour of that lonely heart,
cast the priceless treasure into careless or unworthy
hands? Who was he, that a girl so much courted, so
richly dowered in every way, as Antonia Frankston,
should wait till youth was over for his deliberate approval?
And yet, if she <i>had</i> delayed but for a short while longer—till
<i>the rain came</i>, in fact. Ah me! was not all the
Australian world waiting with exhausted, upturned eyes
for that crowning, long-delayed blessing? Fancy such a
reason being proffered in England. Weddings, in that
happy land, were occasionally postponed till a semblance
of fine weather might be calculated upon, but surely only<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">99</span>
in this antipodean land of contrast and confusion did any
one defer the great question of his life until the <i>departure</i>
of fine weather. Antonia was, doubtless, besieged by hosts
of suitors, among them this infernal, lying scoundrel of a
cad, Hardy Baldacre, besides Jermyn Croker, the Count,
Hartley Selmore, and numberless others. Madness was in
his thoughts—he would go down, rain or no rain, wet or
dry, tempest or zephyr, hurricane or calm. He would
hunt for the ruffian Baldacre, and slay him where they
met.</p>
<p>Nevertheless he must at once answer Paul’s letter,
which he did to the effect that, ‘He wondered that his
old friends should believe any mere fabrications, unsupported
by testimony, to his prejudice. Not that there
was anything discreditable about the report, if true; but
this was <i>not</i> true. His cousin, with misplaced heroism,
had visited him in his solitude; a refined and highly
educated woman, as would be apparent to all, she certainly
was. But as a <i>wife</i> he had never thought of her, nor
could he, if their existence ran parallel for years.’ Having
despatched the letter, Ernest felt easier in mind, more
removed from that condition the most irritating and intolerable
of all, the accusation of wrong without the
power of justification. It was hard to resist an almost
uncontrollable desire to rush down to Sydney then and
there to set himself right with his friends. But, as he
ran over the obstacles to such a course, it seemed, on cooler
thought, to be unadvisable in every way. First, there
was the extreme difficulty of performing the journey: he
had not a horse at Rainbar capable of carrying him across
to the mail station. When he got there it was problematical
whether the contractor was running a wheel mail
or not. It would be undesirable, even ridiculous, to find<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">100</span>
himself a couple of hundred miles from home, stranded on
the endless, dry, hopeless plain. To make a lengthened
stay in Sydney, should he get there, was not to be thought
of under his present circumstances of debt and anxiety.
‘No,’ he said, as he crushed the feeling back with a self-repression
more nearly allied to heroism than mere ostentatious
efforts of courage, ‘no, my colours are nailed to
the masthead, and there shall they hang till the cry of
“victory” is once more heard, or till the fight is lost
beyond mortal hope.‘</p>
<p>So, sadly yet steadfastly, Ernest Neuchamp turned
himself to the monotonous tasks which, like those of
sailors on a desert island, or of the crew of a slowly-sailing
ship, were yet carried on with daily, hopeless
regularity. Still the ashen-gray pastures became more
withered and deathlike. Still the sad, staggering lines of
cattle paced in along the well-worn dusty trails to their
watering-places, and paced back like bovine processions
after witnessing the funeral obsequies of individuals of
their race, which experience, in truth, was daily theirs.</p>
<p>Then the diet, once not distasteful to the much-enduring
palate of youth, became wellnigh intolerable:
the flaccid unfed meat, the daily bread with never a
condiment, the milkless tea, the utter absence of all fruit,
vegetable, herb, or esculent. Truly, as in those ancient
days when a pastoral people record their sorrowful
chronicles of the dry and thirsty region where no water
is, ‘the famine was sore in the land.’</p>
<p>At this time, so dreary, so endless, so crushing in its
isolated, unchanging, helpless misery, Ernest was unutterably
thankful for the hope and consolation which his
studious habits afforded him. His library, the day’s work
done, filled up his lonely evening as could no other employment<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">101</span>
possible under the circumstances. He ransacked
his moderate references for records of similar calamities
in all lands which, unlike the ‘happy isles’ of Britain,
are from time to time invaded with drought, the chief
agent in all the recorded wholesale destruction of animal
life. He noted with painstaking and laborious accuracy
the duration, the signs, the consequences, the termination
of such dread seasons. From old books of Australian
exploration he learned, almost by heart, the sad experiences
of the pioneers of the land when they stood
face to face with what to them were new and terrible
foes.</p>
<p>‘It is hard,’ said he to himself, as he paced his room
at midnight, after long hours of close application to such
studies, ‘it is hard and depressing to me, and to many a
wretched colonist who has worked longer and has more
on the hazard than I, to see the fruit of our labours
slowly, pitilessly absorbed by this remorseless season.
But what, after all, is a calamity which can be measured,
like this, by a money standard, compared to one which,
like this latest famine in Hindostan, counts its <i>human</i>
victims by tens of thousands, by millions? See the dry
record of a food failure, which comprehends the teeming
human herds which cover the soil more thickly than
even our poor starving flocks!</p>
<p>‘Can we realise thousands of lowly homes where the
mother sits enfeebled and spectral beside her perishing
babes, whose eyes ask for the food which she cannot
grant; where the frenzied peasant rushes, in the agony
of despair, from his cabin that he may not hear the
hunger cries, the death groans of his wife and babes;
where the dead lie unburied; where the beast of prey
alone roams satiated and lordly; where nature mourns<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">102</span>
like a maniac mother with tears of blood for her
murdered offspring?</p>
<p>‘Such is not, may never be, the fate of this wide,
rich, peaceful land, vast and wondrous in its capabilities
in spite of temporary disasters. Let us take heart.
Our losses, our woes, are trifling in comparison with the
world’s great miseries. We are, in comparison, but as
children who lose their holiday gifts of coin or cakes.
Our lives, our health and strength, are all untouched.
We have hope still for our unbartered heritage, the
stronger for past dangers of storm and tide. The world
is yet before us. There are other seas, untried and
slumbering oceans, where our bark may yet ride
with joyous outspread sail. Let us still labour and
endure, until Fate, compelled by our steadfastness, shall
be once more propitious.</p>
<div class="poetry-container"><div class="poetry"><div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">‘Si fractus illabitur orbis</div>
<div class="verse indent4">Impavidum ferient ruinæ.</div>
</div></div></div>
<p>I hardly expected to be quoting Horace at Rainbar, but the
old boy probably had some experience of untoward seasons,
sunshiny desolation, like this of ours. I don’t know
whether “Impavidum” applies strictly to any one but
Levison. I am afraid that the “fractus orbis” pertains
to our cosmos of credit, which, shattered to its core, will
strike us all soon and put us to the proof of our philosophy.‘</p>
<p>A trifling distraction was created about this time,
much to Ernest’s relief, by the arrival of Mr. Cottonbush,
who had received instructions from Mr. Levison to
muster, brand, and take delivery of the small herd of
cattle, the single flock of sheep, and the lot of horses
which that far-seeing speculator had purchased from the
brothers Freeman. This pastoral plenipotentiary, a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">103</span>
wiry, reticent individual, utterly impervious to every
wile and stratagem which the art of man in Australia
had hitherto evolved from the very complicated industry
of stock-raising, first informed the Freemans of his
mission, producing a written authority with the awe-striking
signature of Abstinens Levison, and then
reported himself to Mr. Neuchamp.</p>
<p>‘It <i>is</i> a bad season, sir,’ he said, in answer to that
gentleman’s greeting, which of course comprehended the
disastrous state of the weather, ‘and many a one
wouldn’t bother mustering these three or four hundred
crawling cattle. They might be all dead in three
months for all we can see. But Mr. Levison isn’t like
any one else. He sends me a line to do this, or go
there, and I always do it without troubling about the
reasons. <i>He</i> finds them for the lot of us, and pretty fair
ones they generally are when time brings ’em out.’</p>
<p>‘I think <i>I</i> know why he made this bargain,’ said
Ernest, ‘and I must say I wonder more about it every
day. But I am so far of your opinion, now that I am
becoming what you call an “old hand,” that I shall
imitate your example in letting Mr. Levison’s reasons
work themselves out in practice.‘</p>
<p>‘That’s the best way, sir,’ assented the colonel of
cavalry under this pastoral general of division. ‘I’ve
never done anything but report and obey orders since
I’ve been with Levison, this many a year. I used to
talk and argue a bit with him at first. I never do now,
though he’s a man that will always hear what you’ve got
to say, in case he might pick something out of it. But
I never knew him alter his mind after he’d got all the
information he wanted. So it’s lost time talking to him.’</p>
<p>‘And what do <i>you</i> think about this terrible season?’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">104</span>
asked Ernest, anxiously looking at this iron man of the
desert, whose experience was to his, he could <i>now</i> in this
hour of wreck and ruin realise, as immeasurably superior
as the grizzled second mate’s to the cabin boy’s when the
tempest cries aloud with voice of death and the hungry
caverns of the eternal deep are disclosed.</p>
<p>‘It’s bad enough,’ assented Mr. Cottonbush thoughtfully,
‘bad enough; and there’s many a one will
remember it to his dying day. In some places they’ll
lose most of their stock before the winter’s on for want
of feed, and all the rest, when it <i>does</i> come, from the
cold. There were ten thousand fat sheep (or supposed
to be fat) of Lateman’s caught in the Peechelbah mallee
the other day as they were going a short cut. When I
say “caught,” the water had dried up that they reckoned
on, and was only found out when they was half way
through. The sheep went mad and wouldn’t drive. So
did the chap in charge, very nigh. When he got out he
had only some four thousand three hundred odd left.
That was a smash, wasn’t it?‘</p>
<p>‘Sheep are not so bad as cattle in one way,’ said Mr.
Neuchamp; ‘you can travel them and steal grass. A
good many people seem unprincipled enough to resort to
the meanness of filching from their neighbours and the
country generally what no man can spare in this awful
time.’</p>
<p>‘Well,’ said Mr. Cottonbush, smiling and wincing
slightly, ‘it ain’t quite the clean potato, of course; but if
your sheep’s dying at home, what can you do? Every
man for himself, you know; and you can’t let ’em stop
on the run and die before your eyes. We’ve had to do
a bit of it ourselves. But the old man, he bought two
or three whacking big bits of country in the Snowy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">105</span>
Mountains, Long Plains, the Gulf, Yarrangobilly, and
two or three more, enough to feed all the sheep in the
country, and started ours for it directly after shearing,
while the roads were good. <i>He</i> knew what was coming
and provided in time, same as he always does. Blessed
if he didn’t lease a lot of the country he could spare to
people who were hard pushed and came late, so he got
his own share cheap.’</p>
<p>‘And was there abundance of grass and water?’</p>
<p>‘Green grass two feet high, running creeks all the
summer, enough to make your mouth water. If we get
rain down before the snow comes next month our flocks
will come back better than they went, and with half as
much wool again as the plains sheep.’</p>
<p>That day Mr. Cottonbush informed the Freeman
family that, inasmuch as the Rainbar stockyard was a
strong and secure enclosure, and as his employer, Mr.
Levison, was a very particular man in having cattle that
he bought properly branded up, he didn’t like any to be
left over, and they must yard every mother’s son of ‘em.</p>
<p>So, as Mr. Neuchamp had kindly given permission
for his yard to be used, the entire Freeman clan,
including a swarm of brown-faced, bare-legged urchins,
arrived on the following day with the whole of their
herd. It was a strange sight, and not without a
proportion of dramatic interest. The cattle were so
emaciated that they could hardly walk; many of them
staggered and fell. In truth, as they moved up in a
long woebegone procession, they looked like a ghostly
protest against man’s lack of foresight and Heaven’s
wrath. The horses were so weak from starvation that
they could barely carry their riders. One youngster was
fain to jump off his colt, that exhausted animal having<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">106</span>
come to a dead halt, and drive him forward with the
cattle.</p>
<p>Even the men and the boys had a wan and withered
look. Not that they had been on short commons, but,
dusty, sunburned, and nervously anxious to secure every
animal that could walk to the yard, they harmonised
very fittingly with their kine.</p>
<p>When they arrived at the yard Mr. Cottonbush
counted them carefully in, and then signified to the
vendors that, in his opinion, it would be wise of them to
go back and make a final ‘scrape,’ as he expressed it, of
their pasture-ground, lest there might inadvertently have
been any left behind.</p>
<p>‘That sort of thing always leads to trouble, you know,’
said he; ‘there’s a sort of doubt which were branded and
which were not. Now, Mr. Levison bought every hoof
you own, no milkers reserved and all that; he don’t
believe in having any of the best cattle kept back. So
you’d better scour up every beast you can raise before
we begin to brand. We can tail this mob, now they’re
here.’</p>
<p>This supplementary proceeding resulted in the production
of about thirty head of cattle, among which
there curiously happened to be, by accident, half a dozen
cows considerably above the average in point of breeding
and value.</p>
<p>This very trifling matter of a ‘cockatoo’s’ muster
having been thus concluded, all the horses having been
yarded, and the flock of sheep driven up—Mr. Levison
having made it a <i>sine quâ non</i> that he would have all or
none—the fires were lighted and the brands put in.</p>
<p>To the wild astonishment of the Freemans, Mr. Cottonbush, having
put the <img src="images/i_110.jpg" alt="[Ǝ]NE" /> brand in the fire,
commenced<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">107</span>
to place that conjoined hieroglyph upon every cow,
calf, bullock, and steer, assisted by Mr. Windsor, Charley Banks, and
the black boys.</p>
<p>‘Why, “the cove” ain’t bought ‘em, surely?’ said
Joe Freeman, with a look of much distrust and disapproval.
‘Where’s he to get the sugar, I want to
know; or else it’s a “plant” between him and old
Levison.‘</p>
<p>‘When the stock’s counted and branded you’ll get
your cheque,’ said the imperturbable manager; ‘that’s all
you’ve got to bother your head about. It’s no business
of yours, if you’re paid, whether Levison chooses to sell
’em, or boil ’em, or put ’em in a glass case.’</p>
<p>‘Well, I’m blowed,’ said Bill Freeman, ‘if we ain’t
regularly sold. If I’d a-known as they was a-comin’ here,
I’d have seen Levison in the middle of a mallee scrub
with his tongue out for water before I’d have sold him a
hoof. One comfort: the cash is all right, and half of
these crawlers will die before spring.‘</p>
<p>‘Not if rain comes within a month,’ said Mr. Cottonbush
cheerily. ‘You’d be surprised what a fortnight
will do for stock in these places, and the grass grows like
a hotbed. These cattle are smallish and weak, but not
so badly bred. They’ll fill out wonderfully when they
get their fill. You’d better wait and see them counted,
and then you can have your cheque.’</p>
<p>Jack Windsor and Charley Banks worked with a will,
so did the younger members of the yeomanry plantation.
The grown cattle were of course pen-branded. By night-fall
every one was marked very legibly and counted out.
Four hundred and seventy head of cattle over six months
old, eighty-four horses, and twelve hundred mixed sheep,
principally weaners. These last were fire-branded on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">108</span>
the side of the face, provided with a shepherd, and kept
near home.</p>
<p>The necessary preliminaries being concluded, Mr.
Cottonbush handed a cheque, at the prices arranged, to
Abraham Freeman, and turned the horses and cattle out
of the yard.</p>
<p>‘You haven’t a horn or a hoof on Rainbar now,’ said
he composedly; ‘perhaps you have ’em in a better place,
in your breeches pockets; and remember I’ll be up here
next November, or else Mr. Levison, to take up your
selections as agreed. Then, I suppose, you’ll be fixing
yourself down upon some other miserable squatter. You’re
bound not to stop here, you know.’</p>
<p>Having thus accomplished his mission clearly and unmistakably,
Mr. Cottonbush, whose acquaintance Ernest
had first made at Turonia when he took delivery of Mr.
Drifter’s cattle, declared his intention of starting at daybreak.
Waste of time was never laid to the charge of
Mr. Levison’s subordinates. ‘Like master like man’ is
a proverb of unquestionable antiquity. There is more
in it than appears upon the surface. Whatever might
have been the moulding power, it is certain that his
managers, agents, and overseers attached great importance
to those attributes of punctuality, foresight, temperance,
and thrift which were dear to the soul of Abstinens
Levison.</p>
<p>‘I’m glad these crawlers of cattle are branded up and
done with while it’s dry, likewise the horses. All this
kind of work is so much easier and better done in dry
weather,’ said the relaxing manager. ‘They’re not a very
gay lot to look at now. But I shouldn’t wonder to see
you knocking ten pounds a head out of some of those cats
of steers before this day two years.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">109</span></p>
<p>‘Ten pounds a head!’ echoed Ernest. ‘Why not say
twenty, while you’re about it?’</p>
<p>‘You don’t believe it,’ said Mr. Cottonbush calmly,
rubbing his tobacco assiduously in his hands preparatory
to lighting his pipe. ‘Levison writes that stock are
going up in Victoria to astonishing prices, and that what
they’ll reach, if the gold keeps up, no man can tell. So
your cattle <i>might</i> fetch twenty pounds after all.’</p>
<p>‘What would you advise me to do with the Freemans’
stock, now that I have got them?‘ asked Ernest.</p>
<p>‘If I was in your place,’ said Mr. Cottonbush judicially,
‘I should stick to the cattle, for every one of them,
down to the smallest calf, will be good money when the
rain comes. The sheep also you may as well keep:
they’ll pay their own wages if you put ’em out on a bit
of spare back country, and there’s plenty that your cattle
never go near. You could bring ’em in to shear them,
and they’ll increase and grow into money fast enough.
You might have ten thousand sheep on Rainbar and never
know it.’</p>
<p>‘I don’t like sheep much,’ said Ernest; ‘but these
are very cheap, if they live, and there is plenty of room,
as you say. And the horses?’</p>
<p>‘Sell every three-cornered wretch of ’em—a set of
upright-shouldered, useless mongrels—directly you get a
chance,’ said Mr. Cottonbush with unusual energy of
speech. ‘And now you’re able to clear the run of ’em,
being your own, which you never could have done if they
remained theirs. You’d have had young fellows coming
for this colt or that filly till your head was gray.’</p>
<p>‘I hope not,’ said Ernest, laughing; ‘but I am glad
to have all the stock and land of Rainbar in my own hands
once more.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">110</span></p>
<p>Mr. Cottonbush departed at dawn, and once more
Ernest was alone in the gray-stricken, accursed waste,
wherein nor grass grew nor water ran, nor did any of
these everyday miracles of Nature appear likely again to
be witnessed by despairing man.</p>
<p>Still passed by the hungry hordes of travelling sheep,
still the bony skeletons of the passing cattle herds. No
rain, no sign of rain! All pastoral nature, brute and
human, appeared to have been struck with the same
blight, and to be forlorn and moribund. The station
cattle became weaker and less capable of exertion;
‘lower,’ as Charley Banks called it, as the cold autumn
nights commenced to exhibit their keenness. The Freemans
relinquished all control over their cattle, and
chuckled over the weakly state of the Rainbar herd.</p>
<p>The autumn had commenced, a peerless season in all
respects save in the vitally indispensable condition of
moisture. The mornings were crisp, with a suggestive
tinge of frost, the nights absolutely cold, the days, as
usual, cloudless, bright, and warm. If there was any
variation it was in the direction of a lowering, overcast,
cloudy interval, when the bleak winds moaned bodingly,
but led to no other effect than to sweep the dead leaves
and dry sticks, which had so long passed for earth’s
usual covering, into heaps and eddying circular lines.
The roughening coats on the feeble frames of the stock,
now enduring the slow torture of the cold in the lengthening
nights, told a tale of coming collapse, of consummated,
unquestioned ruin. Daily did Ernest Neuchamp dread
to rise, to pass hours of hopeless despondency among
these perishing forms, dying creatures roaming over a
dead earth during their brief term of survival! Daily
did he almost come to loathe the sight of the unpitying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">111</span>
sun, which, like a remorseless enemy, spared not one
beam of his burning rays, veiled not one glare of his
deadly glance. He had an occasional reminiscence of the
steady, reassuring tones, the unwavering purpose of which
abode with the very presence of Abstinens Levison. But
for these he felt at times as though he could have distrusted
the justice of an overruling Power, have cursed
the hour of his birth, and delivered himself over to despair
and reprobation.</p>
<p>While Mr. Neuchamp was not far removed from this
most unusual and decidedly unphilosophical state of mind,
it so chanced on a certain afternoon (it was that of
Wednesday, the eighteenth day of May, as was long after
remembered) that he and Jack Windsor were out together,
a few miles from home, upon the ironical but necessary
mission of procuring a ‘fat beast.’ This form of speech
may be thought to have savoured too much of the wildly
improbable. The real quest was, of course, for an animal
in such a state of comparative emaciation as should not
preclude his carcass for being converted into human food.
The meat was not palatable, but it supported life in the
hardy Anglo-Saxon frame. It was all they had, and they
were constrained to make the best of it.</p>
<p>‘Look at these poor devils of cattle,’ said Jack,
pointing to a number of hide-bearing anatomies moving
their jaws mechanically over the imperceptible pasture.
‘They have water, but what the deuce they find to eat I
can’t see. There’s that white steer, that red cow, and
one or two more, with their jaws swelled up. There’s
plenty of ’em like that.’</p>
<p>‘From what cause?’ asked Mr. Neuchamp. ‘Cancer
is not becoming epidemic, I hope.’</p>
<p>‘It comes from the shortness of the feed, <i>I</i> think,’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">112</span>
returned Jack; ‘you see the poor creatures keep licking
and picking every time they see a blade of grass, if it’s
only a quarter of an inch long; half their time they
miss their aim and rattle their jaws together with
nothing between them. That’s what hurts ’em, I expect,
and after a bit it makes their heads swell.’</p>
<p>‘I wonder what they would think in England of such
an injury, occurring in what we always believed to be a
rich pastoral country.’</p>
<p>‘So it is, sir, when the season’s right. I expect in
England you have your bad seasons in another way, and
get smothered and flooded out with rain; and the crops
are half rotten; and the poor man (I suppose he is
<i>really</i> a poor man there, no coasting up one side of a
river and down the other for six months, with free rations
all the time) gets tucked up a bit.’</p>
<p>‘As you say, Jack, there are bad seasons, which mean
bad harvests, in England,’ answered Ernest, always
inclined to the diversion of philosophical inquiry; ‘and
the poor man there, as you say, properly so called, inasmuch
as he requires more absolute shelter, more sufficient
clothes in the terrible winter of the north, than our
friends who pursue the ever-lengthening but not arduous
track of the wallaby in Australia. They may in England,
and do occasionally, I grieve to say, if unemployed and
therefore unfed, actually <i>starve to death</i>. But what are
those cattle just drawing in?’</p>
<p>‘Those belong to a lot that keeps pretty well back,’
answered Jack, ‘and they’re different in their way from
these cripples we’ve been looking at, as they’ve had
something to <i>eat</i>, but they’re pretty well choked for a
drink. I don’t know when they’ve had one. That’s
how it is, you see, sir; half the cattle’s afraid to go<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">113</span>
away for the water, and the rest won’t leave what
little feed there is till they’re nearly mad with drouth.
It’s cruel work either way. I’m blest if that wasn’t a
drop of rain!’</p>
<p>This sudden and rare phenomenon caused Ernest to
take a cursory examination of the sky, which he had
long forborne to regard with hope or fear. It was clouded
over. But such had been the appearance of the firmament
scores of times during the last six months. The air
was still, sultry, and full of the boding calm which precedes
a storm. Such signs had been successfully counterfeited,
as Ernest bitterly termed it, once a month since
the last half-forgotten showery spring. He had observed
a halo round the moon on the previous night. There had
been dozens of dim circular rings round that planet all
the long summer through. The rain was certainly falling
now. So had it commenced, on precisely such a day,
with the same low banks of clouds, many a time and oft,
and stopped abruptly in about twenty minutes, the
clouds disappearing, and the old presentment reverting
to a staring blue sky, a mocking, unveiled sun therein,
with the suddenness of a transformation scene in a
pantomime.</p>
<p>‘I think that spotted cow looks as near meat as
anything we’re likely to get, sir,’ said Jack Windsor,
interrupting the train of distrustful reverie. ‘It begins
to look as if it meant it. Lord send we may get well
soaked before we get home!’</p>
<p>Mr. Windsor’s pious aspiration was appropriate this
time. They reaped the benefit of a genuine and complete
saturation before they reached the yard with the small
lot of cattle they were compelled to take in for companionship
to their ‘fat beast.’ There was no appearance<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">114</span>
of haste about the rain, no tropical violence, no waterspout
business. It trickled down in slow, monotonous,
still, and settled drizzle, much as it might have done in
North Britain. It only did not stop; that was all. It
was hopefully continuous all the evening. And when
Mr. Neuchamp opened his casement at midnight he
thankfully listened to the soaking, ceaseless downpour,
which seemed no nearer a sudden conclusion than during
the first hour.</p>
<p>Before dawn Mr. Neuchamp was pacing his verandah,
having darted out from his couch the very moment that
he awoke. The temperature had sensibly fallen; so had
the clouds, which were low and black; and still the
rain streamed down more heavily than at first. There
was apparently no alteration likely to take place during
the day. The water commenced to flow in the small
channels. The minor watercourses, the gullies, and
creeks were filling. Wonder of wonders—it was a
settled, set-in, hopelessly wet day! What a blessed and
wonderful change from last week! Ernest had a
colloquy with Charley Banks about things in general,
and then permitted himself a whole day’s rest—reading
a little, ciphering a little, and looking up his correspondence,
which had fallen much into arrear. As the
day wore on the rain commenced to show determination,
heavily, hour after hour, with steady fall, saturating the
darkened earth, no longer dusty, desolate, hopelessly
barren. The gaping fissures were filled. The long
disused ruts and gutters ran full and foaming down to
their ultimate destination, the river. That great stream
refused to acknowledge any immediate change of level
from so inconsiderable a cause as a rainfall so far from
its source. But, doubtless, as Charley Banks pointed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">115</span>
out, in a week or more it would ‘come down’ in might
and majesty, when the freshets at the head waters should
have time to gather forces and swell the yellow tide.
It was well if there was not then a regular flood, but
that would do them no harm; might swamp out the
Freemans, perhaps, but as long as Tottie wasn’t drowned,
and the old woman, the rest of the family might be
swept down to Adelaide for all he, Charley, cared.
So let it rain till all was blue. There was no mistake
this time. It was a general rain. We should have
forty-eight hours of it before it stopped. Every hoof of
stock was off the frontage now and away back, where
there was good shelter and a trifle of feed. In a
fortnight after this there would be good ‘bite’ all over
Rainbar run. We should have a little comfort in our
lives now. What a pull it was, that old Cottonbush had
branded up those last stores before the rain came.</p>
<p>Thus Mr. Charles Banks, jubilantly prophetic, with
the elasticity of youth, having thrown off at one effort
all the annoyance and privation of the famine year,
was fully prepared for an epoch of marvels and general
prosperity.</p>
<p>The day ended as it had commenced. There was
not a moment’s cessation from the soaking, pouring,
saturating, dripping downpour of heaven’s precious rain.
‘As the shower upon the mown grass,’ saith the olden
Scripture of the day of David the King. Doubtless the
great City of Palaces was erst surrounded by shaven
lawns, by irrigated fields and gardens. But on the
skirts of the far-stretching yellow deserts, tenanted then
as now by the wild tribes, to whom pasture for their
camels and asses, and horses and sheep, was as the life-blood
of their veins, doubtless there were thousands of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">116</span>
leagues all barren, baked sterility, until the long-desired
rain set in, when, as if by magic, herbs and waving
grains and flowerets fair sprang up, and rejoiced the
hearts of the tribe, from the silver-bearded sheik to the
laughing child.</p>
<p>So it would be at Rainbar. Ernest knew this from
many a conversation which he had had upon the subject
with Jack Windsor and Charley Banks. In this warm,
dry-soiled country, the growth of pasture under favourable
circumstances is well-nigh incredible. Nature
adapts herself to the most widely differing conditions of
existence with amazing fertility of resource. In more
temperate zones the partial heat which withers the
flower and the green herb when cut down, slays the
plant and destroys germination in the seed for evermore.
Here, in the wild waste, when the fierce and burning
blast revels over scorched brown prairies, and the
whirlwind and the sand column dance together over
heated sands, the plant life is well and truly adapted to
the strange soil, the stranger clime. The tall grasses
grow hard and gray, or faint yellow, under the daily
desiccation which spares no tender growth; but they
remain nutritive and life-sustaining for an incredible
period, if but the necessary cloud water can be supplied
at long intervals. Then the hard-pushed pastoral colonist,
when he found that his flocks had bared to famine pitch
the pastures within reach of the watercourses, which were
his sole dependence in the earlier days, was compelled
to resort to the most ancient practice of well-digging, of
which he might have gained the idea from the familiar
records of a hard-set pastoral people in the sandy wastes
of Judea. Receding to the wide plains and waterless
forests of the vast region which lay cruelly distant from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">117</span>
any known stream or fountain, which was in summer
regularly abandoned by the aboriginal denizens of the
land, he sank, at much expense, wells of great depth—at
first with uncertain result; but, though much of
the water thus painfully obtained—for from three to
five hundred pounds for two to three hundred feet
sinking was no uncommon expense in a single well—was
brackish, much salt, still progress was made. The
stock was enabled in the midst of summer heat or protracted
autumn drought to feed upon these previously
locked-up pastures, upon the saline herbs and plants,
the nutritious, aromatic shrubs peculiar to this land,
where no white man had ever before seen stock except
in winter.</p>
<p>By degrees it began to be asserted that ‘back country,’
<i>i.e.</i> the lands remote from all visible means of subsistence
for flocks and herds, as far as water was concerned, paid
the speculative pastoral occupier better than the ‘frontage,’
or land in the neighbourhood of permanent creeks,
and of the few well-known rivers. <i>There</i> roamed that
unconscionable beast of prey, the all-devouring free
selector. He could select the choicest bends, the richest
flats, the deepest river reaches, even where the squatter
had fenced or enclosed. For were not the waters free
to all? He naturally appropriated the best and most
tempting conjunctions of ‘land and water.’ These were
precisely those which were most profitable, most necessary,
occasionally most indispensable to the proprietor of
the run.</p>
<p>But it was not so with the back blocks. There
capital yet retained much of its ancient supremacy.
The wielder of that implement or weapon was enabled
to cause his long-silent wilderness to blossom as the rose,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">118</span>
by means of dams and wells. He was in a position also
to drive off, keep out, and withstand the invading pseudo-grazier,
with his sham purchases and his wrongful grass
rights.</p>
<p>Thus, by a wise provision of the Land Act, all improvements
of a value exceeding forty pounds sterling,
when placed by the pastoral tenant upon the Crown
lands which he was facetiously supposed to rent, protect
the lands upon which they stand, or which, in the case
of a well, they underlie; that is to say, a five-hundred-guinea
well or a hundred-pound dam cannot be free-selected
or taken cool possession of as a conditional
purchase by the land marauder of the period. Some
people might see a slight flavour of fairness in this provision
which has not always in other colonies, Victoria
notably, been granted by the democratic wolf to the
conservative lamb. However the Government of New
South Wales may have erred in other respects, it has in
the main so far ruled the outnumbered pastoralists with
a courtesy, fairness, and freedom from small greed such
as might be expected from one body of gentlemen in
responsible dealing with a class of similar social rank.</p>
<p>One successful well or dam, therefore, converted a
block of country hitherto useless for nine months out of
the twelve into a run capable of carrying ten thousand
sheep all the year round. Of course, any portion of the
Crown estate the conditional purchaser might ‘take up,’
or, without notice, occupy. But where was he to procure
his water from? He had not often five hundred pounds,
or if so, did not ‘believe’ in such solemn disbursement
for ‘mere improvements.’ Therefore he still haunted,
cormorant-like, the rivers and creeks—the ‘permanent
water’ of the colonist. To the younger sons of ancient<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">119</span>
houses, scions of Howards, Somersets, and of the untitled
nobility of Britain, he conceded the right to live like
hermits in the Thebaid, upon their artificially and expensively
watered back blocks.</p>
<p>A special peculiarity of the ocean-like plains of inmost
Australia is the miraculous growth of vegetation after the
profuse irrigation which invariably succeeds a drought.
In the warm dry earth, now converted into a bed of
red or black mud, saturated to its lowest inch, and rich
for procreation of every green thing, lies a hoard of seeds
of wondrous number and variety of species. Broad and
green, in a few days, as the vivid growth from the aged,
still fruitful bosom of mysterious Nile, along with the
ordinary pasture appear the seed leaves of unknown,
half-forgotten grasses, reeds, plants, flowers, never noticed
except in an abnormally wet season. In cycles of
ordinary moisture, the true degree of saturation not
having been reached, they lie death-like year after year,
until, aroused by Nature’s unerring signal, they arise and
burst forth into full vitality. In such a time an astonishing
variety of herbs, plants, and flowers is to be seen
mingling with gigantic grasses, such as Charley Banks
described to Mr. Neuchamp when he prophesied, after
forty-eight hours of steady rain had fallen, that on the
Back Lake Plains this year he would be able to tie the
grass tops together before him, <i>as he sat on horseback</i>.
Mr. Neuchamp had never before discovered his lieutenant
in a wilful exaggeration; but on this occasion he felt
mortified that he should still be supposed a fit subject
upon which to foist humorous fabrications.</p>
<p>‘I see you don’t believe me,’ said Charley, rather put
out in turn at not being credited. ‘Let’s call Jack.
You ask him the height of the tallest grass he ever saw<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">120</span>
in this part of the country in a real wet season. There
he goes. Here, Jack, Mr. Neuchamp wants to ask you a
question.’</p>
<p>‘I wish to know,’ said Ernest gravely, ‘to what height
you have ever known the grass grow up here in a firstrate
season?’</p>
<p>‘Well, I don’t know about measurement,’ said Jack,
‘but I remember at Wardree one year we had to muster
up all the old screws on the run to give the shepherds to
ride.’</p>
<p>‘Why was that?’</p>
<p>‘Because they couldn’t <i>see</i> their sheep in the long
grass; and out on a plain where the grass was over their
own heads, it was hard work not to lose themselves. Of
course it was an out-and-out year; something like this is
going to be, I expect. Why, I’ve tied the grass over my
horse’s shoulder in the spring, as <i>I’ve been riding along</i>,
many a time and often.’</p>
<p>Charley Banks smiled.</p>
<p>‘That will do, John,’ said Mr. Neuchamp.</p>
<p>‘I apologise fully,’ said Ernest, as soon as they were
alone. ‘I promise never to lack that confidence in your
statements, my dear fellow, which I must say I have
hitherto found in every way deserved. How are the
cattle doing? You have been out all day, and must have
been soaked through and through.’</p>
<p>‘I didn’t put on anything that water could hurt,’ said
Charley, ‘or very much in the way of quantity either.
Jack and I only wanted to be sure of the line the cattle
took, so as to get after them to-morrow. We could track
them as if they had been walking in batter pudding. If
they got off the run now we should have no horses to
fetch them back with, and if we left them away till they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">121</span>
got strong, they’d be broken in to some other man’s run,
which would be so much time lost. Luckily they all
made for the Back Lake, where there’s some sandy ridges
and good bedding ground. Freeman’s cattle are mixed
up with the “circle dots,” which is all the better, as they
know the run well, and can’t be got off it. Lucky they’re
branded.‘</p>
<p>‘And how about the old herd?’</p>
<p>‘We didn’t tire our horses going after them, but, by
the main run of the tracks, the nearest of them will stop
at the Outer Lake timber; and the head cattle will go
slap back to the very outside boundary. We’ve no neighbours
at the back, so the farther back they go the fresher
the feed will be. <i>They’re</i> right.’</p>
<p>‘I suppose they will begin to improve in a few
months?’</p>
<p>‘Improve?’ echoed Mr. Banks; ‘if this weather is
followed up, every beast on Rainbar run, down to a
three-months-old calf, will be mud fat <i>in three months</i>,
and you may begin to take away the first draft of a
thousand head of fat cattle that we can send to market—and
a rising market, too—before next winter.’</p>
<p>Mr. Neuchamp did not shout aloud, nor cast any part
of his clothing into the air, like Jack Windsor: his way
of receiving sudden tidings of weal or woe was not demonstrative.
But he grasped Charley Banks’s hand, and
looked into the face of the pleased youngster with a
gleam in his eye and a look of triumph such as the latter
had rarely witnessed there.</p>
<p>‘We have had to wait—“to suffer and be strong,”—Charley,
my boy,‘ he said, ‘but I think the battle is won
now. You shall have your share of the spoils.’</p>
<p>When Mr. Neuchamp sallied forth on the second day<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">122</span>
after the rain, he could not but consider himself in a
somewhat similar position to one of the Noachian family
taking an excursion after the flood. True, his flood had
been of a temporary and wholly beneficial nature, but
not the less had it entirely altered the expression upon
the face of Nature. Aqueous effects and results were
prominently apparent everywhere. Mud and hardened
sandy spaces, already flushed with green, had succeeded
to the pale, dusty, monotoned landscape.</p>
<p>Thus, once more, short as had been the time of change,
the eye was relieved by the delicate but distinct shade of
green which commenced to drape the long-sleeping, spellbound
frame of the mighty Mother. Even in the driest
seasons, except on river flats, there are minute green
spikelets of grass at or just below the surface. Let but
one shower of rain fall, softly cherishing, and on the
morrow it is marvellous to perceive what an approach to
verdure has been made. Then the family of clovers, long
dead and buried, but having bequeathed myriads of burr-protected,
oleaginous seed vessels to the kind keeping of
the baked and powdered soil, reappear in countless hosts
of minute leaflets, which grow with incredible rapidity.
It is not too much to say that in little more than a week
after the ‘drought broke up’ at Rainbar there was grass
several inches high over the entire run. The salt bushes
commenced to put forth tender and succulent leaves. All
nature drew one great sigh of relief, every living creature—from
the small fur-covered rodents and marsupials which
pattered along their minute but well-beaten paths when the
sun was low to the water, from the wild mare that galloped
in snorting through the midnight, with her lean, tireless
offspring, to sink her head to the very eyes in the river
when she reached it, to the thirsty merino flock at the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">123</span>
well-trough, or the impoverished herd that struggled in
hungered and athirst to muddy creek or treacherous
river bank—every living creature did sensibly rejoice
and give thanks, audibly or otherwise, for this merciful
termination to the long agony of the Great Drought.</p>
<p>That morning of the 18th May was a fateful morn
to many a struggling beginner like Ernest Neuchamp;
to many a grizzled veteran of pioneer campaigns and long
wars of exploration, of peril of body and anguish of mind;
to many a burdened sire with boys at school to pay for,
and the girls’ governess to consider, whom the next year’s
losses, if <i>the rain held off</i>, would compel the family to
dispense with.</p>
<p>On the night which preceded that day of deliverance
Ernest Neuchamp went to bed utterly ruined and hopelessly
insolvent; he arose a rich man, able within six
months to pay off double the amount of every debt he
owed in the world, and possessed beside of a run and
stock the market value of which exceeded at least four-fold
what he had paid for it.</p>
<p>This was a change, sudden as an earthquake, swift as
a revolution, almost awe-striking in its shower of sudden
benefits, dazzling in its abrupt change from the dim light
of poverty, self-denial, and anxiety, to an unquestioned
position of wealth, reputation, and undreamed-of success.</p>
<p>How differently passed the days now! What variety,
what hope, what renewed pleasure in the superintendence
of details ever leading upward to profit and satisfaction
in a hundred different directions!</p>
<p>Day by day the grass grew and bourgeoned and
clothed the flats with a meadow-like growth akin to that
of his native country. None of this amazing crop, however,
was used except by the flocks of travelling sheep<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">124</span>
returning strong and well-doing to their long-abandoned
homes. These passing hosts made so little impression upon
the wonderfully rapid growth that, as Mr. Banks averred,
‘you could not see where they had been.’ The station
cattle, and even the small flock of sheep were ‘well out
back,’ and, presumably, were content to leave the ‘frontage’
as a reserve for summer needs.</p>
<p>Concurrently with this plenty and profusion, in which
every head of the Rainbar stock revelled, from Mr.
Levison’s ‘BI,’ whose skin now shone with recovered
condition, and who snorted and kicked up his heels as he
galloped into the yard with the working horses, to the
most dejected weaner of the Freeman ‘crawlers,’ came
strangely exciting news of the wondrous discovery of
gold in Victoria, and the rapid rise in the price of
meat.</p>
<p>Fat stock were higher and higher in each succeeding
market, until the previously unknown and, as the democratic
newspapers said, unjustifiable and improper price
of ten pounds per head for fat cattle was reached, with a
corresponding advance for sheep. As this astounding
but by no means dismaying intelligence was conveyed to
Mr. Neuchamp in the hastily-torn-open newspaper which
he was glancing at outside, just as Jack Windsor had
directed his attention to the gambols of ‘BI,’ who, with
arched neck and perfect outline, fully justified Mr. Levison’s
encomium upon his shape, that gentleman’s prophecy
as to the enhanced value of Rainbar reaching twenty
thousand pounds when ‘BI’ kicked up his heels seemed
likely to be fulfilled to the letter.</p>
<p>Mr. Windsor, in his enthusiasm concerning the condition
of the horse left in his charge, and that of the stud
generally, had for the moment omitted to open an unpretending<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">125</span>
missive delivered by the same post which lay
in his hand. As Ernest turned to walk towards the
house he was stopped by the sound of a deep and bitter
curse, most infrequent now upon the lips of his much
altered follower.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">126</span>
<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII</a></h2>
</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘What is the matter, John?’ said Ernest kindly.
‘Any had news?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘I see that something unusual has happened,’ said
Mr. Neuchamp, with sympathy in his voice. ‘Tell me
all about it.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">127</span></p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘What time have you to spare between this and the
day of the wedding?’ inquired Ernest.</p>
<p>‘It’s to be on Friday week,’ said Jack.</p>
<p>‘You can never be there in time—it is impossible!’
cried Ernest in a tone of voice which showed his sympathy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">128</span>
with his faithful servant. ‘I pity you sincerely,
John!’</p>
<p>‘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 <i>can</i> 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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I <i>shall</i> 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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">129</span></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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</p>
<p>
On to his croupe the fair ladye he swung,<br />
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">130</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">131</span>
vigour, as the sick from the physician, as the babe from
the mother’s tendance.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">132</span></p>
<p>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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">133</span>
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 <i>them</i>, out of it all. Then they had to wait
idle on their land till November, or less lose the cash
agreed on.</p>
<p>‘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.‘</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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
<i>next time</i> when they were well off.’</p>
<p>One afternoon Charley Banks came tearing in, displaying
in triumph a provincial journal, the <i>Parramatta
Postboy</i>, 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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">134</span>
to Mr. Neuchamp the following extract, from which it
may be gathered that Mr. Windsor ‘was on time,’ in
spite of all apparent obstacles:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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.</p></blockquote>
<p>‘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.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">135</span>
Well, Carry Walton’s a stunning girl, and it will be the
making of Jack. He’ll go as straight as a die now.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘How shall we manage with the cattle without him?’
queried Mr. Banks.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I do not think that arrangement would quite answer,’
quoth Mr. Neuchamp gravely.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">136</span>
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.</p>
<p>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
<i>had</i> to put Tottie Freeman in charge of Rainbar while he
was on the road.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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 <i>now</i> 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?’</p>
<p>Ernest mentioned that, presuming upon old acquaintance,
such had been his intention.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">137</span></p>
<p>‘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——’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Perhaps there <i>may</i> 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.’</p>
<p>‘H—m!’ replied Ernest thoughtfully, ‘that involves
a large question—several large questions, in fact. Good-bye
for the present.’</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">138</span>
had done his devoir was about to receive the traditional
guerdon, so necessary to the perfect equilibrium of the
world of chivalry and romance.</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>As Miss Neuchamp, also attired in full evening costume,
approached, while not far behind, with the air of a
confirmed <i>habitué</i>, 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.</p>
<p>‘I am truly glad to see you, my dear Ernest,’ she said,
offering him her cheek with proper cousinly coolness. ‘I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">139</span>
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?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘And suppose stock rise higher still?’ queried Mr.
Frankston, smiling at the magnificent dogmatism of his
unsentimental friend.</p>
<p>‘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 <i>can’t</i> rise. Five pounds all
round for young and old on the station is a price never
before reached in Australia. You <i>must</i> see the crash<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">140</span>
that is coming. Really, now, without humbug, don’t you
know that there will be a change before Christmas?’</p>
<p>‘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 <i>will</i> sell, you might give me the offer.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘And you took it?’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.‘<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">141</span></p>
<p>‘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 <i>do</i> believe that it’s past
seven o’clock.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">142</span>
uppermost, and you’ll end suitably with an unparalleled
Jacquerie.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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!’</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">143</span>
with the air of the captain of a sinking ship who has
vowed to stand by her while a plank floats.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">144</span>
think I see my way.’</p>
<p>‘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?‘</p>
<p>‘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 <i>really</i> his?
The banks may have the lion’s share for all anybody
knows.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">145</span>
believe this is a bottle of the Manzanares you prefer,
and we’ll join the ladies, which means adjourn to the
verandah.’</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>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 <i>savans</i> 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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">146</span>
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.’</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">147</span>
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 <i>while
life endures</i>?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">148</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘“I’ve just had information that the Sydney people<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">149</span>
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.</p>
<p>‘“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.</p>
<p>‘“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.</p>
<p>‘“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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">150</span>
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.”</p>
<p>‘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.‘</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘How much heavier is the load of my obligations to
you to become?’ asked Ernest. ‘I feel as if I should<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">151</span>
never live to free myself from the debt I owe you
already.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">152</span></p>
<p>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 <i>de
lunatico inquirendo</i>. 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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">153</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘We have not as yet advertised it,’ replied Mr.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">154</span>
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
<img src="images/i_158.jpg" alt="M[D]" />
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.’</p>
<p>‘The huts <i>are</i> 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?’</p>
<p>‘Half cash, and the balance in approved bills, at one
and two years, secured upon the stock and station.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">155</span>
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.</p>
<p>When Mr. Neuchamp produced this small but important
document to Paul Frankston, that commercial
mentor rubbed his hands with unconcealed satisfaction.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">156</span>
over Rainbar and Mildool—a second one—and then you
may draw a cheque for the ten thousand as soon as you
like.’</p>
<p>‘And what about the “approved” bills?‘</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Well, if this shot turns out badly,’ said Paul, ‘I’ll
promise not to <i>back your bills any more</i>. 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.‘</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">157</span>
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.</p>
<p>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—<i>they</i> 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
<i>look</i> at him—oh! so differently.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">158</span>
Fiend, he arises one day ruined, undone, and despised by
himself, neglected by others.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>ad infinitum</i>, 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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">159</span>
‘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.</p>
<p>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 <i>did</i>
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.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">160</span></p>
<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX</a></h2>
</div>
<p>A letter had been despatched to Mr. Windsor’s address,
of which his master had knowledge, requesting him to
proceed to Sydney upon important business. Accordingly,
at an early hour next day he presented himself at the
club steps and greeted his employer with a subdued air of
satisfaction, as if doubtful how far his recent decided
action had met with approval.</p>
<p>‘I am very glad to see you, John,’ said Mr. Neuchamp;
‘I hope Mrs. Windsor is well. I congratulate you both
heartily. Yours was a spirited plan, and your success in
the carrying out, or rather the carrying off, of my old
friend Carry most enviable. I was afraid there might
be obstacles. How did you arrange it all? Suppose
you walk over to the Domain with me, and tell me all
about it.’</p>
<p>Mr. Windsor, much doubting if this were the important
business upon which he had been summoned to town, but
not unwilling to relate the tale of his victory to so sympathising
an auditor as he knew his master to be, thus
commenced—</p>
<p>‘You know, sir, I had a tightish ride to get over before
I caught the mail. I felt very queer, I tell you, as if I
didn’t meet that identical coach I should never get down<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">161</span>
in time. I was horrid frightened every time I thought
about it, there’s no mistake. I saved Ben Bolt as much
as I could the first day and bandaged his legs when I got
to the stable late at night. I did eighty miles that day,
and dursn’t go farther for fear I might crack him at the
first burst. I was up with the stars and fed him. I
didn’t sleep much, you’re sure, and at three in the morning
I was off for a hundred mile ride! and that heat, <i>a man’s
life</i>! Mine wouldn’t have mattered much afterwards, if
I’d lost. I didn’t feel gay just then, and I thought Ben
Bolt walked out rather stiff. However, he put his ears
back, and switched his tail sideways, as I mounted. That
was a good sign. It was all plains, of course, soft, sandy
road—couldn’t be beat for smoothness, and firm, too. I
kept him going in a steady hand-gallop, pulling him up
only now and again during the forenoon. In the middle
of the day I stopped for three good hours, gave him a
middling feed—not too much, and got a little water; but
he got a real good strapping. I stood over the feller
doing it, and gave him half-a-crown.</p>
<p>‘I’d done fifty miles between three and eleven—I
wasn’t going fast, you see—but of course the second fifty
makes all the difference. I began to be afraid he was
too big. The feed at Rainbar was awfully good, you
know, sir; but as luck would have it, I’d given him some
stiffish days after the farthest out cattle, and that had
hardened him a bit.</p>
<p>‘About two o’clock I cleared out again; saddled him
myself; saw that his back was all right, and felt his legs,
which were as cool and clean as if he hadn’t gone a yard.
I had the second fifty to do before twelve at night. That
was the time the coach passed, and hardly waited a
moment, either.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">162</span></p>
<p>‘Off again, and I kept on steady at first, trusting to
six miles an hour to do it in, and something to spare;
but every now and again I kept thinking, thinking, suppose
he goes lame all of a sudden! suppose he jacks up!
suppose he falls, put his foot into a hole, or anything—rolls
over me and gallops off, all the men in the world
wouldn’t catch him! suppose I’m stopped by bushrangers—Red
Cap’s out, you know;—why don’t they hang
every scoundrel that turns out the moment he hoists his
flag?’</p>
<p>‘Because they might reform, John,’ mildly interposed
Mr. Neuchamp.</p>
<p>‘No fear—that is, mostly, sir,’ continued Jack apologetically;
‘but they wouldn’t have had the heart to stop
me; and besides, I expect I could have dusted any of ’em
with Ben.</p>
<p>‘Well, bushrangers or not, I got within twenty miles
of Boree; and then my head got so full of fancies, that I
settled to make a call on Ben Bolt, and do it in two hours.
Suppose the coach was earlier than usual! No passengers,
or only some young squatter, who wanted to go faster and
to stop nowhere—and tipped the driver! I’ve seen these
things done before now.</p>
<p>‘So I took the old horse by the head, gave him a
hustle and a pull, and, by George, if you’ll believe me,
sir, he went away with his mouth open, as if he hadn’t
only been out to the Back Lake. The sun was down
then, and the night air was coolish. But I knew the
track well, and as we sailed along, Ben Bolt giving a kind
of snort every now and then, same as he used to do
when he didn’t know the place he was going to, I felt
that I had the field beat, and the race as good as won.
I thought I could see Carry a-beckonin’ to me at the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">163</span>
winning-post. I hardly think I pulled up three times,
I felt that eager, and bound to win or die, before I saw
the light of the Boree Inn, and the coach stables across
the plain.</p>
<p>‘“Has the coach from down the river come in yet,
Joe?” says I to the ostler, trembling all over.</p>
<p>‘“No, nor won’t be this hours yet; you needn’t have
rode so fast.”</p>
<p>‘“I couldn’t afford to be late,” says I. “Lend us a
rug while I cool my old horse a bit. He’s carried me
well this day, if he never does another.”</p>
<p>‘Ben didn’t look beat—nor yet half beat. My belief
is he could have done another twenty or thirty miles
without cracking up. But a hundred miles is a hundred
miles, and no foolish ride, even in this country where
horses are as plenty as wallabies, such as they are, so
I did my best for him. I let him rinse his mouth,
and then I walked him up and down, with the rug on,
for a solid hour. Of course he broke out at first, but he
gradually dried and come all right. Before the coach
started with me on board, he was doing nicely for the
night, littered down (for we foraged some straw out of
the bottled ale casks) and eating his feed just as he would
after a longish day’s muster out back at Rainbar.’</p>
<p>‘I am very glad he carried you so well, John,’ said
Mr. Neuchamp, at the conclusion of this antipodean
Turpin’s ride; ‘but how did you speed in the last and
most momentous stage?’</p>
<p>‘Oh, <i>that</i> was easy drafting enough,’ replied Mr.
Windsor, who apparently had considered that portion of
his matrimonial adventure which depended upon horseflesh
as the really important and exciting part of the
transaction. ‘I was safe and sound in Parramatta on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">164</span>
the Thursday afternoon. I heard enough about the grand
wedding for next day—but I never let on. Said I was
off by sea to Queensland to look at some store cattle, and
hired a trap, with a fairish horse, and a boy to mind it,
which I drove down to the cross-roads, just about a mile
from the “Cheshire Cheese.” There was an old woodcutter’s
hut just inside the fence at the corner. So I
left the boy there, and told him to hold the horse among
the trees, and not to go away till I came—if it wasn’t
till dinner-time to-morrow. Of course, I squared him
right. He was sharp enough; them Parramatta boys
mostly are.</p>
<p>‘Down I goes to the old house, and marched in quite
free and pleasant like, to spend the evening for the sake
of old times. There was Carry looking half dull, half
desperate, like a mountain filly three days in the pound—as
I told her afterwards—though she was among her
own people, in a manner of speaking.</p>
<p>‘There was Homminey, and some other Hawkesbury
chaps, full of their jokes and fun—my word! if I could
only have gone in at him and his best man, a great, slab-sided,
six-foot-three fellow, just about as scraggy as he
was tallowy, I think I could have spoilt both their figure-heads—one
up and the other down.</p>
<p>‘However, there wouldn’t have been any sense in
charging the whole family, like a knocked-up bullock
meeting a picnic party—as I once saw, and didn’t he
scatter ’em!—so I put on all the side I could, and laid
by for a chance.</p>
<p>‘First of all, I shook hands with ’em all round, and
came the warm-hearted fakement. Said “I’d come to
say good-bye; they mustn’t think I bore any ill-will—just
on my way to the north for store cattle, passage<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">165</span>
taken and all—happened to hear of the wedding to-morrow,
and thought I’d look in and wish ’em joy.”</p>
<p>‘Then, of course, I threw my money about—must have
a round of drinks for luck. I never saw a publican yet
that could refuse to serve a “shout.” Then, of course,
<i>they</i> must treat me, seeing I was behaving so handsome.
Then I must have another round for all hands; and last
of all, I gammoned to be a bit “sprung,” and must propose
the bride’s health. So I made ’em fill up. Homminey’s
little round eyes was beginning to twinkle a bit, and old
Walton was getting affectionate, but Carry’s mother
watched us both like a cat. I said, “I knowed the bride
these two years or more, and I proposed her health, and
that of the good-hearted, honest, straightforward chap as
was going to marry her to-morrow morning.” This
fetched ’em about a bit. I said, “I’d knowed him a
goodish while, and heard tell of him, too, and a better
feller couldn’t be. After he was married he’d be still
better,—a deal better, <i>that</i> I could safely go bail for.
He couldn’t help it, with such a wife. I therefore gave
the health of Miss Carry Walton and her husband that
was to be, to-morrow, and no heel-taps.” I never proposed
my own health before.</p>
<p>‘Well, Homminey, after this, came over and squeezed
my hand in his great mutton fist, and looked at me, as
if he wasn’t quite sure; then he bust out and said I
was a real good-natured chap, as didn’t bear malice, and
I’d always be welcome at Richmond Point.</p>
<p>‘“Right you are, old corn-cob,” says I; “I’ll come
and see you the very first time you ask me. And now
let’s have a bit of a dance to finish up with, for my
time’s short, and I must be off. The steamer leaves at
daylight.”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">166</span></p>
<p>‘Well, between the grog, and being that glad to get
rid of me, that they’d have done anything to see my back,
they all agreed to it. There were three or four other
girls there; one of ’em, his cousin, was fourteen stone if
she was a pound. I gave her a few turns when the music
struck up, and then turned to Carry, quite promiskus,
directly the tune was altered.</p>
<p>‘“Oh dear, oh dear, why did you come?” she said in
a low tone; “wasn’t I miserable enough before?”</p>
<p>‘“You know the cross-roads?” I says, knocking
against the tall chap’s partner to drown the words.
“There’s no time for talking. If you’re as true to me as
I am to you, will you do as I tell you?”</p>
<p>‘“You know I will,” she said; “what can I do?”</p>
<p>‘“Can you get out of your bedroom?” I says.</p>
<p>‘“No. I don’t know. Yes—perhaps. I think I
can,” she said in a strange voice, not a bit like her
own.</p>
<p>‘“Then get away the moment you get to bed—don’t
stop to take anything with you, but make straight for the
cross-roads. Inside the trees you’ll see a buggy with a
boy. Stay with him till I come. It will be there till
daylight and long afterwards. Will you come, Carry?”</p>
<p>‘“If I don’t come I shall be mad, or locked up, or
dead,” she said, with such a miserable look on her face
that I could hardly help kissing her and comforting her
before them all.</p>
<p>‘Now, the old woman helped us, without wanting to,
for she says, “Carry, you’re looking like a washed-out
print frock; do, for gracious sake, go to bed, and sleep
away your headache. She’s not been well lately, Mr.
Windsor, and she’s flustered like at seeing strangers, not
but what you’ve behaved most gentlemanly.”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">167</span></p>
<p>‘“I’m afraid she’s thinkin‘about her wedding-dress
or her veil, or something,” says I. “I wish I could stay
and see how she looks to-morrow, but I can’t, and business
is business.”</p>
<p>‘Poor Carry was off before this, with just “Good-night
all,” which made Homminey look rather glum. I
ordered another round, saying I must be off; but when
it was drunk and paid for, I stayed half an hour before
I shook hands, most hearty, and walked out.</p>
<p>‘The moment I turned the corner of the garden-fence
I started off, and ran that mile up to the cross-roads as
if all the blacks on Cooper’s Creek was after me. Just
as I got to the trap I overtook a woman, with a large
bundle, labouring along. It never could be—yes <i>it was</i>—Carry!</p>
<p>‘I first kissed her and then scolded her. “Never a
woman born,” I said, “that could do without a bundle.
Why didn’t you leave all that rubbish? ain’t you good
enough for me as you are?”</p>
<p>‘“Oh, John,” says she, “would you have me come to
you in my—in my one frock? Nonsense! every woman
must have a little dress.”</p>
<p>‘“Suppose you had been caught?”</p>
<p>‘“But I’m not caught, except by a bushranger, or
some wild character,” says she, smiling for the first time.
“I’m afraid poor Harry will not enjoy his dinner to-morrow.”</p>
<p>‘“Hang him and his dinner!” said I. “He’s all
dinner. I’ve half a mind to go back and murder him
now.”</p>
<p>‘But instead of that, we made haste for Appin, after
giving the boy a pound. And, to make a long story
short, were married there <i>that day</i>, for it was past twelve<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">168</span>
o’clock. And Carry’s there with my old mother now,
and very proud she is of her.’</p>
<p>‘I see, John,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, ‘that you have
carried out one enterprise with your usual success. The
other one I want you for, now, is to start at once for
Rainbar, and to take delivery of Mildool run and stock,
which I bought last week. They agree to muster in six
weeks. And you can tell Carry—Mrs. Windsor, I beg
her pardon—that she is the overseer’s wife at Mildool.
I have decided to give you the management of that run,
and I look for wonderful profits from it all this season.’</p>
<p>‘And you’ll get ’em, sir,’ said Mr. Windsor, ‘if there’s
any faith in a fust chop season, and right-down hard
work. God Almighty’s given us the fust, and if Jake
Windsor don’t find the second, he wishes his right arm
may rot off to the shoulder.’</p>
<p>‘I have no doubt that you will do your best, John,’
answered Mr. Neuchamp, much gratified by the warm
gratitude exhibited by one whose fate at one time lay in
his hand; whose after-career had done so much to justify
his anxiety for the welfare of his fellow-man. ‘I have
no doubt that Mildool will be the best-managed station
on the river—after Rainbar, of course; and that there
will be a splendid increase this year,—always providing
that no calf bears my brand—and never mistake me on
that score—that cannot be honestly provided with a
mother of the same ownership.’</p>
<p>Mr. Windsor made a slight gesture of compulsory
resignation, as of one who feels himself bound down to
superhuman purity; but he said, ‘You shall be obeyed
in that, sir; and in every other thing you choose to order;
though it will come queer to the old hands at Mildool,
if all tales are true, to kill their own beef, let alone<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">169</span>
mothering their calves. But <i>your word’s my law</i>! And
I see now that going straight is the best in the end,
whether in big things or little. We’ll be off to-morrow,
Carry and I, and she can hang it out at Rainbar and
have Tot Freeman to talk to—those chaps ain’t left yet,
I believe—while I’m taking over the cattle at Mildool.’</p>
<p>‘That will do very well, John. Meanwhile you can
let a contract for a neat six-roomed cottage at Mildool,
as there isn’t a place there fit for Piambook and his gin
to live in. You must consult your wife about the site of
it, though, as she will have to live in it and spend many
a day by herself there. Don’t let her regret the snug
parlour and the old orchard at the “Cheshire Cheese,”
eh, John?‘</p>
<p>‘Well, it <i>is</i> a great change, now I come to think of it,’
said Mr. Windsor, the first expression of distrust coming
over his bold features that had been there exhibited since
his successful raid upon the lowlanders. ‘I daresay she
<i>would</i> feel struck all of a heap if she was to come upon
Mildool old station sudden-like, with the dog-holes of huts,
and every tree cut down on the sandhill because the
men were too lazy to go out for firewood, or for fear the
blacks might sneak on them, and the pile of bones, like
a boiling down round the gallows. But, thank God!
there’s grass now, and there’s fat cattle enough in Mildool
by this time—for they’ve never sent away a beast
this season, I hear—to build an Exhibition, if it’s wanted.
Carry’s got me, and I’ve got her, that’s the main thing;
and I think we shall make shift to jog along. We’ve
got to do it, and no two ways about it. So, good-bye,
sir. When shall we see you at Rainbar?’</p>
<p>‘I am afraid that business will detain me in Sydney
for some weeks longer,’ said Mr. Neuchamp thoughtfully,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">170</span>
as if mentally calculating the exact day on which he
might quit the metropolis. ‘But you and Mr. Banks
will be able to manage the muster easy enough.’</p>
<p>‘Not a bit of bother there need be about it, that I
can see, sir. We shall have lots of help; every stockman
within a hundred miles will be there. There’ll be
an awful big mob of strangers; and the Drewarrina
poundkeeper hasn’t had such a lift for many a day as he’ll
get. We must square the tails of every beast that’s
counted, that’s one thing, so as not to have ’em played
on to us twice over. I think Mr. Banks is down to most
moves about cattle work, and what he don’t know I can
tell him. Good-bye, sir.’</p>
<p>‘By the way, John,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, ‘I shall
want you to stay in town this evening, if you can spare
so much time away from Carry. I have to see about the
draft copy of the sale agreement, which you will take up
with you and give to Mr. Banks. Mr. Frankston informs
me that these agreements need to be very strictly carried
out, and that advantageous purchases <i>have</i> been evaded
from neglect in doing so. So come out to Morahmee
this afternoon, when you can have my final instructions.’</p>
<p>Mr. Neuchamp spent the morning in tolerably close
attendance upon lawyers and persons addicted to the
drawing up of those paper and parchment promises
which, if honour were binding, need never to have
troubled penman or engrosser. Nathless, human nature
being what it is, and retaining simian tendencies to steal,
hide, falsely chatter and closely clutch, the sheepskin
may not be safely relinquished. Before Mr. Neuchamp
bethought himself of the mid-day solace of lunch he was
possessed of a legal document, wherein the exact time
granted for mustering and several other leading conditions<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">171</span>
were set forth with such clearness that evasion or misunderstanding
seemed impossible.</p>
<p>A copy of this all-important document was posted to
Charley Banks; he brought with him another for the use
of Mr. Windsor, who might employ his leisure time on
the journey up in learning it by heart, and so render
himself able to meet all comers respecting its provisions.</p>
<p>Antonia had expressed a wish to see Jack Windsor,
and to send a message to his wife before he left town.
For this reason chiefly Ernest had appointed Morahmee
as the rendezvous on this particular afternoon. As
the shadows lengthened, Mr. Neuchamp betook himself
in that direction, as indeed he had done daily for
weeks past.</p>
<p>It so chanced that, on the evening before, Antonia
had received a pink triangular note from Miss Harriet
Folleton, who was more or less a friend of hers, to say
that she intended to come and lunch with her next day
at Morahmee, and would be there, unless her dear Antonia
wrote to say she couldn’t have her. There was
not any great similitude of taste or disposition between
the two girls—one indeed much disapproved of the other.
But those who have noted the ways of their <i>monde</i> will
not decide from this statement that Antonia Frankston
and Harriet Folleton did any the less greet one another
with kisses and effusion when meeting, or say farewell
with lavish use of endearing epithets.</p>
<p>Such being the state of matters, it was by no means
surprising that Harriet Folleton, a girl of great beauty
and soft, enthralling manner, but of so moderate a development
of intellect that she might have been called,
if any one had been so rudely uncompromising as to
speak the unvarnished truth about so pretty a creature,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">172</span>
‘a fool proper,’ should arrive in the paternal brougham
before mid-day, and therefore share luncheon with her
dear Antonia in much innocence and peace.</p>
<p>It would have been even less surprising to any one
who had possessed the requisite leisure and opportunity
to study that fair girl’s ways, that, as the two friends
were strolling near the strand, where a giant fig-tree
shadowed half the little bay, a boat should pull round
the adjoining headland, manned by four man-of-war-looking
yachtsmen, with the <i>White Falcon</i> on their breasts
and hat-ribbons, while from the boat, as she ran up
to the jetty, stepped the gracious form of Count von
Schätterheims.</p>
<p>‘Why, you naughty girl,’ said Antonia, instantly
divining the ruse, ‘I do believe you planned to meet the
Count here, and disobey your father. So this coming to
see me was all deception! How dare you treat me like
this? I have a great mind to tell your father, and never
speak to you again.’</p>
<p>‘Oh, pray don’t, Antonia dearest,’ whimpered the softly
insincere one, ‘I only said I <i>might</i> be here this afternoon;
and he said he was going off to Batavia, or Russia, or
India, or somewhere. And papa was so dreadful, that
I thought there was no harm in it. I shall never see
him again—oh!’ Here the despairingly undecided
damsel commenced to weep, and so interfere with the
natural charms of her fine and uncommon complexion,
that Antonia, inwardly resolving to restrict the acquaintance
to conventional limits in future, was constrained
to soothe and console her. Meanwhile the Count,
who had been engaged in an earnest colloquy with
his crew, advanced with his customary gallantry to meet
them.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">173</span></p>
<div class="poetry-container"><div class="poetry"><div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">‘My boad is on de zhore</div>
<div class="verse indent2">And my barg is on de zea;</div>
</div></div></div>
<p>is not dat the voord of your boet? I come to make
farevell to you, Miss Frankstein; to you, Miss Folledon,
to lay at your veet dis hertz—mein hertz—vich is efer
for dee so vondly beating.’</p>
<p>‘And are you really going to leave us, Count?’ asked
Antonia, without any particular interest or otherwise in
the noble foreigner, of whom she was becoming wearied
and increasingly distrustful. Then happening to look at
Harriet Folleton’s face, she saw that she was deathly
pale, and trembled as if about to fall. The Count, too,
though complimentary as usual, seemed annoyed and
uneasy at her presence.</p>
<p>The Count, in answer to the question, pointed to his
yacht, a beautiful schooner, more fair than honest of
aspect, and of marvellous sailing powers, which had,
perhaps, more than any of his reported possessions,
tended to sustain his prestige since his arrival in
Sydney.</p>
<p>Antonia’s practised eye at once discerned that she was
fully equipped for sea. With sails ready to be unfurled
at a moment’s notice, she could sweep out unchallenged
and trackless as the falcon on her ensign, before the
freshening south wind which was even now curling the
waves with playful but increasing power.</p>
<p>With lightning rapidity she divined the full extent of
the girl’s imprudence and the Count’s villainy. In the
same sudden mental effort she resolved, at all hazards,
to save her companion from the consequences of her inconceivable
folly.</p>
<p>‘I did vorm de resolution dat I shall bezeegh you
and Miss Folledon to honour me by paying me von last<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">174</span>
leetle visit on board de <i>Valgon</i>, dis afdernoon. Mine
goot friend Paul, he was goming, but de business—dat
pete noir—he brevent him. He ask me to peg Miss
Frankstein if she vill, zo also Miss Folledon, vizout her
fader, to my so-poor-yet-highly-to-be-honoured graft go.
Dere is izes, one small collation, a few friend. Surely
you will join dem?’</p>
<p>Here the Count beamed the irresistible smile which
had through life served him well, and advancing, held
out both hands to the young ladies.</p>
<p>‘Oh, do let us go!’ said the reassured weakling. ‘It
would be so pleasant. It is such a delightful afternoon.
I should like it of all things.’</p>
<p>But Antonia more than ever distrusted the Count, <i>et
dona ferentes</i>. She disliked his eye, his wily words, the
appearance of his swarthy crew, the evidently sea-fitted
appearance of the yacht. She felt more than ever convinced
that he had matured a deliberate plot to carry off
an unsuspecting girl.</p>
<p>Such in truth was the unpardonable sin with which
the Herr von Schätterheims had resolved to conclude his
Australian career. Unable to meet the many pressing
claims upon his finances, the holders of which, he had
reason to know, were meditating an advance in line;
having failed in the daring speculations in which, by
means of humble foreign agents, he had invested the
small capital with which he had arrived, and the incredibly
large loans which his assurance and reputation
for wealth had enabled him to procure,—he had conceived
the desperate plan which Antonia’s quick intuition
had discovered. He had determined, by force or fraud,
to carry off Harriet Folleton, trusting that the irrevocable
<i>coup</i> once made, time and other considerations would tend<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">175</span>
to the ultimate wresting of her immense fortune from
her father’s hands.</p>
<p>Hunted by his creditors and threatened with imprisonment,
the Count was now desperate. In such a position
he had, more than once during his career, showed no
disposition to stick at trifles. His yacht lay within hail—a
seabird with her great wings plumed for instant
flight, a Norway falcon looking on ocean from a low-placed
rocky ridge. His crew of mixed nationality, who
had followed him through many a clime, were lawless
and devoted. The hour had come when Albert von
Schätterheims would stand forth with front unveiled,
and show these simple dwellers by the shore of the
southern main what manner of man they had dared to
drive to bay.</p>
<p>Therefore, when Antonia Frankston stepped forward,
and with head erect and flashing eye interposed between
the Count and his sacrifice, she confronted a different
man from the silky, graceful <i>serviteur des dames</i> with
whom she had often wished, for some instinctive reason,
to quarrel.</p>
<p>‘I cannot go with you now, nor shall Miss Folleton,
Count Schätterheims; it would not be right, in my
father’s absence. Permit us to return to the house.’</p>
<p>‘Beholt me desoladed if Miss Frankstein will not
honour my poor boad,’ said the Count, as he barred the
progress of the two young ladies on the somewhat narrow
green-walled alley which led to the house; ‘but’—fixing
his eye steadily upon Harriet Folleton—‘I go not forth
alone; Miss Harriet Folledon, you bromised me. I haf
your vord. You vill come with me now; is it not so,
belofet one? Ja! you vill follow de fortunes of Albert
von Schätterheims, for efer.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">176</span></p>
<p>He strode forward a pace, and seizing the wrist of the
frightened girl, spoke rapidly in Spanish, while two of
his sailors ran up from the boat, to whom he committed
the half-insensible form of the fainting girl.</p>
<p>Antonia Frankston did not faint or swoon. With
sudden movement she confronted the Count, with so
fierce an air and so unblenching a brow that he involuntarily
stepped back a pace, and made as though to protect
himself from the onset of a foe.</p>
<p>‘Coward and robber that you are, release her this
instant,’ she cried.</p>
<p>The Count smiled sardonically. ‘You will parton
me, mademoiselle, if I redurn you with my complimend
for your goot opinion. My engachemends is more pressing,
as you gan pelief.’</p>
<p>On the girl’s face, as she stood with threatening
aspect—a young Bellona, as yet unversed in battles—burned
a deeper glow; in her eye flashed a fiercer light
as she marked the smile on the calm features of the
Count, which, in her heated fancy, seemed the mocking
regard of a fiend.</p>
<p>‘She shall <i>not</i> go!’ cried she, springing forward and
throwing her arms round the neck of the helpless maid.
‘Oh that my father were here—or Ernest —— Robbers,
villains, assassins that you are, release her—don’t
dare to touch <i>me</i>!’</p>
<p>But at this moment, at a signal from their chief, the
dark-browed, swarthy seamen laid their rude hands upon
the sacred form of the deliverer herself, and rapidly
hurried both damsels towards the gig. With one wild
look to heaven, one frantic gesture of wrath, despair, and
abandonment, Antonia Frankston betook herself to one of
the best weapons in her sex’s armoury, and shrieked till<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">177</span>
every rock and tree within a mile of Morahmee echoed
again.</p>
<p>‘<i>Carambo!</i>’ said one of the men, ‘we shall have half
Sydney here before we are clear with these shrieking
senoritas; have you no muffler for her cursed mouth?’</p>
<p>‘<i>Paciencia</i>, Diego!’ said the Count, ‘harm her not.
A few minutes will suffice—and then——’</p>
<p>But before further infraction of the liberty of the subject
could be carried out, Miss Frankston had exhibited
for some moments the full force of a very vigorous pair
of lungs. The party had nearly reached the little pier,
whence so many joyous bands had taken the water, when
a man came crashing through the shrubbery, and rushed
furiously at Von Schätterheims.</p>
<p>‘Stand back, Neuchamp!’ shouted the Count, levelling
a revolver, ‘or you die.’</p>
<p>‘Scoundrel and pirate that you are,’ said Ernest,
facing him with steady eye, ‘fire! do your worst. By
heaven, I will tear you limb from limb if you do not instantly
order your ruffians to desist.’</p>
<p>This rather melodramatic threat was used by Mr.
Neuchamp, who was cool enough to take in the precise
aspect of the fray at a glance, more with the intention of
gaining time than of intimidating five armed men.</p>
<p>He was eminently at a disadvantage as matters stood.
He was, so to speak, at the Count’s mercy, being at the
wrong end of his revolver, and that experienced soldier,
sailor, tinker, tailor, or whatever, indeed, in time past
might have been his true designation, was far too wary
to permit him a chance of closing.</p>
<p>The sailors in whose grasp were Antonia and her
guest had drawn their knives, and were prepared for an
affray <i>à l’outrance</i>. The two seamen in the boat carried<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">178</span>
sheath-knives at least. He could not but admit to himself,
grinding his teeth the while, that he had the hazard
of beholding his love torn from her home by the rude
hands of lawless men, or of dying vainly in her defence.</p>
<p>To this latter alternative, could it but avert her peril,
he was willing, nay anxious, to yield himself. But if—if
only a short respite could be gained—even now—the
issue was uncertain. His resolution was taken.</p>
<p>‘Stop your men, Count, while we parley,’ he said, ‘or,
by the God above us, you shall shoot me down the next
second, and I tear the false heart out of your breast, if
you miss. Choose!’ And he stepped forward in the
face of the levelled weapon.</p>
<p>‘You are mat, like every dummer Englander, I pelief,’
said the nineteenth-century buccaneer. ‘Why should I
not kill you for your insults to my honour? But I
revrain. I would not meddle with the Fräulein Frankstein—she
dell you herselve, but she try to rop me of
my shpirit-star—my schatz—bromised prite—I presend
her to you. I know your sendimend for her. I make
you my complimend. Her dempers is angelig.’</p>
<p>Here the Count wreathed his face into such a smile
as the companion of Faust may have worn when Marguerite
implores the Mater Dolorosa, and spoke rapidly
with commanding gesture to his myrmidons, who released
their hold upon Miss Frankston. But Antonia still
clung with desperate tenacity to the cold hands, the
corpse-like form of Harriet Folleton.</p>
<p>‘You see she is obstinade—to the death,’ said the
Count, whose moustache seemed to curl with wrath. ‘It
is not her affair, or yours; go in beace, gross not my path
more furder.’</p>
<p>‘I cannot abandon Miss Folleton, nor will Antonia,’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">179</span>
said Mr. Neuchamp, raising his voice so as to drown a
peculiar crackling noise in the shrubbery which his ear
had caught. ‘Do <i>you</i> go in peace, Von Schätterheims?
Wrong not further the kind hearts that have trusted you;
betray not hospitality free and open as ever man received.
I will return with both, or not at all.’</p>
<p>‘Then die, fool!’ hissed the Count, as he raised his
weapon and fired full at the head of Ernest Neuchamp,
who at the same moment rushed in and closed, while his
blood flowed freely from a wound in the forehead, and
ensanguined his adversary as they grappled in deadly
conflict.</p>
<p>The accuracy of the Count’s aim, faultless and unerring
in gallery practice, or at the <i>poupée</i>, of which he could
drill heart, head, or limb, five times out of six, may or
may not have been shaken by the sudden apparition of
Jack Windsor, or by the portentous yell which that
gentleman emitted, worthy of Piambook or Boinmaroo, as
he observed the Count in the act of firing at the sacred
head of his benefactor.</p>
<p>Too late to interpose with effect as he stood on a
block of sandstone overlooking the scene of conflict, he
raised his voice in one of the half-Indian cries with which
the horsemen of the Central Desert are wont to intimidate
the unwilling herd at the stockyard-gates. The
sailors started and gazed with astonishment as Mr. Windsor
sprang recklessly from his elevated post, and cleared
the rough declivity with a succession of bounds, emulating,
not unworthily, the hard-pressed ‘flyer’ of his
country’s forests when the grim gazehounds are close on
haunch and flank.</p>
<p>Straight as a line for the men that held the captive
maids went the henchman, and as they hurriedly released<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">180</span>
their prey and stood on guard, Mr. Neuchamp could have
offered a votary’s prayer to the patron saint of old England’s
weaponless gladiators, as he marked the unarmed
Anglo-Saxon’s rapid unswerving onset.</p>
<div class="poetry-container"><div class="poetry"><div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Though there, the western mountaineer</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Rushed with bare bosom on the spear,</div>
<div class="verse">And flung the feeble targe aside,</div>
<div class="verse indent2">And with both hands the broadsword plied.</div>
</div></div></div>
<p>Mr. Windsor so far resembled Donald at Flodden
Field, that he trusted chiefly to natural strength and
courage. But none the less did he display an amount of
coolness and cunning of fence characteristically Australian.</p>
<p>Charging the nearest Frenchman, as he took him to
be, and indeed in all future relation so described him,
with the velocity of a mallee three-year-old, he feinted
with his right hand at the forehead of his foe, and as the
Mexican-Spaniard, for such he was, raised his arm for a
deadly stab, he suddenly gripped his wrist, catching him
full in the face with the ‘terrible left,’ and stretched him
senseless and bleeding at his feet. Snatching up the
knife, he had but time to parry a stroke which shrewdly
scored his right arm, when his other antagonist was upon
him. Both men glared at one another with uplifted
knives—for a moment; in the next Mr. Windsor swept
his antagonist’s outstretched foot from under him with
a Cornish wrestler’s trick—a lift—a dull thud, and he
lay on his back, with Jack’s knee on his chest and the
dangerous knife in the bushman’s belt.</p>
<p>In the meanwhile Miss Frankston, perceiving that the
men who had charge of the boat showed no disposition to
quit their station, half dragged, half raised Miss Folleton
along the path to the verandah steps, halting just within
sight of the combatants.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">181</span></p>
<p>‘Now, do you prefer being dragged up to the house,
Von Schätterheims?—by Jove! I shoot you where you
stand if you resist,’ inquired Ernest of that nobleman,
whom he had mastered after a severe struggle, and
whose revolver he now pointed at those classical features,
‘or will you depart in God’s name, and rid us of your
presence for ever?’</p>
<p>‘It is Fade,’ said the Count gloomily. ‘He is too
strong. My shtar is under an efil influence. I will quid
dese accurset lants. Let your man—teufel dat he is
with his boxanglais—release my grew, and I go; but stay—I
am guildy by your laws; why should you release me?’</p>
<p>‘You deserve death for your outrage,’ replied Ernest
sternly. ‘You could hardly escape lifelong imprisonment.
But I would not willingly see the man, at whose
board I have sat, in the felon’s cell. Go, and repent.
Also—and this is my chief reason—I would willingly
evade the <i>esclandre</i> which your public trial for this day’s
proceedings would cause.’</p>
<p>‘Ha! not the deet. But the fama—what you call
“scandall,”’ said the Count wonderingly. ‘But you
English, you are as efer, a strange—a so wunderlich
beoples. Still, I go. It is all that is left to Albert von
Schätterheims in this hemis-vahr—to steal away, like
the hund, beaden, disgraced, dishonoured. Fahrwohl.
Dell to the Fräulein my regret, my despair, my shames.
Under another schtar Albert von Schätterheims mighd
haf geliebt und gelebt—but all dings is now ofer.’</p>
<p>Ernest stepped back and motioned him to arise, still
keeping guard. The Count called aloud to his men, one
of whom still lay beneath Mr. Windsor’s thrall, and the
other sitting up, all blood-stained, swayed backward and
forward, as only half recovered from a swoon.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">182</span></p>
<p>‘Let your men go, John,’ said Mr. Neuchamp. ‘The
treaty of Morahmee is arranged between the high
contracting powers. They will not renew the war,’ he
continued, as the Count and Jack’s last antagonist
between them raised the fainting man and led him down
to the gig, which in the briefest period was seen heading
for the yacht as fast as oars could drive her.</p>
<p>‘My word, sir,’ said Mr. Windsor, ‘it looked very
crooked when I come on the ground. I saw that frog-eating
mounseer potting you with his squirt like a tree’d
’possum—both the young ladies, too, being run off to sea
with, clean and clear against their wills. I don’t hold
with that sea business at all—it’s dangerous—let alone
with a boss like the Count, who’s wanted in his own
country, like as not. However, we euchred ’em this
time, whoever plays next game.’</p>
<p>‘You behaved like a trump, Jack. You were my
genuine “right bower,”’ said Mr. Neuchamp with unwonted
humour and heartiness. ‘Without you we should
never have won the odd trick. I knew that you were
just behind me at Woolloomooloo; but I was terribly
afraid that you could not be up in time.’</p>
<p>‘If one John Windsor’s anyways handy when you’re in
trouble, sir, you’ll mostly find him there or thereabouts,
as long as he’s alive, that is. I can’t say afterwards.
What do you think, sir, about what comes after all this
rough-and-tumble that we coves call life?’ demanded
Jack with sudden interest.</p>
<p>‘I don’t think too much about it, which is perhaps
the best wisdom. But of this we may be sure, John,
that no man will fare worse in the other world for doing
his duty as a man and a Christian in this.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">183</span></p>
<p>When the house was reached, it appeared that Miss
Folleton had been handed over to the good offices of her
friend’s maid, and was recovering her nervous system in
the seclusion of a guest-chamber. Antonia, having
smoothed her hair, and rearranged herself generally,
awaited the victor in the verandah. She stood gazing
seawards with a haughty air of defiance, which still
savoured of the fray. The light of battle had not faded
from her eye; a bright flush embellished with rare and
wondrous beauty the untinted marble of her delicate
features.</p>
<p>As she stood, unconsciously statuesque, and gazed
half unheeding in her rapt regard of the flying bark, the
long-loved, fast-thronging, magical glories of the evening
ocean-pageant,</p>
<div class="poetry-container"><div class="poetry"><div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent20">... the day was dying:</div>
<div class="verse">Sudden the sun shone forth; its beams were lying</div>
<div class="verse">Like boiling gold on ocean, strange to see;</div>
<div class="verse">And on the shattered vapours, which defying</div>
<div class="verse">The power of light in vain, tossed restlessly</div>
<div class="verse">In the red heaven like wrecks in a tempestuous sea.</div>
</div></div></div>
<p>‘It is you,’ she said, suddenly turning towards Ernest
with a look of praise and gratitude almost childlike in
its absence of reserve. ‘How can I, how will my father,
ever thank you for this day’s deeds? I had given up
all for lost; that is, as far as that foolish Harriet was
concerned. They should have torn me limb from limb
before they should have placed us in their boat. Then
I determined to fight for Harriet, to—yes! I believe
that is the word, for I really felt the real fighting spirit
all over—it is not such a very unpleasant sensation as
one would think. I was quite <i>exaltée</i>, and if I had had
a revolver, I think the Count would have paid forfeit<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">184</span>
with his life, whatever might have come after. Papa
would kill him now if they met.’</p>
<p>‘Is there no fear of such a meeting?’</p>
<p>‘None, thank Heaven!’ said Antonia, ‘though he
deserves the worst in the shape of punishment. Sydney
has seen the last of him. Look!’ she cried, as every
sail on the long, low, beautiful schooner filled as if by
magic, and the graceful craft, leaning to the full force of
the strong south wind, swept forth towards the sea-way.</p>
<p>‘He is safe from pursuit,’ she continued, ‘even if
tidings could have been sent at the instant. With this
breeze behind him, there is nothing in Sydney which
would not be hull down behind the <i>White Falcon</i> before
day broke. Of course he will steer for one of the
northern ports, or else for the Islands. They must have
had every sail tied with spun-yarn, so as to be ready to
unfurl at a moment’s notice. To you alone, and to that
brave Jack Windsor, it is due that we are not miserable
captives in yonder flying bark. I shudder to think
of it.’</p>
<p>‘I should have done little without John,’ said Mr.
Neuchamp. ‘He came up like Blücher at Waterloo, and
I was as impatiently awaiting his arrival as the Duke.
Here—receive Miss Frankston’s thanks, John; then,
with her permission, you can go and ask the butler for
some beer. I daresay you feel equal to it.’</p>
<p>‘You have behaved this day, John Windsor, like a
brave man and a true Australian,’ said Antonia, giving
her hand to Jack, which he shook carefully and with
much caution, relinquishing the dainty palm with evident
relief. ‘My father will know how to thank the rescuer
of his daughter; and she will remember you as a gallant
fellow and a friend in need all the days of her life.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">185</span></p>
<p>‘Thank you, miss,’ said Mr. Windsor, with a
respectful yet puzzled air. ‘I’ve had many a worse
shindy than this in my time, and got no thanks either—’tother
way on, ‘ndeed. But of course I couldn’t help
rolling in, seeing the master double-banked, and you
young ladies being made to join a water-party against
your wills. Don’t you have no more truck with them
boats, miss; they’re too uncertain altogether. Nothing
like dry land to my taste; even if the season’s bad,
there’s a something to hang on by. My respects, miss,
and I’ll try that beer; my throat’s like a bark chimney
with the soot afire.’</p>
<p>‘And now I must order you, Mr. Neuchamp, to
betake yourself to your room. Look in the glass and
see if your complexion hasn’t suffered. Was it the
Count’s blood which flowed, or did you scratch your face
with the prickly pear hedge? Let me look! Merciful
heaven!’ exclaimed the girl, with a half scream, as she
narrowly scanned her deliverer’s face; ‘why, there is the
deep trace of a bullet on your temple. How providential
that it was the least bit wide—a slight turn of your
head—a shade nearer the temple, and you would have
been lying there dead—dead! How awful to think of!’</p>
<p>Here she covered her face with her hands. Tears
trickled through the slender palms as her overwrought
feelings found relief in a sudden burst of weeping.</p>
<p>Mr. Neuchamp’s attempts at consolation would
appear not to have been wholly ineffectual, if one may
judge from the concluding sentences of rather a long-whispered
conversation, all carried on prior to the
lavation of his gory countenance.</p>
<p>‘I always thought,’ said Antonia, smiling through her
tears, with as much satirical emphasis as could coexist<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">186</span>
with so sudden an access of happiness, ‘that you wanted
some one to take care of you in Australia. I fear I
have been led into undertaking a very serious responsibility.’</p>
<p>‘May it not be the other way?’ very naturally inquired
Ernest. ‘If I had not been, as Jack would say,
“there or thereabouts” to-day, some one might have
been a pirate’s bride, after all. Miss Folleton, of course,
had prior claims, but——‘</p>
<p>‘But—please to go and render yourself presentable,
this instant. We shall have such an amount of talking
to do before we can put poor dear old pappy in possession
of all the news. Good gracious, how can we ever tell
him? How furious he will be!’</p>
<p>‘Will he?’ inquired Ernest, with affected apprehension;
‘perhaps we had better defer our——’</p>
<p>‘I don’t mean <i>that</i>—and you know it, sir; but, unless
you wish to be taken for a pirate yourself, or an escaped
I-don’t-know-what, you will do as I tell you.’</p>
<p>So Ernest was fain to do as he was bid, commencing,
unconsciously indeed, that period of servitude to which
every son of Adam, all unheeding, is pledged who rivets
on himself the flower-wreathed adamantine fetters of
matrimony. He sought Mr. Frankston’s extremely comfortable
dressing-room, at the behest of his beloved
<i>châtelaine</i>; and very glad he was to find himself
there.</p>
<p>His sense of relief and general congratulation was,
however, slightly alloyed by the thought of the stupendous
amount of explanation and narrative due to Paul Frankston,
when this now fast-approaching hour of dinner
should arrive.</p>
<p>‘I would it were bedtime, and all well,’ groaned he,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">187</span>
in old Falstaff’s words, as he addressed himself to the
rather serious duties of the toilette.</p>
<p>Mr. Frankston arrived from town but a few minutes
before the dinner-hour, and, like a wise man, made at
once for his room.</p>
<p>‘Only just time to dress, darling,’ said he to his
daughter. ‘Got such a budget of news; met Croker
just as I was coming out, tell Ernest. No end of news—quite
unparalleled. You will be surprised, and so
will he.’</p>
<p>‘And so will you,’ thought Mr. Neuchamp, who just
came into the hall in time to hear the concluding sentence.
But he darkly bided his time.</p>
<p>As the dinner-bell rang, forth issued Mr. Frankston,
radiant with snowy waistcoat and renovated <i>personnel</i>,
having the air at once of a man in good hope and
expectation of dinner, also conscious of the possession of
news which, however sensationally disastrous, does not
prejudicially affect himself.</p>
<p>‘Now then,’ he said, the soup having been disposed
of, and the mildly stimulating Amontillado imbibed,
‘what do you think has become of our friend—or, rather,
your friend, Antonia, for you never would let me abuse
him—the Count von Schätterheims?’</p>
<p>‘What indeed?’ replied Antonia, looking at her
plate.</p>
<p>‘Well, he has bolted, levanted, cleared out, on board
his famous yacht, the <i>White Falcon</i>, for some northern
port—Batavia, the Islands, New Guinea—no one
knows.’</p>
<p>‘How about money matters?’ inquired Ernest.</p>
<p>‘Well, you both take it coolly, I must say,’ said Paul,
hurt at the small effect of his great piece of ordnance.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">188</span>
‘As to money, all Sydney, in the legitimate credit way,
is left lamenting. He had been operating very largely
of late, and his losses and defalcations are immense.
Yorick and Co.’s bill for wines and liqueurs is something
awful.’</p>
<p>‘Alas, poor Yorick!’ said Ernest, with so pathetic an
emphasis that Antonia could not help laughing.</p>
<p>‘You two seem very facetious to-night,’ quoth Paul
with dignity. ‘It is no laughing matter, I can tell you.
But you won’t laugh at <i>this</i>, I fancy. Croker told me
that it was everywhere believed that he had persuaded
that unhappy, infatuated girl Harriet Folleton to accompany
him in his flight.’</p>
<p>Mr. Frankston uttered these last words with a deep
solemnity, imparted to his voice by the heartfelt pity
which, at any time, he could have felt for the victim in
such a case.</p>
<p>His daughter and Ernest were sufficiently ill-bred to
laugh.</p>
<p>‘Hang me if I understand this!’ he commenced, in
tones of righteous indignation; and then, softening, ‘Why
Antonia, dearest, surely you must pity——’</p>
<p>‘Papa, she is upstairs and in bed at this very moment,
so she can’t have run away with the Count. There
must be a mistake somewhere.’</p>
<p>‘So there must, so there must,’ said Paul, instantly
mollified, and addressing himself to his dinner. ‘I’m a
hot-tempered old idiot, I know. But there’s no mistake
about the Count’s debts, or the Count’s flight. He was
sighted by No. 4 pilot cutter that brought in the English
liner, the <i>Cumberland</i>, this evening, steering nor’-nor’-east,
and before such a breeze as will see him clear of
anything from this port before daylight.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">189</span></p>
<p>‘He has gone, safe enough,’ said Ernest; ‘indeed, we
watched him go through the Heads from the verandah—a
most fortunate migration, in my opinion. He has
conferred an immense benefit upon the country by
leaving it, which I trust he will confirm by never
returning.’</p>
<p>‘Then you saw him go from here?’ inquired Mr.
Frankston. ‘Was he close enough for you to see him?’</p>
<p>‘Well,’ admitted Ernest, ‘he certainly <i>was</i> close
enough to see, and, indeed, to feel; but it’s rather a long
story, and if you’re going to smoke this evening, we can
have it all out on the verandah.’</p>
<p>‘I think I must go and see how my visitor is getting
on,’ said Antonia; ‘and as I feel tired, I will make my
farewell for the evening.’</p>
<p>Was there in the outwardly formal handshaking a
sudden instinctive pressure? Was there in the hasty
glance a lighting up of hitherto lambent fires in the clear
depths of Antonia’s deep-hued eyes—an added, half-remorseful,
half-clinging tenderness in the never-omitted
caress which marked her evening parting with her father?
If so, that father was all unconscious, and the outward
tokens were so faint as to have been invisible to all but
one deeply interested, near-sighted observer.</p>
<p>‘I am much relieved to find that poor girl Harriet
Folleton has not been carried off, after all, by that
scoundrel, who has taken us all in so splendidly,’ growled
Paul. ‘Of course, now the mischief is done, all kinds of
reports are going about the city as to his real character.
People say he was a valet, or a courier; others, a supercargo,
who ran away with that pretty boat he brought
here. He certainly had a very good notion of handling
a yacht.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">190</span></p>
<p>‘Let me tell you, then, that it is chiefly owing to
your daughter’s courage and unselfish determination to
save her friend at all hazards, that Harriet Folleton is
not now a captive in yonder yacht, hopelessly lost and
disgraced,’ announced Mr. Neuchamp, commencing his
broadside.</p>
<p>‘Why, you don’t tell me that the scoundrel came
<i>here</i> and attempted any violence?’ said the old man,
rising excitedly and performing the regulation quarter-deck
walk up and down the verandah, while he dashed
his ignited cigar excitedly out over the lawn. ‘If I
knew—if I had known this day that he dared to set his
foot upon these grounds with a lawless purpose towards
any guest of Antonia’s, I’d have followed him to the
Line and hanged him at his own yardarm.’</p>
<p>As the old man uttered these very decided sentiments,
somewhat at variance with the Navigation Act and international
usage, his brow darkened, his eye gleamed with
pitiless light, and his arm was raised with a gesture
which indicated familiarity with the cutlass and the
boarding-pike.</p>
<p>‘You must not excite yourself,’ said Ernest, laying
his hand kindly on the old man’s arm. ‘Remember,
first of all, that the offender is beyond pursuit; that he
was baulked in his evil purpose, and that he suffered
ignominious defeat, chiefly through the timely help of
Jack Windsor, who assisted me to rout the attacking
force.’</p>
<p>‘Good God!’ exclaimed the old man. ‘Attack—defeat;
what has happened? and I sat gossiping at the
club, while you were defending my home and my
honour!’</p>
<p>‘Could I do less? However, you had better hear the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">191</span>
whole story straight out. No harm has been done, and
the enemy was routed with loss.’</p>
<p>The story was told. Full justice was done to
Antonia’s heroism. Jack Windsor’s prowess received its
meed of praise. His own fortunate overthrow of the
Count by good luck and a little more practice in wrestling
than continental usages render familiar, was slightly
alluded to. Finally, he explained his reasons for assisting
the escape of Von Schätterheims, and thereby confining
the scandal of his attempted abduction to the
narrow limit of the actual participators in the affray.</p>
<p>Mr. Frankston walked the deck of a long-departed
imaginary vessel so long without speaking that Ernest
feared some rending typhoon of wrath after the enforced
calm. But the event justified his best surmises. Placing
his hand upon his guest’s arm, Paul said, in a voice
vibrating with emotion—</p>
<p>‘I see in you, Ernest Neuchamp, a man who this day
has saved my honour and my life—hers, to whom this
poor remnant of existence is but as this worthless weed.’
(Here he cast from him the half-consumed cigar.) ‘From
this day forth you are my son—take everything that I
can give. Paul Frankston holds nothing back from the
man who has done what you have done this day. I am
but your steward—your manager, my dear boy, henceforward.’</p>
<p>‘There is <i>one</i> of your possessions—the most precious,
the most priceless among them,’ answered Ernest, holding
up his head with a do-or-die sort of air, ‘and that one I
now ask of you. We are past phrases with each other.
But you will understand that I at least do not undervalue
the worth of Antonia Frankston’s heart, of your
daughter’s hand!’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">192</span></p>
<p>Mr. Frankston once more paced the long-faded deck
and communed with the broad and heaving deep. Then
he turned. His eyes, from which the strange fire had
faded wholly out, had a softened, perhaps somewhat
clouded light.</p>
<p>‘Ernest Neuchamp,’ he said, ‘if this day has witnessed,
perhaps, the most bitter insult, the deepest
humiliation to which Paul Frankston has ever been subjected,
it has also witnessed his greatest joy. Take her—with
her old father’s blessing. You have, what he
considers, earth’s greatest treasure; and it is no flattery,
but honest liking, when he swears that you are worthy
of her. As far as human look-out can see over life’s
course, Paul Frankston’s troubles and anxieties are over.
Now I can take my cigar again.’</p>
<p>More than one cigar was needed to allay the old
man’s overstrained nervous system. Long they sat and
talked, and saw the moon rise higher in the star-gemmed
sky, casting a broader silver flame across the tremulous
illumined deep; while between Ernest Neuchamp and the
old man again stood a shadowy, diaphanous, divinely-moulded
form, turning into an elysian aroma the scent
of Paul’s cigars, and echoing the secret gladness of each
thought, which in that hour of supernal loveliness and
unutterable joy flowed from the bared heart of Ernest
Neuchamp.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>On the next morning Aurora in person must have
attended to the proper arrangement of the dawn, the
breakfast-hour, and other small matters which, apparently
trivial, tend unquestionably to that due equilibrium
of the nervous system, without which comfort is impossible
and exhilaration hopeless.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">193</span></p>
<p>Thus, Miss Folleton, having slept well, appeared
renovated and just becomingly repentant. Antonia was
severely happy, Mr. Neuchamp calmly superior to fate,
and Mr. Frankston so hilarious that his daughter had
to interpose more than once.</p>
<p>That ambrosial repast concluded, Antonia departed
for town in the carriage, and straightway delivered up
Miss Folleton to her rejoicing relatives, who had suffered
anxiety in her absence. Hers was an impressionable,
shallow nature, recovering easily from moral risks and
disasters—even from physical ills. Her appetite reasserted
itself; her love of life’s frivolities, temporarily
obscured, brightened afresh; and long before the legend
of the debts, the daring, the disappearance of the Count
von Schätterheims had been supplanted by newer scandal,
her cheek had recovered its wonted bloom, her step its
lightness in the dance, and her mien its touchingly
dependent grace.</p>
<p>In due time she had her reward; for she captured,
after a short but brilliant campaign, consisting of an
oratorio, a lawn party, and three dances, an immensely
opulent northern squatter. She looks fair and pure as
the blue sky above her, as she rolls by, dressed <i>à
merveille</i>, in the best-appointed carriage in Sydney. But
for happiness—who shall say?</p>
<p>In the meanwhile, unlimited pleasure-seeking and
universal admiration supply a reasonable substitute.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">194</span>
<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX</a></h2>
</div>
<p>Mr. Neuchamp, having now occasional leisure to reflect,
discovered that he was provided with an extensive and
valuable property which he <i>had</i> partly come to Australia
to seek, and with an affianced bride, whom he had not at
all included among his probable possessions. As for the
great project of Colonial Reform, which had stood out
grandly dominating the landscape in the future of his
dreams, with the solitary exception of the conversion of
Jack Windsor, he could not aver that he had accomplished
anything.</p>
<p>His co-operative community had notably failed in
practice. But for the aid and counsel of Mr. Levison, it
might have overthrown his own fortune, without particularly
benefiting the individuals of this society.</p>
<p>Whenever he had acted upon his own discretion, and
in furtherance of advanced views, he had been conspicuously
wrong. Where he had followed the ideas of others,
or been forced into them by circumstances, he had been
invariably right. Where he had been generous, he had
been deceived; where he had been cautious, he had
found himself extravagant in loss; where he had been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">195</span>
rash, riches had rolled in upon him with flowing tide.
His most elaborate estimates of character had been
ludicrously erroneous. His advice had been inapplicable,
his theories unsound. Practice—mostly blindfold—had
alone given him a glimmering knowledge of the relatively
component parts of this most contradictory, unintelligible
antipodean world.</p>
<p>Mr. Neuchamp, having reached the very visible landmark
of an engagement in his pilgrimage of love, was
much minded to press for an immediate union, believing,
now that the rain had come, there existed no rational
impediments in the way of this last supreme success.
Well-informed persons will know that no such outrage
upon <i>les convenances</i> could for a moment be tolerated.
Baffled but not despondent, he returned to the charge
with such determination that the event was fixed to take
place in about two months, as being the earliest hour anything
so dreadful could be thought of.</p>
<p>So much being gained, Ernest became speedily aware
that being at all hours and seasons subject to the raids of
milliners‘attendants and others was a state of existence
out of harmony with a poet’s soul. Thus, after divers
unsatisfactory and interrupted interviews with Antonia,
he took his passage by the mail, and heroically started for
Rainbar.</p>
<p>This brilliant combination of business with necessity
would, he thought, serve to while away the weary hours
between the scorned present and the beautiful future.
Rainbar and Mildool had to be visited at some time or
other. Although the luxurious life of the metropolis had
gained upon him, Ernest Neuchamp always arose, Antæus-like,
fresh to the call of duty.</p>
<p>When he quitted the railway terminus and entered
the mail-coach which was to convey him to his destination,
the full magnitude of the mighty change of season<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">196</span>
burst upon him. During his stay in Sydney the short,
bright southern spring-time had been born and was ripening
into summer, with what effect upon plant life it was
now a marvel of marvels to see.</p>
<p>Mr. Neuchamp’s novitiate had been served during the
latter years of a ‘dry cycle.’ He had seen fair growth of
pasture towards Christmas time, but of the amazing crop
of grass and herbage uncared for, wasted, or burned, in
what Mr. Windsor called ‘an out-and-out wet season,’ he
had no previous experience.</p>
<p>From the moment that the coach cleared the forest
parks which skirted the plains, Ernest found himself
embarked upon a ‘measureless prairie,’ where the tall
green grass waved far as eye could see in the summer
breeze. A millennium of peace and plenty had apparently
arrived for all manner of graminivorous creatures. How
different was the aspect of these ‘happy hunting grounds,’
velvet-green of hue, flower-bespangled, brook-traversed,
with the forgotten sound of falling waters ever and anon
breaking on the ear, with hum of bee and carol blithe of
bird, as the sleek-coated, high-conditioned coach-horses
rattled the light drag merrily over the long long road!
What a wondrous transformation! Would Augusta, <i>la
belle cousine</i>, have believed that all this glorious natural
beauty had been born, grown, and developed ‘since the
rain came’?</p>
<p>When at length the journey was over, and the proprietor
of Rainbar and Mildool was deposited, with his
portmanteau, at the garden gate of the former station,
Mr. Neuchamp was constrained to confess that he hardly
knew his own place. There had been much growth
and greenery when he left with the fat cattle; but the
riotous extravagance of nature in that direction could<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">197</span>
not have been credited by him without actual eye-witness.</p>
<p>Around the buildings, the garden fence, the stockyard,
the cowshed, was a growth of giant herbage, composed of
wild oats, wild barley, marsh-mallows, clover, and fodder
plants unnamed, that almost smothered these humble
buildings and enclosures. A few milch cows fed lazily,
looking as if they had been employed in testing the comparative
merits of oilcake and Thorley’s cattle-food, for an
agricultural experiment. The river-flats below the house
were knee-deep in clover and meadow grasses, causing
Mr. Neuchamp to wonder whether or no it would be
worth while to go in for a mowing-machine and a few
horse-rakes, for the easy conversion of a fraction of it
into a few hundred tons of meadow hay, to be stored
against the next, ‘dry year.’ The mixed grasses, as he
had tested in a small way, made excellent hay. But how
far off looked such a calamity! Thus ever with ‘youth
at the prow and pleasure at the helm’ do we lightly
measure the future, recking neither of stormy sky nor of
the ravening deep.</p>
<p>After Mr. Neuchamp had sufficiently admired the
grassy wilderness, thoughts arose respecting dinner, and
also a feeling of wonder where everybody was. The
station appeared to be minding itself. The cook was
absent, though recent indications of his presence were
visible in the kitchen. Charley Banks was away and Jack
Windsor, probably at Mildool; also Piambook, whose
open countenance and dazzling teeth would have been
better than nothing. Where was Mrs. Windsor, <i>née</i>
Walton? He had rather looked forward to having a
talk with her under new conditions of life. She could
not be at Mildool, as there was no shelter for a decent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">198</span>
woman there. What in the name of wonder had become
of them all? There were no Indians in this country, or
he might have turned his thoughts in the direction of
Blackfeet or Comanches, the ‘wolf Apaché and the cannibal
Navajo.’ Not even a Mormon settlement handy
enough to organise a ‘mountain-meadows massacre’! He
never thought Rainbar so lonely before. He went into
the cottage, and in a leisurely way unpacked his portmanteau
in the snug bedroom which he had so long inhabited—where
he had so often, before the rain came, lain down
in sorrow and arisen in despair. What a tiny wooden
box it seemed! Yet he had thought it comfortable, even
luxurious. Like those of many other distinguished travellers
and heroes long absent from the scene of early conflict
or youthful habitation, the eyes of Mr. Neuchamp
had altered their focus.</p>
<p>After three months’ familiarity with the lodging of
clubs and villas, the neat but necessarily contracted
apartments of his bush cottage appeared like cupboards,
or even akin to a watch-box which he had once dwelt in
at Garrandilla.</p>
<p>However, he knew by former experience that a week
or two of station life would restore his vision, his appetite,
and his contentment with the district. Further than
that he did not go. At the present price of cattle, it was
not likely that he would need ever again to spend as
many months consecutively at Rainbar as he had devoted
to that desirable but isolated abode before the ‘drought
broke up.’</p>
<p>Having had ample time for comparison and appropriate
reflections, he was at length set free from the
apprehension that he was the sole inhabitant of Rainbar
by the appearance of old Johnny, the cook, who expressed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">199</span>
great delight and satisfaction at seeing him, and, explaining
his absence by the statement that he had taken a
walk of five miles down the river in order to buy a bag
of potatoes from a dray loaded with those rare esculents,
proceeded to place him in possession of facts.</p>
<p>‘Every one about the place was away mustering at
Mildool,’ he said, ‘including Mr. Banks, both the blackfellows,
Jack Windsor, and even Mrs. Windsor, who,
finding that there was an unoccupied hut formerly belonging
to a dairyman at Mildool, had joined the mustering
party. He (Johnny) hadn’t had a soul to talk to for
three weeks since the muster began, and was as miserable
as a bandicoot.’</p>
<p>The old man bustled about, laid the cloth neatly, and
cooked and served an inviting meal, which Ernest, after
the reckless preparations supplied to coach passengers,
really enjoyed. It was far into the night when the
sound of horses‘hoofs was heard, and Mr. Banks, carrying
his saddle and bridle, which he placed upon the verandah,
let go his courser to graze at ease, entered the spare bedroom,
undressed, and was in bed and asleep all in the
space of about two minutes and a half, as it seemed to Mr.
Neuchamp, from the first sound of his arrival. He did
not care to make himself known to the wearied youngster,
and reserved that sensation, very wisely, as might be
many other pieces of news and matters of business, until
morning light.</p>
<p>With the new day arising, the active youth was much
astonished, and even more gratified, to find his employer
again under the same roof. At the daylight breakfast of
the bush—<i>de rigueur</i> when unusual work of any kind is
going forward—he favoured Ernest with a full recital of
all the exciting news.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">200</span></p>
<p>‘Everything was well as could possibly be. All the
cattle at Rainbar were fat as pigs—all the “circle dot”
cattle, all Freemans‘lot, which had really turned out a
famous bargain. A dealer from Ballarat had been up a
week since, and to him he had sold the whole of the
Freeman horses at fifteen pounds a head, cash, young and
old. He didn’t think, when old Cottonbush put the brand
on them, that they’d ever see a ten-pound note for the
whole boiling. He had the dealer’s cheque—a good one
too, or he wouldn’t have taken it—for twelve hundred
and fifteen pounds! There were just eighty-one head.</p>
<p>‘As for the back country, it looked lovely. Grass and
water everywhere. The Back Lake was full; the river
was bank high, and if there was a flood—a regular big
one—he wouldn’t say but what the water might flow into
the canal after all and fill the Outer Lake. By the way,
there were some back blocks for sale at the back of Rainbar
and Mildool, and if he had his way they should be
bought, as it would give them the command of all the
back country as far as Barra Creek, and keep other
people from coming in by and by, and perhaps giving
trouble; nothing like securing all your back country
while it is cheap.</p>
<p>‘With regard to Mildool, it was the best bargain he
(Charley Banks) had ever seen. All unbranded stock
were to be given in, and there would be calves and yearlings
enough to brand to pay two years’ wages to every
man employed on both runs. They had pretty well got
through the count; there would be a two or three hundred
head over the muster number, which would be no
harm, and it was only ordinary store price for half fat
cattle broken in to the run. As to fat stock, you might
go on to any camp and cut out with your eyes shut; you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">201</span>
couldn’t go wrong; they were all fat together, young and
old. Mooney, the dealer, stayed a night last week, and
said he would give seven pounds all round for a thousand
head, half cows, to be taken in three months. He
thought it was a fair offer. It saved all the bother of
sending men on the roads, and when you let the mob out
of your yard you get your cheque, or draft, as the case
might be. He was always for selling on the run, as long
as the buyers were known men.‘</p>
<p>‘How was Mrs. Windsor?’</p>
<p>‘Oh, she was a brick—a regular trump—something
like a woman! When she found Jack would only come
back from Mildool once a week, she inquired whether
there was any sort of a hut that could hold a small
family at Mildool; was told there was the old dairyman’s
hut at Green Bend, about a mile from the station.
So she said she would rather live in a packing-case than
be separated from her husband; and as Mildool was to
be their home, they might as well go there at once. The
end of it was that she made Jack take her traps over,
and she has got the old place so neat and comfortable
that any one might live there, small as it is, and enjoy
life. She was a downright sensible woman, as well as a
deuced good-looking one, and she would make Jack a rich
man before he died.’</p>
<p>‘Was there anything else to tell?’</p>
<p>‘Well, not much. He was going to let Jack have
Boinmaroo at Mildool, and keep Piambook here; when
they mustered at either place they could join forces.
Oh! the Freemans. Well, they had all gone a month
back. Joe and Bill had gone to take up more land in
the Albury district. Wish them joy wherever they go.
We’re quit of them, that’s one comfort. Abraham Freeman<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">202</span>
and his lot cleared out for his old place at Bowning.
They’ll do well there in a quiet way. Poor Tottie was
sorry to leave Rainbar, and cried like fun. Had to comfort
her a bit when the old woman wasn’t looking. It’s
a beastly nuisance having other people’s stock on your
run, and other people’s boys galloping about all over the
country, whether you like it or not. Was deuced glad
to see their teams yoked and their furniture on, I can tell
you. Suppose you’d like to ride over to Mildool, now
you are here?’</p>
<p>Mr. Neuchamp thought he might as well, although
fully satisfied that the muster would have been satisfactorily
completed without him. So the two men rode
over that day and had a look at the humours of a
delivery muster.</p>
<p>There was, as usual, great skirmishing about the
ownership of calves temporarily separated from their
maternal parents, one stockman averring that he remembered
every spot on a certain calf’s hide since its
early infancy, others corroborating his assertion that it
‘belonged to,’ or was the progeny of, his old black
‘triangle-bar’ cow; Mr. Windsor, as counsel for the
Crown, declaring, on the other hand, that no calf should
leave the Mildool run unless provided with a manifest
mother, then and there substantiating her claim to
maternity by such personal attentions or privileges as
could not be fabricated or misunderstood. To him the
adverse stockman would remark that, if he was going to
talk like that, he might stick to every blessed clear-skin
on the river. Mr. Windsor retorting that he doesn’t say
for that, but if people think they can collar calves for the
asking, they’ve come to the wrong shop when they ride to
Mildool muster. And so on, and so on.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">203</span></p>
<p>Nathless, in course of time all things are arranged,
in some shape, with or without a proportionate allowance
of growling, as the men say. It being apparent
that Mr. Windsor, now full-fledged overseer of Mildool,
knows a thing or two, and will stand up stoutly for his
master’s rights, fewer encroachments are, let us suppose,
attempted.</p>
<p>The cattle are counted and finally gathered, and are
discovered to exceed, by three hundred odd, the station
number. The former manager feels complimented that
he has been able to muster beyond his books. The purchaser
is satisfied, as the additional cattle are merely
charged to him at store cattle price, and, being ‘to the
manor born,’ will swiftly ‘grow into money.’ The strange
stockmen depart, carrying with them a large mixed drove
of strayed cattle. The ex-overseer pays his men and
then leaves for down the country, there to wait on the
agents, and receive his <i>congé</i> or further employment, as
the case may be. Charley Banks and the black boys,
Jack Windsor, and Mr. Neuchamp are left in undisputed
possession of the new kingdom.</p>
<p>With such a season, with such prices ruling, the
management is the merest routine work, a few hundred
calves to brand, arrangements to make for an early
muster to show the herd to the great cattle-dealer, who
wants to buy a thousand head fat to be taken away in
three months, and paid for by his acceptance at that
date. Mr. Mooney happens to come before Ernest leaves
for Sydney, and the negotiation being successful, the new
proprietor of Mildool sets out for the metropolis with a
negotiable bill in his pocket for seven thousand pounds—more
than a third of the purchase-money of the run.</p>
<p>While Mr. Neuchamp was possessing his soul in tranquillity<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">204</span>
at Rainbar, he was surprised at receiving a letter
from his erstwhile Turonia comrade, Mr. Bright. That
cheerful financier wrote as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="psig">
<span class="smcap">Turonia</span>, <i>10th December 18—</i>.<br />
</p>
<p><span class="smcap">My dear Neuchamp</span>—I hear you are to be married to the nicest
girl in Sydney. I thought it only reasonable, considering our two
or three larks here, to offer my congratulations; and, by the bye,
talking of things happening, that fellow Greffham, whom you remember
my helping to arrest, was hanged last Wednesday at
Medhurst.</p>
<p>The evidence, joined to his paying away the numbered notes,
known to be in the escort parcel, was awfully strong against him.
He made no confession, and was as cool and unconcerned to the
very last, as you and I ever saw him at the billiard-table. What
a wonderful uphill game he could play! It is just possible he
might have got off; but Merlin fished up additional evidence
which fixed him, in the eyes of the jury, I think—-the groom
at the inn, who swore he saw a small parcel covered with a gray
rug on his saddle, as he returned from the direction of Running
Creek, which he had not when he passed up. You ought to
have seen him and Merlin look at each other when Merlin asked
the Crown prosecutor to have Carl Anderson called. It was a
‘duel with eyes.’ But, even without that, I don’t see how he
could have accounted for the notes.</p>
<p>I happened to be in Medhurst the day he was to be turned off.
I received a message that he wanted to see me, so I went to the gaol.
I knew the sheriff well. They showed me into his cell at once.</p>
<p>When I got in, Greffham nearly had finished dressing, and had
only to put on his frock-coat to be better turned out, if possible,
than he was for the lawn party Branksome gave when the Governor
came up. He happened to be cleaning his teeth—you remember
how white and even they were—as I came through the door.</p>
<p>‘Sit down, old man,’ he said, just as usual, shying his toothbrush
into the corner of the cell. ‘I daresay they’ll do; and I
suppose I shan’t want <i>that</i> any more. What should you say?
’Pon my soul, there isn’t a chair to offer you; devilish close about
furniture, aren’t they now? But it’s very kind of you, Bright, to
come and see a fellow, when he’s—well—peculiarly situated, eh?’</p>
<p>Here he laughed quite naturally, I give you my word—not forced<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">205</span>
at all. He certainly <i>was</i> the coolest hand I ever saw; and he died
as he lived.</p>
<p>‘What I wanted to see you for, Bright, was this’—here his voice
shook and he <i>did</i> appear to show a little feeling—‘you’ll take these
two letters for me, like a good fellow; one I want you to send to —— after
I am gone; the other you can open <i>then</i>. Make what use you
like of the contents. I shan’t care then; say nothing <i>now</i> to gratify
curiosity. As to what I may have done, or not done, I hold myself
the best judge of my reasons. You know what my life has
been. Open and straightforward, if somewhat reckless. My cards
have always been on the table. I have risked all that man holds
dear on a throw before. This time I have lost. I pay the stakes;
there is no more to be said. Lionel Greffham is not the man to
say “I repent.” He is what he is, and will die as he has lived.
My time on earth has not been spun out much, but, measured by
enjoyment, with a front seat mostly at life’s opera, it adds up fairly.
Give me a Havannah from your case. You will see me pretty
“fit” for the stage when they ring in the leading performer. By
the way, I told them to give you my revolver; and while I think
of it, just remember this, if you want to make <i>very close shooting</i> at
any time, only put in three parts of the powder in the cartridge.‘</p>
<p>I really believe these were his last words, except to the —— hang-man.</p>
<p>He finished his cigar, and lounged up to the gallows, where he
died in the face of a tremendous crowd, calmly and scornfully, just
as he was accustomed to bear himself to them in life. Jack Ketch
was a new hand, and nervous. I heard Greffham say, just as if he
was rowing a fellow for awkwardness in saddling his horse, ‘You
clumsy idiot, what are you trembling for? Hang me, if I can see
what there is to make a fuss about! I’ll bet you a pound I tuck
you up in ten minutes without any baggling. <i>Now</i>, you’re right.
Am <i>I</i> standing quite square?’</p>
<p>‘You’re all right, sir,’ the man said respectfully. The drop fell,
and poor Greffham (I can’t help saying it, although he was a precious
scoundrel) died without the least contrition. Showed perfectly good
taste to the last. Deuced rum people one meets on a goldfield, don’t
you, now?</p>
<p>I suppose you’re not likely to come this way again. We’re not
quite so jolly as we were. The Colonel has gone back to India. Old
De Bracy has got a good Government appointment, for which he
looks more suited than market-gardening, though he was hard to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">206</span>
beat at that, or anything he tackled. I hear you’ve made pots of
money. Parklands was here the other day, and told me. I have
a deuced good mind to turn squatter myself. My regards to old
Frankston, and ask him if he remembers the last story I told him.
Ha, ha!—Yours sincerely,</p>
<p class="psig">
<span class="smcap">John Wilder Bright</span>.</p></blockquote>
<p>Now the great muster and delivery at Mildool was
over and everyday life at Rainbar had again to be faced,
Ernest began to feel like one Alexander, sometimes called
Great, who had conquered his way into the kingdom of
Ennui. He was the possessor of a fortune and of a bride,
both above his utmost hopes, his loftiest aspirations; but
he began to fear that he had lost that which leaves life
very destitute of savour—he feared with a new and
terrible dread that he had lost his Occupation!</p>
<p>For life seemed so much more easy, so much less
necessary to take thought about, now that he had two
stations than when he had but one—one likely to be
wrested from him. So is it that Difficulty is oft our
friend in disguise, Success but the veiled foe which smiles
at our faltering footsteps and watches to destroy. He
saw now, that with Jack Windsor at Mildool, and Charley
Banks, alert, energetic, fully experienced, at Rainbar, his
life henceforth would be that of a visitor, a supernumerary—unless
indeed he employed his mind in the
construction and organisation of ‘improvements’! Ha,
ha! ’<i>Vade retro</i>, Sathanas!‘ The Genie was safe immured
in his brazen sealed-up vessel. There should he
remain.</p>
<p>Still was there one ‘improvement’ in which he had
never altogether lost faith, long and dispiriting as had
been the divorce between formation and utility. This
was the cutting the connecting channel between the Back
Lake and the ‘Outer Lake.’ Long had the ‘master’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">207</span>
ditch’ been as useless as a fish-pond in the bosom of the
Sahara, as a rose-garden in a glacier, as an oyster-bed in
a steppe. Cattle had walked over it; grass had grown
in it; stockmen and thoughtless souls had jeered at it,
and at the English stranger who had thrown away upon
its construction the money of which he possessed a
quantity so greatly in excess of his apparent intelligence.
As long as he remained the proprietor of the run, it
would be hardly in keeping with the manner of the bush
to call it ‘Neuchamp’s Folly.’ But had failure or absence
chanced to occur in his case, the satirical nomenclature
would not have been deferred for a week. In the solitary
rides and musings to which, in default of daily work and
labour, Mr. Neuchamp was fain to betake himself, it
chanced that he had repeatedly examined that portion of
this great sheet of water, which rang with the whistling
wings of wild fowl, and on breezy days surged with long
rippling waves against its bank.</p>
<p>While in Sydney a number of back blocks, at no
greater distance from this outer lake than it was from
the former ‘frontage,’ had been put under offer to him.
What if he should accept the terms—the price was low—and
trust to the chance of the next great flood in the
full-fed chafing river sending the water leaping down his
tiny canal, and thus giving a value never before dreamed
of to this splendidly grand but unnatural region. In
spite of his half-settled determination to accept no other
speculative risks, but, like a wise man, to rest contented
with proved success, the next post conveyed instructions
to Messrs. Paul Frankston and Co. to close for all the
blocks, each five miles square, from A to M, comprising
all the unoccupied country at the back of Rainbar and
Mildool, at the price named.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">208</span></p>
<p>On the following morning the weather was misty and
unusually cloudy, with an apparent tendency to rain.
No rain fell, however; but the raw air, the unusual
bleakness of the atmosphere, seemed abnormal to Ernest
Neuchamp.</p>
<p>‘I should not wonder,’ said Mr. Banks, in explanation,
‘that it was raining cats and dogs somewhere else, snowing,
or something of that sort. Perhaps at the head of
the river. If that’s the case, we shall have a flood and
no mistake. Such a one as none of us has seen yet.
However, we’ve neither hoof nor horn nor fleece on the
frontage. It can’t hurt us, that’s one comfort.’</p>
<p>Mr. Banks’s prognostications were correct. Within
three days—</p>
<div class="poetry-container"><div class="poetry"><div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent7">... like a horse unbroken,</div>
<div class="verse">When first he feels the rein,</div>
<div class="verse indent2">The furious river struggled hard,</div>
<div class="verse">And tossed his tawny mane,</div>
<div class="verse">And burst the curb and bounded,</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Rejoicing to be free,</div>
<div class="verse">And whirling down in fierce career</div>
<div class="verse">Battlement and plank and pier,</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Rushed headlong to the sea.</div>
</div></div></div>
<p>Battlement and plank and pier were in this case
represented by hut slabs and rafters, haystacks and pumpkins,
from the arable lands and meadows through which
the great river held its upper course; while drowned
stock and the posts and rails of many a mile of submerged
fencing represented the latter floating trifles.
There was much that was grand in the steadily deepening,
broadening tide which slowly and remorselessly
crawled over the wide green flats, which undermined the
great waterworn precipices of the red-clayed bluffs, bringing
down enormous fragments and masses, many tons in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">209</span>
weight, which fell, foamed, and disappeared in the turbid,
hurrying wave. Who could have recognised in this fierce,
swollen, tyrant river, yellow as the Tiber, broad as the
Danube, resistless as Ocean, the shallow, pellucid streamlet,
rippling over its sandy shallows, of the dead, bygone
famine year?</p>
<p>On the larger flats it was miles wide. The white,
straight tree-trunks stood like colonnades with arches
framed in foliage, disappearing in endless perspective
above a limitless plain of gliding waters.</p>
<p>By night, as Mr. Neuchamp awoke in his cottage,
which was built upon an elevation said by tradition to
be above the reach of floods, the ‘remorseless dash of
billows’ sounded distinctly, unpleasantly close in the
darkness.</p>
<p>On the following day, the flood still continuing to
rise, Piambook was despatched to the Back Lake to
report, and upon his return stated that ‘water yan along
that one picaninny blind creek like it Murray, make
haste longer Outer Lake.’ Full of hope and expectant
of triumph, Mr. Neuchamp started out for ‘Lake country,’
accompanied by Mr. Banks.</p>
<p>When they arrived at the first lake the unusual
fulness and volume of the water in that reservoir showed
that the main stream must have been forced outwards
along the course of the ancient, natural channel, by which
in years of exceptional high floods—and in those years
only—the lake had been filled.</p>
<p>Now, thought Mr. Neuchamp, the hour, long delayed,
long doubted, has surely come. Who could have dreamed
but a few short months since, when our very souls were
adust and athirst with perennial famine, that our eyes
should behold the sight which I see now? How should<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">210</span>
it teach us to hoard the garnered gold of truth, the
‘eternal verity’ in our heart of hearts! ‘My lord delayeth
his coming.’ Was that held to be a reason, an
excuse for the unfaithful, self-indulgent? Truly this
would seem to some as great a miracle as the leaping
water which followed the stroke of the prophet’s staff in
that other desert of which we read of old.</p>
<p>And now his eyes did actually behold the first trickling,
wondrous motion of the brimming reservoir to
advance, gravitation-led, along the narrow path to its far-distant
sister lake. Slowly the full waters rose to the
very lip of the vast natural cup or vase, and then, first
saturating the entrance, poured down the narrow outlet
which the forecasting mind of man had prepared for it.
It trickled, it flowed, it ran, it coursed, foaming and
rushing, along the cutting, of which the fall at first exceeded
that of the general passage. It was done! It
was over! A proud success!</p>
<p>Charley Banks threw up his hat. Together they rode
recklessly onward to the Outer Lake, and there Ernest
Neuchamp enjoyed silently the deep satisfaction—then
known but to the projector and inventor—of witnessing
the waters of the Inner Lake, for the first time since the
sea had ceased to murmur over these boundless levels,
flow fast and flashing forward, driven by the pressure of
the immense body behind, into the vast, deep, grass-clothed
basin of the Outer Lake.</p>
<p>This was a triumph truly. For this alone it was
worth while to have journeyed across the long long
ocean tide, to have toiled and suffered, waited and
watched, to have eaten his heart with fear and sickening
dread of the gaunt destroyer ‘Ruin,’ ever stalking
nearer and nearer. This was true life—real adventure—the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">211</span>
hazard and the triumph which alone constitute
true manhood.</p>
<p>In the ecstasy of the moment Ernest Neuchamp forgot
the fortune he had gained, the bride whom he had won,
the home of his youth, the grand and glorious future, the
not uneventful past. All things seemed as dreams and
visions by the side of this grand and living Reality.</p>
<p>As he sat on his horse and gazed, still flowed the
glorious wave into the century-dry basin by the channel
which he, Ernest Neuchamp, had, in defiance of Nature,
opinion, and society, conceived, formed, and successfully
completed. Seasons might come and go; another dry
time might come; the water might periodically evaporate
and disappear,—but nothing could evade the great fact
henceforth in the history of the land, that he had established
the connection between the river and this distant,
long-dry, unthought-of reservoir. There would be no
more hint or menace of Neuchamp’s Folly—more likely,
Neuchamp’s River.</p>
<p>Lake Neuchamp! Pshaw! it was an inland sea.
Why not name it now? Why not render immortal, not
his own perhaps ancient patronymic, but the lovely and
beloved name of his soul’s divinity? Now was the hour,
the minute, when the virgin waters were falling for the
first time in creation into the flower-besprinkled lap of
the green earth before their eyes!</p>
<p>‘Charley, my boy,’ he said to Mr. Banks, ‘take off
your hat. Piambook, do liket me,’ he said, removing his
own. ‘I name this water, now about to be filled for the
first time within the memory of man, “Lake Antonia.”
So mote it be. Hip, hip, hurrah!‘ and the echoes of the
waste rang to the unfamiliar sounds of the great British
shout of welcome, of salutation, of battle-joy, of death-defiance,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">212</span>
which England’s friends and England’s foes have
had ere now just cause to know.</p>
<p>‘Hurrah!’ joined in Charley Banks with genuine
feeling. ‘By George! I never thought to see this sight—last
year particularly; but, of course, we might have
known it wasn’t going to be dry always, as Levison said.
We don’t see far beyond our noses, most of us. But it
<i>was</i> hard to conjure up any notion of a regular out-and-out
waterfall like this with a twelvemonth’s dust, and
last year’s burnt feed keeping as black as the day it took
fire. I believe there will be thirty feet of water in this
when it’s full up, and it soon will be at this rate.’</p>
<p>‘Budgeree tumble down water that one,’ said Piambook.
‘Old man blackfellow yabber, debil-debil, make a
light here when he yan long that one scrub.’</p>
<p>Another occasion of congratulation awaited Mr. Neuchamp,
the pleasure and pride accompanying which were
perhaps only second in degree to the feelings inspired by
the engineering triumph of Lake Antonia. His stud of
Austral-Arabian horses had shared in the general advance
and development of the property; they were now a perfect
marvel of successful rearing.</p>
<p>He had them brought in daily from the sandhills near
the plain where they ordinarily grazed, and passed hours
in reviewing the colts and fillies, the yearlings, the mares
and the foals. Every grade and stage, from the equine
baby which gambolled and frisked by the side of its dam,
to the well-furnished three-year-old filly—‘Velut in latis
equa trima campis ludit exsultim, metuitque tangi,’—all
were satin-coated, sleek and round, fuller-fleshed, stronger,
swifter; more riotously healthy could they not have been
had they been fed with golden oats in an emperor’s stable.
Daintily now they picked the half-ripened tops from the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">213</span>
fields of wild oats or barley which spread for leagues
around. They drank of the pure clear waters of every
pool and brooklet. They lay at night in the thickly-carpeted
sandy knolls, and snuffed up the free desert
breeze, fresh wafted from inmost sands or farthest seas.
Partaking on one side of their parentage of the stately
height and generous scope of their southern dams, culled
from the noble race of island steeds which bear up the
large frames of the modern Anglo-Saxon, they inherited
a strong, perhaps overpowering infusion of the priceless
blood of the courser of the desert. Their delicate heads,
their wide nostrils, their adamantine legs, their perfect
symmetry, all told of the ancient lineage of Omar the
Keheilan, whose dam was Najima Sabeh or the Morning
Star, of the strain Seglawee Dzedran, which, as every
camel-driver of the Anezeh knows, dates back to El
Kamsch, that glorious equine constellation, the five mares
of Mahomet!</p>
<p>Here, again, was another instance of what Ernest
could not but acknowledge gratefully as the generosity of
Fate. Had but the season continued obdurate, his utter
irrevocable ruin could not have been stayed. As a consequence,
this stud, so precious, so profitable, so distinguished
as it was apparently destined to be (for Mr.
Banks told him that numbers of offers had already been
received for all available surplus stock, while the agent
of a large dealer had implored him to put a price upon
the whole stud), would doubtless have passed under the
hammer as most unconsidered trifles, to be sneered at,
scattered, for ever wasted and lost, as had been many a
good fellow’s pet stud ere now.</p>
<p>At length the day arrived when, having witnessed the
satisfactory conclusion of every conceivable business duty<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">214</span>
and task which could be transacted at Rainbar or Mildool,
Mr. Neuchamp took his place in the mail for Sydney,
which city he had calculated to reach within a week of
the dread ceremonial which was to seal his destiny. The
coach did <i>not</i> break down or capsize, fracturing Mr.
Neuchamp’s leg in two places. The train fulfilled its
appointed task, and the stern steam-giant did not select
that opportunity for running off the rails or equalising
angles. Something of the sort might have been reasonably
expected to happen to a hero so near the rapturous
denouement of the third volume, in which, indeed, every
hero of average respectability is killed, mysteriously imprisoned,
or married.</p>
<p>Mr. Neuchamp had undergone trials and troubles,
risks and anxieties, losses and crosses; but the season of
tribulation was for ever past for him. He had henceforth
but to submit to the compulsory laurel crown, to the
caresses of Fortune’s favourite delegates, to listen to the
plaudits of the crowd, to withstand the whispers and
glances of beauty. He was now wise, beautiful, strong,
and brave, a conqueror, an Adonis—in a word, he was
<i>rich</i>!</p>
<p>He stood successful, and the world’s praises, grudgingly
bestowed upon struggling fortitude, were showered
upon the obviously victorious speculator. All kinds of
rumours went forth about him. His possessions were
multiplied, so that Rainbar and Mildool stood sponsors
for a tract of country about as large as from Kashgar to
Khiva.</p>
<p>The canal was magnified into the dimensions of its
namesake of Suez, and a trade was prophesied which
would overshadow Melbourne and revolutionise Adelaide.
He had contracted for the remount service for the whole<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">215</span>
Madras Presidency, such a matter being quite within the
scope of his immense and high-bred studs. His herds of
cattle were to supply Ballarat and Sandhurst with fat
stock, and Melbourne buyers were on their way to secure
everything he could deliver for the next two years!
Ernest Neuchamp of Rainbar was the man of the day;
the popular idol. Squatter though he might be, some of
Jack Windsor’s grateful utterances had been circulated,
and a democratic but strongly appreciative and generous
populace adored him. Portraits of Mr. Neuchamp and
his faithful retainer, Jack Windsor, contending victoriously
with a swarthy piratical crowd, led on by the
Count with a cutlass and a belt full of revolvers, appeared
in the windows of the print-shops. Heroism and unselfish
generosity, like murder, ‘will out.’</p>
<p>Whether accidentally or otherwise, the Morahmee
conflict had transpired. I make no reflections upon the
well-known inviolable secrecy which shrouds all postnuptial
communications. I content myself with stating
a fact. Mr. Windsor was now a married man.</p>
<p>Ernest was at first annoyed, then surprised, lastly,
unaffectedly amused, when a highly popular dramatic
version of the incident appeared at the Victoria Theatre,
wherein he was represented as defying the Count, and
assuring him that ‘berlood should flow from Morahmee
Jetty to the South Head Lighthouse ere he relinquished
the two maidens to his lawless grasp,’ while Jack Windsor’s
representative, with a cabbage-tree hat and a hanging
velvet band broad enough to make a sash for Carry,
placed himself in an exaggerated, pugilistic attitude, and
implored the foreign seamen to ‘come on and confront
on his own ground, by the shore of that harbour which
was his country’s pride, a true-born Sydney native!’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">216</span>
This brought down the house, and occasioned Mr.
Neuchamp such anguish of mind that he began to think
Jermyn Croker not such a bad fellow after all, and to
feel unkindly towards the great land and the warm-hearted
people of his adoption.</p>
<p>Incapable of being stimulated by flattery into a false
estimate of himself, these exaggerated symptoms of appreciation
but pained him acutely; they disturbed his
philosophical mind, ever craving for the performance of
justice and intolerant of all lower standards of right.</p>
<p>As for Antonia Frankston, like most women, she was
gratified by these tokens of the distinction which had
been so profusely accorded to her hero. He was a hero
who, in her eyes, though worthy of triumphs and processions,
evaded his claims to such distinctions. He was
too prone, she thought, to be over Scriptural in his social
habitudes, and unless roused and incited, to take the
lower rather than the higher seat at the board. Now
that the people, wavering and impulsive, but still a
mighty and tangible power, had endorsed and adopted
him, Antonia’s expansive mind recognised the brevet
rank bestowed upon him. After all, had he not done
much and dared greatly? Was it not well for the world
to know it? If he was to be decorated, few deserved it
more. So Antonia accepted serenely and in good faith
the plaudits and universal flattery which now commenced
to be showered upon the hero of her choice, the idol of
her heart, the image of all written manhood.</p>
<p>The days which Mr. Neuchamp spent in Sydney after
his return from Mildool and Rainbar were certainly more
tedious than any which he had ever known in the pleasant
city; but at length they passed away and were no more—strange
thought! those atoms from the mighty mass<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">217</span>
of Time—drops from his flowing river—draughts, alas!
quaffed or spilled from life’s golden chalice. They were
past, faded, dead, irrevocably gone, as the days of the
years before Pharaoh, before the shepherd kings, before
the dawn of human life, Eden, or the first gleam of light
which flashed upon a darkened, formless world!</p>
<p>Sad, pathetic even, is the death of a day! Its circling
hours have known peace, joy, loving regard, social glee,
charity, justice, mercy, repose. The allotted task has
been done. The parent’s smile, the wife’s love, the babe’s
prattle, have all glorified earth during its short season.
And now the day is done! its tiny term is over, lost in
the shoreless sea of past immensities! The brightly inconstant
orb shines tenderly on the new-born stranger,
full of joyous hope or dread expectancy. Who can tell
what this, the new and garish day, may bring forth?
Let us weep for the loved, fast-fading Child of Time, in
whose golden tresses, at least, twined no cypress wreath.</p>
<p>Then, heralded by calm and cloudless hours, did the
wondrous unit, the Day of Days, dawn for Ernest Neuchamp.
Rarely—even in that matchless clime, where
the too ardent sun alone may be blamed by the husbandman,
rarely by the citizen or the tourist—did a more
perfect, unrivalled, wondrous day steal rosy through the
ocean mists, the folded vapours, to change into fretted
gold and Tyrian dyes the tender tints of flushed dawn.
All nature visibly, audibly rejoiced. The tiny wavelets
murmured on the milk-white sands of the Morahmee
beach, that their darling—she who loved them and talked
with them in many a hushed eve, in many a solemn
starry midnight—was this day to be wed. The strange
foreign pines and flower trees of the Morahmee plantation,
brought from many a distant land to please the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">218</span>
lady of the mansion, echoed the sound as they waved to
and fro with oriental languor and tropical mystery. The
flowerets she daily tended turned imperceptibly their
delicately various sheen of petals to each other and
sighed the tender secret. With how many secrets are
not the flowers entrusted? Have they not been sworn
to silence since those days of the great dead empires,
when the vows and pleadings, songs and laughter, beneath
the rose-chaplets were sacred evermore?</p>
<p>Her gems, of which Antonia had great store—for
there was more difficulty in preventing Paul from overlading
her caskets than of replenishing them—even they
knew it. They flashed and glittered, and reddened, and
sent out green and purple light, for they are envious,
hard, and remorseless of nature, as they noted the arrival
of a bediamonded necklace, and a brooch outshining in
splendour any of their rich and rare and very exclusive
‘set.’</p>
<p>The pensioners, her dependants, of the house, among
the humble, and the very poor, knew it and raised for
her welfare the brief unstudied prayer which comes from
a thankful heart. The poor, in ordinary acceptation, are,
and have always been, in Australia, difficult to discover
and to distinguish. But to the earnest quest of the unaffectedly
charitable, anxious to do good to soul or body,
to succour the tempted, to help the needy, to save him
that is ready to perish, worthy occasions of ministration
have never been absent from the outskirts of every large
city.</p>
<p>The forlorn spinster, friendless and forsaken, the
overworked matron,—the shabby genteel sufferers too
secure to starve, too poor to enjoy, too proud to complain,
and, occasionally, what seemed to be an example of unmerciful<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">219</span>
disaster,—among these were the rich maiden’s
unobtrusive but unremittingly performed good works, of
which none heard, none knew, but the recipients, and
perhaps the discreetest of co-workers.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>And thus, with the day just dawned, had the maiden
life of Antonia Frankston come to an end. From this
day forth her being was to merge in that of one who,
falling with the suddenness of a shipwrecked mariner
into their society, had been, as would have been such a
waif, treated with every friendly office, with the ample
up-springing kindness of a princely heart, by her fond
father. That father, no mean judge of his fellow-man,
had seen in his early career but the noble errors of a
lofty nature and an elevated ideal. Such disproportions
between judgment and experience but prove the natural
dignity of the mind as fully as the precocious wisdom of
the gutter-bred urchin waif, his base descent and companionship.</p>
<p>Paul Frankston had long foreseen that, when the
lessons of life should have cleared the encrustation from
the character of his <i>protégé</i>, it would shine forth bright
and burnished as Toledo steel—all-sufficient for defence,
nay, equal to spirited attack, should such need arise.
He saw that the future possessor and guardian of his
soul’s treasure was a ‘man’ as well as a ‘gentleman.’
On both of these essentials he laid great weight. For
the rest, his principles were high and unfaltering, his
habits unimpeachable. Whatever trifling defects there
might be in his character were merely such as were
incident to mortality. They must be left to the influence
of time, experience, and of Antonia.</p>
<p>‘If she doesn’t turn him out a perfect article,’ said<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">220</span>
Paul, unconsciously quitting the mental for the actual
soliloquy, ‘why, nothing and no one can. If I had been
any one else, and she had commenced early enough at
me, I really believe that she’d have changed old Paul
Frankston into a bishop, or, at any rate, a rural dean at
least; even Charley Carryall——’</p>
<p>But whether Captain Carryall’s utterances and anecdotes
were scarcely of a nature calculated to harmonise
with bishops and deans, or whether Mr. Frankston’s
many engagements at this important crisis suddenly
engaged his attention, can never be known with that
precision which this chronicler is always anxious to
supply. One thing only is certain, that he looked at
his watch, and hastily arising from his arm-chair, departed
into the city.</p>
<p>For the information of a section of readers for whom
we feel much respect and gratitude, it may be mentioned
that the wedding took place at St. James’s, a venerable
but architecturally imperfect pile in the vicinity of Hyde
Park. There be churches near Morahmee more replete
with ‘miserable sinners’ in robes of Worth and garments
of Poole, but Mr. Frankston would none of them. In
the old church had he stood beside his mother, a schoolboy,
wondering and wearied, but acquiescent, after the
manner of British children; in the old church had he
plighted his troth to Antonia’s sainted mother; in the
old church should his darling utter her vows, and in no
other. Are there any words which can fitly interpret
the deep joy and endless thankfulness which fill the
heart and humble the mind of him who, all unworthy,
knows that the chalice of life’s deepest joy is even then
past all risk and danger, steadily uplifted to his reverent
lips?<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">221</span></p>
<p>Doubts there have been, delays that fretted, fears that
shook the soul, clouds that dimmed, darkness that hid
the sky of love. All these have sped. Here is naught
but the glad and gracious Present, that blue and golden
day which, pardoning and giving amnesty to the Past,
beseeches, well-nigh assures, the stern veiled form of the
Future.</p>
<p>Some of these reflections would doubtless have
mingled with the contemplations of Ernest Neuchamp
at Aurora’s summons on that glad morn but for an unimportant
fact—that he was at that well-known poetical
period most soundly asleep.</p>
<p>Restlessly wakeful during the earlier night-watches,
he slept heavily at length, and only awoke, terrible to
relate, with barely time for a careful toilet. Hastily
disposing of a cup of coffee and a roll, he betook himself,
in company with Mr. Parklands, who, I grieve to relate,
had been playing loo all night, and was equally late and
guilty, to the ancient church, where they were, by the
good fortune of Parklands‘watch being rather fast—like
all his movements—exactly, accurately the canonical five
minutes before the time. Both of the important personages,
being secretly troubled, looked slightly, becomingly
pale. But the pallor of Parklands, entirely due to an
unprosperous week, involving heavier disbursements and
later sittings than ordinary, told much in his favour with
the bridesmaids, so much so, that he always averred, in
his customary irreverent speech, that ‘his flint was fixed’
on the occasion.</p>
<p>Probably owing to the calmly superior aspect of Mr.
Hartley Selmore, or the tonic supplied by Jermyn
Croker’s patent disapprobation and contempt of the
whole proceedings, the protagonist and his acolouthos<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">222</span>
went through the ordeal with that exact proportion of
courage, reverence, deftness, and satisfaction, the full
rendering of which is often hard upon him who makes
necessarily ‘a first appearance.’ As for Antonia’s loveliness
on that day, when, radiant, white-robed, and serene,
she placed her hand in that of her lover, and greeted him
with the trustful smile in which the virgin-soul shines
out o’er the maiden-bride’s countenance, Ernest Neuchamp
may be pardoned for thinking that the angel of
his dreams had been permitted to visit the earth, to
rehearse for his especial joy a premature beatific vision.</p>
<p>Mr. Parklands effected a sensation by dropping the
bridal-ring, but as he displayed much quickness of eye
and manual dexterity in regaining it, the incident had
rather a beneficial effect than otherwise. Everything
was happily concluded, even to the kissing of the bridesmaids,
Mr. Parklands, with his usual energy and daring,
having insisted on carrying out personally that pleasing
portion of the programme, supposed to appertain of right
to the holder of the ancient and honourable office of
groomsman. This compelled the chasing of two unwilling
damsels half-way down the aisle, after which the
slightly scandalised spectators quitted the church, while
the wedding-guests betook themselves to Morahmee.</p>
<p>There, as they arrived, Mr. Frankston, sweeping the
bay mechanically with long-practised eye, exclaimed,
‘What boat is that heading for our jetty at such a pace?—a
whaleboat, too, with a Kanaka crew. There’s a tall
man with the steer oar in his fist; by Jove! it’s Charley
Carryall for a thousand.’</p>
<p>And that cheerful mariner and successful narrator it
proved to be when the weather-beaten boat came foaming
up to the little pier, drawn half out of the water by her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">223</span>
wild-looking, long-haired crew, encouraged by their
captain, who was backing up the stroke as if an eighty-barrel
whale depended upon their speed.</p>
<p>‘Frantically glad to see you, Charley, my boy,’ shouted
Paul; ‘never hoped for such luck; the only man necessary
to make the affair perfect—absolutely perfect.
Isn’t he, Antonia? But how did you guess what we
were about, and get here in time? I see the old <i>Banksia</i>
is only creeping up the harbour now.’</p>
<p>‘<i>That</i> guided me,’ said the Captain, pointing to the
profusely decorated Morahmee flagstaff—an invariable
adjunct to a marine villa. ‘I was sure all that bunting
wasn’t up for anything short of Antonia’s wedding. So
I dressed and came away. The operculums I was bringing
our little girl here will just come in appropriately.
They’re the first any of you have seen, I daresay.’</p>
<p>The faintly subdued tone which is usual and natural
in the pre-banquet stage could not be reasonably protracted
after the first fusilade of Paul’s wonderful Pommery
and Veuve Clicquot, Steinberger and Roederer.</p>
<p>The guests were many and joyous, the day brilliant,
the occasion fortunate and mirth-inspiring, the entertainment
unparalleled, and henceforth proverbial in a city of
sumptuous and lavish hospitality.</p>
<p>Small wonder, then, that the merriment was as free
and unconstrained as the welcome was cordial, and the
banquet regal in its costly profusion. How the jests
circulated! how the silvery laughter rang! how the
bright eyes sparkled! how the fair cheeks glowed! how
the soft breeze whispered love! how the blue wave
murmured joy!</p>
<p>Did not Mr. Selmore propose the health of the bride
and bridegroom with such pathetic eloquence that the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">224</span>
uninstructed were doubtful as to whether he was Antonia’s
uncle or Mr. Neuchamp’s father? He referred to the
mingled energy, foresight, acuteness, and originality displayed
by his valued, and, he might add, distinguished
friend Ernest Neuchamp. By utilising qualities of the
highest order, joined with information always yielded, he
was proud to say, by himself and other pioneers, he had
achieved an unequalled, but, he must add, a most deserved
success, which placed him in the front rank of the pastoral
proprietors of New South Wales.</p>
<p>Any one would have imagined from Mr. Hartley
Selmore’s benevolent flow of eulogy that he had carefully
nursed the infancy of Mr. Neuchamp’s fortunes instead
of ruthlessly endeavouring to strangle the tender nursling.
He himself, by means of luck and much discount, had
managed to hang on, ostensible proprietor of his numerous
stations, until the tide turned. Now he was a wealthy
man, and needed not to call the governor of the Bank of
England his cousin.</p>
<p>With prosperity his character and estimation had
much improved. There were those yet who said he was
an unprincipled remorseless old humbug, and would none
of him. But in a general way he was acceptable; popular,
in private and in public. His natural talents were
great; his acquirements above the average; his manner
irresistible; it was no one’s particular interest or business
to bring him to book,—so he dined and played billiards at
the clubs, buttonholed officials, and greeted illustrious
strangers, as if the greater portion of the pastoral interior
of Australia belonged to him, or as though he were one
of the Conscript Fathers, distinguished for an excess of
Roman virtues, of this rising nation.</p>
<p>Mr. Parklands indeed desired to throw some missile<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">225</span>
at him for his ‘cheek,’ as he confided to a young lady
with sensational blue eyes, but desisted from that practical
criticism upon being implored by his fair neighbour
not to think of it, for her sake, and that of the ladies
generally. The speaker was pretty enough to speak
with authority, and so Hartley, like other fortunate conspirators
and oppressors, departed in triumph, with the
plaudits and congratulations of the unthinking public.
For the rest, the affair went off much as such society
fireworks do. Augusta Neuchamp, in a Paris dress,
looked so extremely well that Jermyn Croker congratulated
himself warmly, and mingled such vitriolic scintillations
with his pleasantries, that every one was awed into
admiration. The mail steamer was to sail in a few days,
and he flattered himself that he had contrived a surprise
for all his friends, which should contain an element of
ignoring contempt so complete in conception and execution,
that his departure from the colony should faithfully
reflect the opinions and convictions formed during his
residence in it.</p>
<p>Having, after considerable hesitation, finally determined
to enter upon the frightfully uncertain adventure of
matrimony, he had offered himself and heart, such as it
was, in marriage to Miss Augusta, with many apologies
for the apparent necessity of the ceremony being performed
in a colony. That young lady had endeared herself to
Mr. Croker by her unsparing criticisms, by her ceaseless
discontent with all things Australian, by her unmistakable
air of <i>ton</i> and distinction. He did not entirely
overlook her possession of a moderate but assured income.</p>
<p>With his customary disregard for the feelings of
others, he had insisted upon being married, without the
usual time-honoured ceremonies and concomitants, on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">226</span>
morning upon which the mail steamer started for Europe.
By going on board directly afterwards, the Sydney people
would be precluded from hearing of the event until after
their departure; while their fellow-passengers, most of
them strangers, would be ignorant as to whether the
newly-married couple were of a week’s date or of six
months.</p>
<p>This arrangement, in which he had no great difficulty
in persuading Miss Augusta to acquiesce, would have
excellently answered Mr. Croker’s unselfish expectations
but for one circumstance, which he doubtless noted to
the debit of colonial wrongs and shortcomings—he had
neglected to procure the co-operation of the elements.</p>
<p>No sooner had the ceremony, unwitnessed save by
Paul Frankston and Mr. and Mrs. Neuchamp, taken
place, and the happy pair been transferred to the <i>Nubia</i>,
their luggage having been safely deposited in that magnificent
ocean steamer days before,—no sooner had the
great steamer neared the limit of the harbour, when a
southerly gale, an absolute hurricane, broke upon the
coast with such almost unprecedented fury that till
it abated no sane commander of the Peninsular and Oriental
Company’s service would have dreamed of quitting
safe anchorage.</p>
<p>For three days the ‘tempest howled and wailed,’ and
most uncomfortably the <i>Nubia</i> lay at anchor, safe but
most uneasy, and, as she was rather crank, rolling and
pitching nearly as wildly as she could have done in the
open sea.</p>
<p>It so chanced that one of Mr. Croker’s few weak
points was an extraordinarily extreme susceptibility to
<i>mal de mer</i>. On all occasions upon which he had cleared
the Heads, for years past, he had suffered terribly. But<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">227</span>
never since his first outward-bound experience in early
life had he suffered torments, prostration, akin to this.
He lay in his cabin death-like, despairing, well-nigh in
collapse.</p>
<p>Miss Neuchamp, in spite of her much travelling, was
always a martyr during the first week of a voyage, if the
weather chanced to be bad. Now it certainly was bad,
very bad; and in consequence Miss Augusta lay, under
the charge of a stewardess, in a stern cabin, well-nigh
sick unto death, heedless of life and its chequered presentments,
and as oblivious, not to say indifferent, to the
fate of Jermyn Croker as if she had yesterday sworn to
love and obey the chief officer of the <i>Nubia</i>.</p>
<p>This was temporary anguish, mordant and keen,
doubtless. But Time, the healer, would certainly in a
few days have set it straight. The fact of an unknown
lady and gentleman being indisposed at the commencement
of the voyage afflicts nobody. But here was
apparently the finger of the fiend. A ruffianly pilot,
coming off in his hardy yawl, brought on board a copy
of the <i>Sydney Morning Herald</i> of the day following their
attempted departure, in which it was duly set forth how,
at St. James’s Church, by Canon Druid, Jermyn, second
son of Crusty Croker, Esq., of Crankleye Hall, Cornwall,
was then and there married to Augusta, only daughter of
the Rev. Cyril Neuchamp, incumbent of Neuchamp-Barton,
Buckinghamshire, England. Now the joke was
out. Even under such unpromising circumstances it
told. Here were two mortals, passionately devoted of
course, and in that state of matrimonial experience when
all things tend to the wildest overrating, so cast down,
so utterly prostrated by the foul Sea Demon, that they
positively did not care a rush for each other. The great<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">228</span>
Jermyn lay, faintly ejaculating ‘Steward, Ste-w-a-ar-d,’
at intervals, and making neither lament nor inquiry
about his similarly suffering bride. As for Augusta, she
had scarce more strength of body or mind than permitted
her to moan out, ‘I shall die, I shall die’; and
apparently, for all she cared, in that unreal, phantasmal,
pseudo-existence, which only was not death, though
more dreadful, Jermyn Croker might have fallen overboard,
or have been changed into a Seedee stoker. Then
for this to happen to Jermyn Croker, of all people!
The humour of the situation was inexhaustible!</p>
<p>And though the fierce south wind departed and the
<i>Nubia</i> drove swiftly majestic across the long seas that
part Cape Otway from the stormy Leuwin, though in
due time the spice-laden gales blew ‘soft from Ceylon’s
isle,’ and the savage peaks of Aden, the lofty summit of
the Djebel Moussa rose to view in the grand succession
of historical landscapes; yet to the last day of the
voyage a stray question in reference to the precise effects
of very bad cases of sea-sickness would be directed, as to
persons of proved knowledge and experience, to Mr. and
Mrs. Jermyn Croker, by their fellow-passengers.</p>
<p>It is due to Mr. Croker, as a person of importance, to
touch lightly upon his after-career. His wife discovered
too late that in reaching England he had only changed
the theme upon which his universal depreciations were
composed. ‘Non animam sed cœlum mutant qui trans
mare currunt.’ He abused the climate and the people of
England with a savage freedom only paralleled by his
Australian practice. Becoming tired of receiving 3 or
4 per cent for his money, he one day, in a fit of wrath,
embarked one-half of his capital in a somewhat uncertain
South American loan. His cash was absorbed, to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">229</span>
reappear spasmodically in the shape of interest, of which
there was little, while of principal it soon became
apparent that there would be none.</p>
<p>Reduced to the practice of marked though not distressing
economy, Mr. Croker enjoyed the peculiar
pleasure which is yielded to men of his disposition, of
witnessing the possession of luxuries by others and a
style of living which they are debarred from emulating.
He was gladdened, too, by the occasional vision of an
Australian with more money than he could spend, who
rallied him upon his grave air, and bluntly asked why
he was such a confounded fool as to sell out just as
prices were really rising. Finally, to aggravate his
sufferings, long unendurable by his own account, Mr.
Parklands had the effrontery to come home, and, in the
very neighbourhood where he, Croker, was living for
economy, to buy a large estate which happened to be
for sale.</p>
<p>The unfailing flow of the new proprietor’s high
spirits, his liberal ways, and frank manners, combined
with exceptional straight going in the hunting-field,
rendered him immensely popular, as indeed he had
always contrived to be wherever fate and speculation led
his roving steps. But it may be questioned whether his
brother-colonist ever saw his old friend spinning by
behind a blood team, or heard of his being among the
select few in a ‘quick thing,’ without fulminating one of
his choicest anathemas, comprehending at once the order
to which he and Parklands had belonged, the country
they had quitted, and the one in which they now
sojourned.</p>
<p>Mr. Banks remained in the employment of Mr.
Neuchamp at Rainbar until, having saved and acquired<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">230</span>
by guarded investment a moderate capital, he had a
tempting offer of joining, as junior partner, in the
purchase of a large station in new country. Always a
good-looking, manly fellow, he managed to secure the
affections of a niece of Mr. Middleton, whom he met on
one of his rare trips to Sydney, and, before he left for
the Tadmor Downs, Lower Barcoo, they were married.</p>
<p>Mr. Joe Freeman had employed some of the compulsory
leisure time rendered necessary during his
fulfilment of the residence clause for Mr. Levison, in an
exhaustive study of the Crown Lands Alienation Act.
From that important statute (20 Vic. No. 7, sec. 13) he
discovered that, provided a man had children enough,
there is but little limit to the quantity of the country’s
soil that he can secure and occupy at a rate of expenditure
singularly small and favourable to the speculative
‘landist’ of the period.</p>
<p>Thus Joe Freeman, after considerable ciphering, made
out that he could ‘take up’ for himself and his three
younger children a total of twelve hundred and eighty
acres of first-class land! He had determined that as
long as there was an alluvial flat in the colony his choice
should not consist of <i>bad</i> land. Added to this would be
a pre-emptive grazing right of three times the extent.
This would come to three thousand eight hundred and
forty acres, which, added to the freehold of twelve
hundred and eighty acres, gave a total of five thousand
one hundred and twenty acres. The entire use of this
territory he could secure by a payment of five shillings
per acre for the <i>freehold portion</i> only—say, three hundred
and twenty pounds.</p>
<p>‘Of course his three children were compelled, by law,
to reside on their selections. As two of these were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">231</span>
under five years old, some difficulty in the carrying out
of the apparently stringent section No. 18 might be
anticipated.</p>
<p>This difficulty was utterly obliterated by building his
cottage <i>exactly</i> upon the intersecting lines of the four
half-sections, thus:</p>
<div class="figcenter">
<img src="images/i_235.jpg" alt="Diagram" />
</div>
<p>By this clever contrivance Mary Ellen, the baby, as well
as Bob, aged three years, were ‘residing upon their
selections’ when they were in bed at night, inasmuch as
that haven of rest (for the other members of the family)
was carefully placed across the south line which divided
the estates.</p>
<p>Nor was this all. Bill Freeman took up a similar
quantity of land in precisely the same way, locating it
about a mile from his brother’s selection, so that as it was
clearly not worth any other selector’s while to come
between them, they would probably have the use of
another section or two of land for nothing. The squatter
on whose run this little sum was worked out was a
struggling, burdened man, unable to buy out or borrow.
He was ruined. But the individual, in all ages, has
suffered for the State.</p>
<p>Mr. Neuchamp’s Australian career had now reached a
point when life, however heroic, is generally conceded to
be less adventurous. His end, in a literary sense, is
near. We feel bound in honour, however, to add the
information, that upon the assurance of Mr. Frankston
that they could not leave New South Wales temporarily<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">232</span>
at a more prosperous time, Ernest Neuchamp resolved
once more to tempt the main, and to taste the joy of
revisiting, with his Australian bride, his ancestral
home.</p>
<p>Having taken the precaution to call a council of the
most eminent floriculturists of flower-loving Sydney to
his aid, he procured and shipped a case of orchidaceous
plants, second to none that had ever left the land, for the
delectation of his brother Courtenay. He had long since
paid the timely remittance which had so lightened his
load of anxiety in the ‘dry season’ at Rainbar, with such
an addition of ‘colonial interest’ as temporarily altered
the views of the highly conservative senior as to the
soundness of Australian securities.</p>
<p>Upon the genuine delight which Antonia experienced
when the full glory of British luxury, the garnered wealth
of a thousand years, burst upon her, it is not necessary
here to dilate, nor, after a year’s continental travel, upon
the rejoicings which followed the birth of Mr. Courtenay
Frankston Neuchamp at the hall of his sires. His uncle
immediately foresaw a full and pleasing occupation provided
for his remaining years, in securing whatever lands
in the vicinity of Neuchampstead might chance to be
purchasable. They would be needed for the due territorial
dignity of a gentleman, who, upon his accession to
the estate, would probably have thirty or forty thousand
a year additional to the present rental, to spend on one
of the oldest properties in the kingdom.</p>
<p>‘He himself,’ he said, ‘was unhappily a bachelor. He
humbly trusted so to remain, but he was proud and
pleased to think that the old House would once more be
worthily represented. He had never seen the remotest
possibility of such a state of matters taking place in his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">233</span>
own time, and had never dreamed, therefore, of the
smallest self-assertion.</p>
<p>‘The case was now widely different. The cadet of
the House, against, he would frankly own, his counsel
and opinion, had chosen to seek his fortune on distant
shores, as had many younger sons unavailingly. He had
not only found it, but had returned, moreover, with the
traditional Princess, proper to the King’s younger son,
in all legends and romances. In his charming sister he
recognised a princess in her own right, and an undeniable
confirmation of his firmly-held though not expressed
opinion, that his brother Ernest’s enthusiasm had always
been tempered by a foundation of prudence and unerring
taste.’</p>
<p>Again in his native land, in his own county, Antonia
had to submit to the lionisation of her husband, who
came to be looked upon as a sort of compromise between
Columbus and Sir Walter Raleigh, with a dash of Francis
Drake. The very handsome income which the flourishing
property of Rainbar and Mildool, <i>cum</i> Back-blocks A
to M, and the unwearied rainy seasons and high markets,
permitted him to draw, was magnified tenfold. His
liberal expenditure gratified the taste of the lower class,
among whom legends involving romantic discoveries and
annexations of goldfields received ready credence.</p>
<p>Mr. Ernest Neuchamp was courteously distinguished
by the county magnates, popular among the country
gentlemen who had been his friends and those of his
family from his youth, and the idol of the peasantry, who
instinctively discerned, as do children and pet animals,
that he viewed them with a sympathetic and considerate
regard.</p>
<p>When Mrs. Ernest Neuchamp, of Neuchampstead, was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">234</span>
presented to her Gracious Sovereign by ‘the Duchess,’
that exalted lady deigned to express high approval of her
very delicately beautiful and exquisitely apparelled subject
from the far southern land, and to inquire if all
Australian ladies were so lovely and so sweet of aspect
and manner as the very lovely young creature she saw
before her. The Court Circular was unprecedentedly
enthusiastic; and in very high places was Ernest assured
that he was looked upon as having conferred lustre upon
his order and benefits upon his younger countrymen, to
whom he had exhibited so good and worthy an example.</p>
<p>All this panegyrical demonstration Ernest Neuchamp
received not unsuitably, but with much of his old philosophical
calmness of critical attitude. What he really
had ‘gone out into the wilderness’ to see, and to do, he
reflected he had neither seen nor done. What he found
himself elevated to high places for doing, was the presumable
amassing of a large fortune, a proceeding popular
and always favourably looked upon. But this was only
a secondary feature in his programme, and one in which
he had taken comparatively little interest. He could not
help smiling to himself with humorous appreciation of
the satiric pleasantry of the position, conscious also that
his depreciation of great commercial shrewdness and
boldness in speculation was held to be but the proverbial
modesty of a master mind; while the interest which he
could not restrain himself from taking in plans for the
weal and progress of his old friend and client, Demos,
was considered to be the dilettante distraction with
which, as great statesmen take to wood-chopping or
poultry-rearing, the mighty hunter, the great operator of
the trackless waste, like Garibaldi at Caprera, occupied
himself. It was hardly worth while doing battle with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">235</span>
the complimentary critics, who would insist upon crediting
him with all the sterner virtues of their ideal colonist—a
great and glorious personage who combined the autocracy
of a Russian with the <i>savoir faire</i> of a Parisian, the
energy of an Englishman with the instinct of a Parsee
and the rapidity of an American; after a while, no doubt,
they would find out their god to have feet of clay. He
would care little for that. But, in the meanwhile, no
misgivings mingled with their enthusiastic admiration.
The younger son of an ancient house, which possessed
historic claims to the consideration of the county, had
returned laden with gold, which he scattered with free
and loving hand. That august magnate ‘the Duke’ had
(vicariously, of course—he had long lost the habit of personal
action save in a few restricted modes) to look to his
laurels. There was danger, else, that his old-world star
would pale before this newly-arisen constellation, bright
with the fresher lustre of the Southern Cross.</p>
<p>All these admitted luxuries and triumphs notwithstanding,
a day came when both Ernest Neuchamp, and
Antonia his wife, began to approach, with increasing
eagerness and decision, the question of return. In the
three years which they had spent ‘at home’ they had,
they could not conceal from themselves, exhausted the
resources of Britain—of Europe—in their present state
of sensation.</p>
<p>Natural as was such a feeling in the heart of Antonia,
with whom a yearning for her birthland, her childhood’s
home, for but once again to hear the sigh of the summer
wave from the verandah at Morahmee, was gradually
gaining intensity, one wonders that Ernest Neuchamp
should have fully shared her desire to return. Yet such
was undoubtedly the fact.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">236</span></p>
<p>Briton as he was to the core, he had, during the third
year of their furlough, been often impatient, often aweary,
of an aimless life—that of a gazer, a spectator, a dilettante.
Truth to tell, the strong free life of the new world
had unfitted him for an existence of a mere recipiency.</p>
<p>A fox-hunter, a fisherman, a fair shot, and a lover of
coursing, he yet realised the curious fact that he was
unable to satisfy his personal needs by devoting the
greater portion of his leisure to these recreations, perfect
in accessories and appointments, unrivalled in social concomitants,
as are these kingly sports when enjoyed in
Britain.</p>
<p>Passionately fond of art, a connoisseur, and erstwhile
an amateur of fair attainment, a haunter of libraries, a
discriminating judge of old editions and rare imprints, he
yet commenced to become impatient of days and weeks so
spent. Such a life appeared to him now to be a waste
of time. In vain his brother Courtenay remonstrated.</p>
<p>‘I feel, my dear Courtenay, and it is no use disguising
the truth to you or to myself, that I can no longer rest
content in this little England of yours. It is a snug
nest, but the bird has flown over the orchard wall, his
wings have swept the waste and beat the foam; he can
never again, I fear, dwell there, as of old; never again, I
fear.’</p>
<p>‘But why, in the name of all that is exasperating and
eccentric, can you not be quiet, and let well alone?’
asked Courtenay, not without a flavour of just resentment.
‘You have money; an obedient, utterly devoted
father-in-law, of a species unknown in Britain; a charming
wife, who might lead me like a bear, were I so
fortunate as to have been appropriated by her; troops of
friends, I might almost say admirers—for you must own<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">237</span>
you are awfully overrated in the county. What in the
wide world can urge you to tempt fortune by re-embarkation
and this superfluous buccaneering?’</p>
<p>‘I suppose it is vain to try and knock it out of your
old head, Courtenay, that there is no more buccaneering
in New South Wales than in old South Wales. But,
talking of buccaneers, I suppose I <i>am</i> like one of old
Morgan’s men who had swung in a West Indian hammock,
and seen the sack of Panama; thereafter unable
to content himself in his native Devon.</p>
<p>‘You might as well have asked of old Raoul de Neuchamp
to go back and make cider in Normandy, after he
had fought shoulder to shoulder with Taillefer and Rollo
at Hastings, and tasted the stern delight of harrying
Saxon Franklins and burning monasteries. I have found
a land where deeds are to be done, and where conquest,
though but of the forces of Nature, is still possible.
Here in this happy isle your lances are only used in the
tilt-yard and tournament, your swords hang on the wall,
your armour is rusty, your knights fight but over the
wine-cup, your ladye-loves are ever in the bowers. With
us, across the main, still the warhorse carries mail, the
lances are not headless, and many a shrewd blow on
shield and helmet rings still.</p>
<p>‘I am in the condition of “The Imprisoned Huntsman”—</p>
<div class="poetry-container"><div class="poetry"><div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">‘My hawk is tired of perch and hood,</div>
<div class="verse">My idle greyhound loathes his food,</div>
<div class="verse">My steed is weary of his stall,</div>
<div class="verse">And I am sick of captive thrall;</div>
<div class="verse">I would I were, as I have been,</div>
<div class="verse">Hunting the roe in forest green,</div>
<div class="verse">With bended bow and bloodhound free,</div>
<div class="verse">For that is the life that is meet for me.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">238 </span></div>
</div></div></div>
<p>‘I know from experience that it is as probable that a
star should come down from the sky and do duty in the
kitchen grate,’ said Courtenay Neuchamp sardonically,
‘as that you should listen to any one’s opinion but your
own, or I would suggest that the falcon, and greyhound,
and steed business is better if not exclusively performed
in this hemisphere. I never doubted you would go
your own road. But what does Antonia say to leaving
the land of court circulars and Queen’s drawing-rooms
and Paris bonnets fresh once a week?’</p>
<p>‘She says’—and here Mrs. Neuchamp crept up to
her husband’s side and placed her hand in his—‘that
she is tired of Paradise—tired of perfect houses, unsurpassable
servants and dinners, drives and drawing-rooms,
lawn parties and archery meetings, the Academy and the
Park, Belgravia and South Kensington—in fact, of everything
and everybody except Neuchampstead and dear old
Courtenay. She wants, like some one else, to go out into
the world again, a real world, and not a sham one like
the one in which rich people live in England. She is
<i>living</i>, not life. Perhaps I am “<i>un peu</i> Zingara”—who
knows? It’s a mercy I’m not very dark, like some other
Australians I have seen. But it is now the time to say,
my dear Courtenay, that Ernest and I have grown tired
of play, and want to go back to that end of the world
where work grows.‘</p>
<p>‘Please don’t smother me with wisdom and virtue,’
pleaded Courtenay, with a look of pathetic entreaty. ‘I
know we are very ignorant and selfish, and so on, in this
old-fashioned England of ours. I really think I might
have become a convert and a colonist myself, if taken up
early by a sufficiently zealous and prepossessing missionaress.
I feel now that it is too late. Club-worship is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">239</span>
with me too strongly ingrained in my nature. Clubs
and idols are closely connected, you know. But are we
never to meet again?’ and here the rarely changed
countenance of Courtenay Neuchamp softened visibly.</p>
<p>‘We will have another look at you in late years,’ said
Antonia softly; ‘perhaps we may come altogether when—when—we
are old.’</p>
<p>‘I think I may promise that,’ said Mr. Neuchamp.
‘When Frank is old enough to set up for himself at
Morahmee, with an occasional trip to Rainbar and Mildool,
to keep himself from forgetting how to ride, then I
think we may possibly make our last voyage to the old
home, in preparation for that journey on which I trust we
three may set forth at periods not very distantly divided.’</p>
<p>The brothers shook hands silently. Antonia bestowed
a sister’s kiss upon the calm brow of the elder brother,
and quitted the room. No more was said. But all
needful preparations were made, and ere the autumn
leaves had commenced to fall from the aged woods
which girdled Neuchampstead, the <i>Massilia</i> was steaming
through the Straits of Bonifacio with Ernest Neuchamp
watching the snowy mountain-tops of Corsica, while
Antonia alternately enlivened the baby Frank or dipped
into <i>The Crescent and the Cross,</i> which she had long
intended to read over again in a leisurely and considerate
manner.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>But little remains to tell of the after-life of Ernest
Neuchamp. Settled once more in ‘the sunny land,’ he
found his time fully and not unworthily occupied in the
superintendence of his extensive properties and investments.
There was much necessary journeying between
Rainbar and Morahmee, at which latter place Paul Frankston<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">240</span>
had insisted upon their taking up their permanent
abode. ‘I am going down hill,’ he said; ‘the old house
will be yours when I am gone; why should I sit here
lonely in my age while my darling and her children are
so near me? Don’t be afraid of the nursery-racket
bothering me. Every note of their young voices is music
in my ears, being what they are.’ So in Ernest’s absence
in the bush, or during the sitting of the House of Assembly—having
from a stern sense of duty permitted
himself to be elected as the representative of the electoral
district of Lower Oxley—Antonia had a guardian and a
companion. She resolved upon making the journey to
Rainbar, indeed, in order that she might fully comprehend
the nature of the life which her husband had
formerly led. During her stay she formed a tolerably
fair estimate of the value of the property, being a lady of
an observing turn of mind, and possessing by inheritance
a hitherto latent tendency towards the management of
affairs not generally granted to the sex. She visited
Lake Antonia, and warmly congratulated Mr. Neuchamp
upon that grand achievement. She patted Osmund and
Ben Bolt, now bordering on the dignity of pensioners. She
drove over to Mrs. Windsor’s cottage at Mildool, where
she found Carry established as rather a <i>grande dame</i>,
with the general approbation of the district and of all
the tourists and travellers who shared the proverbial
hospitality of Mildool. She caused the stud to be driven
in for inspection, when she had sufficient presence of
mind to choose a pair of phaeton horses for herself out
of them. But she told her husband that she could not
perceive any advantage to be derived from living at
Rainbar as long as their income maintained its present
average, and that he could manage the interesting but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">241</span>
exceedingly warm and isolated territory equally well by
proxy.</p>
<p>Jack Windsor, upon Mr. Banks’s promotion and
marriage, became manager of the whole consolidated
establishment, with a proportionate advance in salary.
He developed his leading qualities of shrewdness and
energy to their fullest capacity under the influence of
prosperity. Being perfectly satisfied with his position
and duties, having a good home, a contented wife, the
means of educating his large family, the respect of the
whole country-side, and the habit of saving a large portion
of his liberal salary, besides an abundance of the exact
species of occupation and exercise which suited him, it
is not probable that he will make any attempt to
‘better himself.’ It is not certain that Mrs. Windsor
would not favour the investment of their savings in
property ‘down the country’ for the sake of the children,
etc.; but Jack will not hear of it. ‘I should feel
first-rate,’ he says scornfully, ‘shouldn’t I, in a place
of my own, with a man and a boy, and forty or fifty
head of crawling cattle to stare at while they were getting
fit for market? That’s not my style. It wouldn’t
suit any of us—not you either, old woman, to be poking
about, helping at the wash-tub or something, or peelin’
potatoes for dinner. We couldn’t stand it after the life
we’ve had here. I couldn’t do without half-a-dozen
stabled hacks and a lot of smart men to keep up to the
mark. Give me something <i>big</i> to work at, done well, and
paying for good keep and good spending all round. Five
hundred and forty head of fat cattle cut out in two days
like the last Mildool lot, and all the country-side at the
muster—that’s John Windsor’s style—none of your
Hawkesbury corn-shelling, butter-and-eggs racket. You<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">242</span>
ought to have married old Homminey, Carry, if that’s
what you wanted. Besides, after thinking and saving
and driving up to high pressure for the master so long, it
would feel unnatural-like to be only working for myself.‘
So the argument was settled. Mr. Windsor had, it
seems, tasted too fully of the luxury of power and command
to relinquish it for humble independence.</p>
<p>The undisputed sway over a large staff of working
hands, the unquestioned control of money and credit,
within certain limits, had become with him more and
more an indispensable habitude. Accustomed to the tone
of the leader and the centurion, he could not endure the
thought of changing his wide eventful life into the
decorous dulness of the small landed proprietor. Mrs.
Windsor, too, who dressed exceedingly well, and was
admitted on equal terms to the society of the district, a
position which, from her tact, good sense, and extremely
agreeable appearance, she suitably filled and fully deserved,
would probably, as her husband forcibly explained, have
felt the change almost as much as himself. So Mr.
Neuchamp was spared the annoyance of looking out for a
new manager.</p>
<p>Hardy Baldacre accumulated a very large fortune, but
was prevented, in middle life, from proving the exact
amount of coin and property which may be amassed by
the consistent practice of grinding parsimony, combined
with an elimination of all the literary, artistic, social, and
sympathetic tendencies. He habitually condemned the
entire section, under the fatal <i>affiche</i> of ‘don’t pay.’ To
the surprise—we cannot with accuracy affirm, to the
regret—of the general public, this very extensive
proprietor fell a victim to a fit of <i>delirium tremens</i>,
supervening upon the practice of irregular and excessive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">243</span>
alcoholism. Into this vice of barren minds, the pitiless
economist, guilty of so few other recreations, was gradually
but irresistibly drawn.</p>
<p>The <i>White Falcon</i> fled far and fast with the fugitive
noble, whose debts added the keenest edge among his
late friends and creditors to the memory of his treasons.
He escaped, with his usual good fortune, the civil and
criminal tentacula in which the dread octopus of the law
would speedily have enveloped him. He laughed at
British and Australian warrants. But passing into one
of the Dutch Indian settlements, he was sufficiently imprudent
to pursue there also the same career of reckless
expenditure. By an accident his character was disclosed,
and his arrest effected at the moment of premeditated
flight. A severe logic, learned in the strict commercial
schools of Holland, where debt meets with no favour,
guards the commerce of her intertropical colonies. The
<i>White Falcon</i> was promptly seized and sold to satisfy a
small portion of the princely liabilities of the owner,
while for long years, in a dreary dungeon, like another
and a better sea-rover, Albert von Schätterheims was
doomed to eat his heart in the darksome solitude of an
ignoble and hopeless captivity.</p>
<p>The Freeman family prospered in a general sense.
Abraham Freeman settled down upon a comfortable but
not over-fertile farm in the neighbourhood of Bowning.
The thickness of the timber, and the conversion of much
of it into fencing-rails, served to provide him with occupation,
and therefore with good principles, as Tottie saucily
observed, to his life’s end. That high-spirited damsel
grieved much at first over the slowness and general fuss
about trifles, which, after her extended experience, seemed
to her to characterise the whole district, but was eventually<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">244</span>
persuaded by a thriving young miller that there
were worse places to reside in. He was resolute, however,
in forbidding the carrying of bags of flour, and as
she was provided with a smart buggy and unlimited
bonnets, her taste for adventurous excitement became
modified in time, and the black ambling mare was handed
over to the boys.</p>
<p>William and Joe Freeman made much money by
nomadic agrarianism. After years passed in arduously
constructing sham improvements and ‘carrying out the
residence clause,’ with no intention of residing, they
found themselves able to purchase a station.</p>
<p>Having paid down a large sum in cash, they entered
into possession of their property with feelings of much
self-gratulation, as being now truly squatters, just as
much so, indeed, as Mr. Neuchamp, who had thought
himself so well able to patronise them. But, unluckily
for them, and in direct contravention of the saying,
‘Hawks winna pike oot hawks’ een,‘ the ex-owner of the
station, formerly indeed an old acquaintance who had
risen in life, displayed the most nefarious keenness in
plotting an unscrupled treachery. He settled down,
under the conditional purchase clause, section 13, upon
the very best part of the run, the goodwill of which he
had the day before been paid for. Having a large family,
and the land laws having been recently altered so that a
double area could be selected by each ‘person,’ he, with
the Messrs. Freemans‘own cash, actually annexed, irrevocably,
an area which reduced the value of the grazing
property by about one-third. Shrewd and unscrupulous
as themselves, he calmly informed the frantic Freemans
‘that he had only complied with the law.’ He laughed
at their accusations of bad faith. ‘Every man for himself,’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">245</span>
he retorted, adding that ‘if all stories were true,
they hadn’t been very particular themselves, but had sat
down on the cove’s run that first helped ’em when they
was bull-punchers without credit for a bag of flour.’</p>
<p>Rendered furious by this very original application of
their own practice to the detriment of their own property,
they wasted much of their—well—we must say,
legally acquired gains in endless suits and actions for
trespass against this most unprincipled free selector, and
others who shortly followed his example. The lawyers
came to know Freeman <i>versus</i> Downey as a <i>cause célèbre</i>.
It is just possible that these brothers may come to comprehend,
by individual suffering, the harassed feeling which
their action had, many a time and oft, tended to produce
in others.</p>
<p>The later years of Mr. Neuchamp’s life have been
stated by himself to be only too well filled with prosperity
and happiness as compared with his deserts. Those who
know him are aware that he could not become an idler—either
aimless or bored. He lives principally in
Sydney. But if ever he finds a course of unmitigated
town-life commencing to assail his nervous system, he
runs off to a grazing station within easy rail, where
he has long superintended the production of the prize
shorthorns, Herefords, and Devons necessary for the
keeping up the supply of pure blood for his immense
and distant herds. Here he revels in fresh air—the
priceless sense of pure country life—and that absolute
leisure and absolute freedom from interruption which the
happiest paterfamilias rarely experiences in the home
proper. Here Ernest Neuchamp builds up fresh stores
of health, new reserves of animal spirits. Here Ernest
probably thinks out those theories of perfected representative<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">246</span>
government in which, however, he fails at present
to persuade an impatient, perhaps illogical, democracy to
concur. His children are numerous, and all give promise,
as, after a protracted and impartial consideration of their
character, he is led to believe, of worthily carrying forward
the temporarily modified but rarely relinquished
hereditary tenets of his ancient House.</p>
<p>Time rolls on. The great city expanding beautifies
the terraced slopes and gardened promontories of the
glorious haven. Old Paul Frankston lies buried in no
crowded cemetery, but in a rock-hewn family vault under
giant araucarias, within sound of the wave he loved so
well. Yet is Morahmee still celebrated for that unselfish,
unrestricted hospitality to the stranger-guest which made
Paul Frankston’s name a synonym for general sympathy
and readiest aid.</p>
<p>Assuredly Ernest Neuchamp, now one of the largest
proprietors in Australia, both of pastoral and urban property,
has not suffered the reputation to decline. He
remembers too well the hearty open visage, the kindly
voice, the ready cheer of him who was so true at need,
so delicate in feeling, so stanch in deed. Succoured himself
at the crisis of fortune and happiness, he has vowed
to help all whose inexperience arouses a sympathetic
memory. The opinion of a social leader and eminent
pastoralist may be considered to have exceptional weight
and value. However that may be, much of his time is
taken up in honouring the numberless letters of introduction
showered upon him from Britain. Young gentlemen
arrive in scores who have been obligingly provided with
these valuable documents by sanguine ex-colonists. By
the bearers they were regarded as passports to an assured
independence. Some of these youthful squires, with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">247</span>
spurs unwon, need restraining from imprudence, others
a gentle course of urging towards effort and self-denial.
But it has been noticed that the only occasions on which
their respective guide, philosopher, and friend speaks
with decision bordering on asperity, is when he exposes
the fallacy of the reasoning upon which any ardent
neophyte aspires to the position of A Colonial Reformer.</p>
<p class="center spaced">THE END</p>
<p class="center"><small><i>Printed by</i> <span class="smcap">R. & R. Clark</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</small></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<div class="transnote">
<h3>Transcriber's Note</h3>
<p>Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and all other spelling and punctuation remain unchanged</p>.
<p>The book cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the
public domain.</p>
</div>
<p> </p>
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 54366 ***</div>
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