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“The crackling embers glow, |
“THERE is accommodation for more shearers than we shall need this year,” said M‘Nab, apologetically, “but it is as well to do the thing thoroughly. Next year I hope we shall have fifty thousand to shear, and if you go in for some back country I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a hundred thousand sheep on the board before you sell out. That will be a sale worth talking about. Meanwhile, there’s nothing like plenty of room in a shed. The wool will be all the better this year even for it.”
“I know it has cost a frightful lot of money,” said Jack, pensively, practising a gentle gallop on the smooth, pale-yellow, aromatic-scented floor. “I dare say it will be a pleasure to shear in it, and all that—but it’s spoiled a thousand pounds one way or the other.”
“What’s a thousand pounds?” said M‘Nab, with a sort of gaze that seemed as though he were piercing the mists of futurity, and seeing an unbroken procession of tens of thousands of improved merinos marching slowly and impressively on to the battens, ready to deliver three pounds and a-half of spout-washed wool at half-a-crown a pound. “When you come to add a penny or twopence a pound to a large clip, all the money you can spend in a wash-pen, or a shed, is repaid in a couple of years. Of course I mean when things are on a large scale.”
“Well, we’re spending money on a large scale,” said Jack. “I only hope the returns and profits will be in the same proportion.”
“Not a doubt of it,” said M‘Nab. “I must be off home to meet the fencers.”
The shed was locked up, and they drove home. As they alighted, three men were standing at the door of the store, apparently waiting for the “dole”—a pound of meat and a pannikin of flour, which is now found to be the reasonable minimum, given to every wayfarer by the dwellers in Riverina, wholly irrespective of caste, colour, indisposition to work, or otherwise, “as the case may be.”
Jack went into the house to prepare for dinner, while M‘Nab, looking absently at the men, took out a key and made towards the entrance to the store.
“Stop,” cried M‘Nab, “didn’t I see you three men on the road to-day, about four miles off? Which way have you come?”
“We’re from down the river,” said one of the fellows, a voluble, good-for-nothing, loafing impostor, a regular “coaster” and “up one side of the river and down the other” traveller, as the men say, asking for work, and praying, so long as food and shelter are afforded, that he may not get it. “We’ve been looking for work this weeks, and I’m sure,” sliding into an impressive low-tragedy growl, “the ’ardships men ’as to put up with in this country—a-travellin’ for work—no one can’t imagine.”
“I dare say not,” said M‘Nab; “it’s precious little you fellows know of hardships, fed at every station you come to, taking an easy day’s walk, and not obliged to work unless the employment thoroughly suits you. How far have you come to-day?”
There was a slight appearance of hesitation and reference to each other as the spokesman answered— “From Dickson’s, a station about fifteen miles distant.”
“You are telling me a lie,” said M‘Nab, wrathfully. “I saw you sitting down on your swags this morning at the crossing-place, five miles from here, and the hut-keeper on the other side of the river told me you had been there all night and had only just left.”
“Well, suppose we did,” said another one, who had not yet spoken, “there’s no law to make a man walk so many miles a day, like travelling sheep. I dare say the squatters would have that done if they could. Are you going to give us shelter here to-night, or no?”
“I’ll see you hanged first!” broke forth M‘Nab, indignantly; “what, do you talk about shelter in weather like this! A rotten tree is too good a lodging for a set of lazy, useless scoundrels, who go begging from station to station at the rate of five miles a day.”
“We did not come far to-day, it is true,” said the third traveller, evidently a foreigner; “but we have a far passage to-morrow. Is it not so, mes camarades?”
“Far enough, and precious short rations too, sometimes,” growled the man who had spoken last. “I wish some coves had a taste on it themselves.”
“See here, my man,” said M‘Nab, going close up to the last speaker, and looking him full in the eye, “if you don’t start at once I’ll kick you off the place, and pretty quickly too.”
The man glared savagely for a moment, but, seeing but little chance of coming off best in an encounter with a man in the prime of youth and vigour, gave in, and sullenly picked up his bundle.
The Frenchman, for such he was, turned for a moment, and fixing a small glittering eye—cold and serpentine—upon M‘Nab, said—
“It is then that you refuse us a morsel of food, the liberty to lie on the hut floor?”
“There is the road,” repeated M‘Nab; “I will harbour no impostors or loafers.”
“I have the honour to wish you good-evening,” said the Frenchman, bowing with exaggerated politeness; “a pleasant evening, and dreams of the best.”
The men went slowly on their way. M‘Nab went into the cottage, by no means too well satisfied with himself. A feeling of remorse sprang up within his breast. “Hang the fellows!” said he to himself, “it serves them right. Still I am going in to a comfortable meal and my bed, while these poor devils will most probably have neither. That Frenchman didn’t seem a crawler either, though I didn’t like the expression of his eye as he moved away. They’ll make up for it at Jook-jook to-morrow. Why need they have told me that confounded lie? then they would have been treated well. However, it can’t be helped. If we don’t give them a lesson now and then the country will get full of fellows who do nothing but consume rations, and fair station work will become impossible.”
Early next morning—it was Sunday, by the way—Jack was turning round for another hour’s snooze, an indulgence to which he deemed himself fairly entitled after a hard week’s work, when Mr. M‘Nab’s voice (he was always up and about early, whatever might be the day of the week) struck strangely upon his ear. He was replying to one of the station hands; he caught the words— “The shed! God in heaven—you can’t mean it!” Jack was out of bed with one bound, and, half clad, rushed out. M‘Nab was saddling a horse with nervous hands that could scarcely draw a buckle.
“What is it, man?” demanded Redgrave, with a sinking at the heart, and a strange presentiment of evil.
“The wool-shed’s a-fire, sir!” answered the man, falteringly, “and I came in directly I seen it to let you know.”
“On fire! and why didn’t you try and put it out?” inquired he, hoarsely, “there were plenty of you about there.”
He was hoping against hope, and was scarcely surprised when the man said, in a tone as nearly modulated to sympathy as his rough utterance could be subdued to—
“The men are hard at it, sir, but I’m afraid——”
Jack did not wait for the conclusion of the sentence, but made at once for the loose-box where his hack had been lately bestowed at night, and in a couple of minutes was galloping along the lately-worn “wool-shed track” at some distance behind M‘Nab, who was racing desperately ahead.
Before he reached the creek upon which the precious and indispensable building had been, after much careful planning erected, he saw the great column of smoke rising through the still morning air, and knew that all was lost. He knew that the pine timber, of which it was chiefly composed, would burn “like a match,” and that if not stifled at its earliest commencement all the men upon the Warroo could not have arrested its progress. As he galloped up a sufficiently sorrowful sight met his eye. The shearers, washers, and some other provisional hands, put on in anticipation of the unusual needs of shearing time, were standing near the fiercely-blazing structure, with fallen roof and charred uprights, which but yesterday had been the best wool-shed on the Warroo. The deed was done. There was absolutely no hope, no opportunity of saving a remnant of the value of five pounds of the whole costly building.
“How, in the name of all that’s—” said he to M‘Nab, who was gazing fixedly beyond the red smouldering mass, as if his ever-working mind was already busied beyond the immediate disaster, “did the fire originate? It was never accidental. Then who could have had the smallest motive to do us such an injury?”
“I am afraid I have too good a guess,” answered M‘Nab. “But of that by and by. Did you see any strange men camp here last night?” he asked of the crowd generally.
“Travellers?” said one of the expectant shearers. “Yes, there was three of ’em came up late and begged some rations. I was away after my horse as made off. When I found him and got back it was ten o’clock at night, and these coves was just making their camp by the receiving-yard.”
“What like were they?”
“Two biggish chaps—one with a beard, and a little man, spoke like a ’Talian or a Frenchman.”
“Did they say anything?”
“Well, one of them—the long chap—began to run you down; but the Frenchman stopped him, and said you was too good to ’em altogether.”
“Who saw the shed first?”
“I did, sir,” said one of the fencers. “I turned out at daylight to get some wood, when the fust thing I saw was the roof all blazin’ and part of it fell in. I raised a shout and started all the men. We tried buckets, but, lor’ bless you, when we come to look, the floor was all burned through and through.”
“Then you think it had been burning a good while?” asked Jack, now beginning to understand the drift of the examination.
“Hours and hours, sir,” answered the man; “from what we see, the fire started under where the floor joins the battens; there was a lot of shavings under the battens, and some of them hadn’t caught when we came. It was there the fire began sure enough.”
“Did any one see the strange men leave?” asked M‘Nab, with assumed coolness, though his lip worked nervously, and his forehead was drawn into deep wrinkles.
“Not a soul,” said another of the hands. “I looked over at their camp as we rushed out, and it was all cleared out, and no signs of ’em.”
John Redgrave and his manager rode back very sadly to Steamboat Point that quiet Sunday morn. The day was fair and still, with the added silence and hush which long training communicates to the mere idea of the Sabbath day.
The birds called strangely, but not unmusically, from the pale-hued trees but lately touched with a softer green. The blue sky was cloudless. Nature was kindly and serene. Nothing was incongruous with her tranquil and tender aspect but the stern, tameless heart of man.
They maintained for some time a dogged silence. The loss was bitter. Not only had rather more money been spent upon the building than was quite advisable or convenient, but the whole comfort, pride, and perhaps profit, of the shearing would be lost.
“Those infernal scoundrels,” groaned M‘Nab; “that snake of a Frenchman, with his beady black eyes. I thought the little brute meant mischief, though I never dreamed of this, or I’d have gone and slept in the shed till shearing was over. I’ll have them in gaol before a week’s over their heads, but what satisfaction is there in that? It’s my own fault in great part. I ought to have known better, and not have been so hard on them.”
“I was afraid,” said Jack, “that you were a little too sharp with these fellows of late. I know, too, what they are capable of. But no one could have foreseen such an outrage as this. The next thing to consider is how to knock up a rough makeshift that we can shear in.”
“That doesn’t give me any trouble,” answered the spirit-stricken M‘Nab; “we could do as we did last year; but the season is a month forwarder, and we shall have the burrs and grass-seed in the wool as sure as fate. But for that, I shouldn’t so much care.”
M‘Nab departed gloomily to his own room, refusing consolation, and spent the rest of the day writing circulars containing an accurate description of the suspected ones to every police-station within two hundred miles.
Then it came to pass that the three outlaws were soon snapped up by a zealous sergeant, “on suspicion of having committed a felony,” and safely lodged in Bochara gaol. There did they abide for several weary months, until the Judge of the Circuit Court was graciously pleased to come and try them.
The loss in the first instance was sufficiently great. The labour of many men for nearly a year; every nail, every ounce of iron contained in the large building had been brought from Melbourne; the sawyers’ bill was considerable. Twice had the men employed to put on the shingles deserted, and the finishing of the roof was regarded by the anxious M‘Nab as a kind of miracle. The sliding doors, the portcullises, the hundreds of square feet of battening, the circular drafting-yard; all the very latest appliances and improvements, united to very solid and perfect construction, made an unusual though costly success. And now, to see it wasted, and worse than wasted. “It is enough to make one believe in bad luck, Mr. Redgrave!” said Mr. M‘Nab, who had just quitted his bedroom.
“I am afraid it means bad luck for this season,” pursued he; “our wool will be got up only middling, and if prices take a turn downward it will be very puzzling to say what the damage done by this diabolical act of arson will amount to.”
“We must hope for the best,” said Jack, who, feeling things very keenly at the time, had a great dislike to the protracted torture which dwelling upon misfortunes always inflicts upon men of his organization. “The deed is done. To-morrow we must rig up a second edition of last year’s proud edifice.”
The sheep were shorn, certainly. Mr. Redgrave did not exactly permit the crop of delicate, creamy, serrated, elastic, myriad-threaded material to be torn off by the salt-bushes, or to become ragged and patchy on the sheeps’ backs. But the pleasure and pride of the toilsome undertaking, the light and life of the pastoral harvest, were absent. There was a total absence of rain; so there was a good deal of unavoidable dust. The men could not be got to take the ordinary amount of pains; so the work was thoroughly unsatisfactory. Then, in spite of all the haste and indifferent workmanship purposely overlooked by M‘Nab, the grass-seed and clover-burr ripened only too rapidly, and the ewes and lambs, coming last, were choke-full of it. The lower part of every fleece was like a nutmeg-grater with the hard, unyielding, hooked and barbed tentacles. M‘Nab groaned in spirit as he saw all this unnecessary damage, which he was powerless to prevent, and again and again cursed the hasty word and lack of self-control which, as he fully believed, had indirectly caused this never-ending mischief.
“A thousand for the shed, and another thousand for damage to wool,” said he one day, as he flung one of these last porcupine-looking fleeces with a disgusted air into a rude wool-bin made of hurdles placed on end. “It’s enough to make a man commit suicide. I feel as if I ought to walk to Melbourne with peas in my boots.”
“Never mind, M‘Nab,” said Jack, consolingly; “as I said before, the thing is done and over, and we may make ourselves miserable, and so injure our thought and labour fund. But that won’t build the shed again. Luckily the sheep are all right—they couldn’t burn them. I never saw a better lot of lambs, and the numbers are getting up to the fifty thousand I once proposed as a limit. What’s the total count we have passed through?”
“Forty-one thousand seven hundred and eighty,” answered M‘Nab, who always had anything connected with numerals at his fingers’ ends. “We have bought several small lots since last year, and the lambing average was very high. Of course the lambs don’t actually count till weaning time.”
“Well, we must only hope for a good season,” said Jack, “and for wool and prices to keep up. Then, perhaps, the loss of the shed won’t be so telling. We ought to have a good many fat sheep to sell in the winter.”
“So we shall,” said M‘Nab, “nearly ten thousand—counting the full-mouthed and cull ewes. Then we shall have lambs from nearly sixteen thousand ewes next year. I hope the season will not fail us, now the paddocks are all finished.”
“Well, it does look rather dry,” admitted Jack; “so early in the year too. But then it always looks dry here when it doesn’t rain. I shall have to run away to Melbourne now, and arrange whether to sell or ship this only moderately well-got-up wool of ours. I must have another interview with Mr. Shrood. It has been all spending and no returns of late.”
Shearing being over—how differently concluded to what he had fondly anticipated! Jack hied himself to town for his annual holiday. It did not wear so much the air of a festival this year. There seemed to be a flavour of stern business about it; much more than Jack liked.
The wool-market was by no means in so buoyant a condition as that of last year. The faces of his brother squatters, especially those of the more enterprizing among them, wore a serious and elongated expression. Ugly reports went about as to a probable fall in wool and stock. Jack found his indifferently got-up clip quite unsaleable in the colonial market. He therefore shipped it at once, taking a fair advance thereon. Freight, too, was unreasonably high that year. Everything seemed against a fellow.
He went in for the little interview with Mr. Mildmay Shrood, and thought that affable money-changer less agreeable than of yore. “He wanted to know, you know.” He asked a series of questions, testifying a desire to have the clearest idea of Jack’s stock, value of property, liabilities, and probable expenditure during the coming year. He dwelt much upon the unfortunate destruction of the wool-shed; asked for an estimate of the cost of another; looked rather grave at the account of the get-up of the clip, and the necessity for shipping the same. However, the concluding portion of the interview was more reassuring.
“Of course you will continue to draw as usual, my dear sir; but I may say, in confidence, that in commercial circles a fall in prices is very generally anticipated.”
“There may be a temporary decline,” rejoined Jack, candidly, “but it is impossible that it should be lasting. As for sheep, the stock are not at present in the country to enable us to keep up with the demand, especially since these meat-preserving establishments have commenced operations.”
“Quite so, my dear sir, quite so,” assented Mr. Shrood, looking paternally at him and rubbing his hands, “I am quite of your opinion; but some of our directors have doubts—have doubts. Would you mind looking in before you go—say in a week or two? Thanks. Good-day—good-day.”
Jack attended the wool-sales pretty regularly, and saw the clips which were undeniably well got up sell at good prices, in spite of the general dullness of the market. The clip was an unusually heavy one, and every day’s train brought down trucks upon trucks of bales, as if the interior of Australia was one colossal wool-store, just being emptied at the command of an enchanter. But the “heavy and moity” parcels were not touched by the cautious operators at any price. So Jack groaned in spirit, doubting that he might come in for a low market at home, and knowing that he would have saved himself but for the woful work of the incendiaries. He did not derive much comfort from the daring spirits whose early and successful ventures had inspired him with the first ideas of changing his district. They walked about like people who owned a private bank, but upon which bank there happened to be, at present, a run. They were, as a rule, men far too resolute to give in during adversity, or the threatening of any, how wild soever, commercial tempest. Still they looked sternly defiant, as who should say— “to bear is to conquer our fate.” Jack did not enjoy the probabilities. These were brass pots of approved strength for floating in the eddying financial torrents. Might not he, an earthen vessel, meet with deadly damage, fatal cracks, irrevocable immersion, in their company? “Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?”
He sent up his stores, making a close calculation as to quantity. There would not be so many men required after this shearing. The paddocks were all finished, and few hands would be needed. Then he had doors and windows, and hinges and nails, and tons of galvanized iron for roofing for the shed—all over again. Confound it! Just as a fellow was hoping to get a little straight. Jack did feel very unchristian. However, it was as necessary as tea and sugar—that is, if he ever intended to get a decent price for his wool again. Somewhat earlier in the season than usual, Jack commenced to revolve the question of a start. Then he bethought himself of Mr. Mildmay Shrood.
“I wonder what he wanted to see me for?” asked Jack of his inner consciousness; “very civil, friendly little fellow he is. I suspect my over-draft is pretty heavy just now. But the fencing is all done, that’s a blessing. And forty thousand sheep and a first-class run are good security for more money than I’m ever likely to owe.”
So Mr. Redgrave hied away to the grand freestone portals which guarded the palace of gold and silver, and the magic paper which gladdeneth the heart of man, who reflecteth not that it is but a fiction—a “baseless fabric”—an unsubstantial presentment of the potentiality of boundless wealth.
Mr. Shrood was examining papers when he was ushered into the sacred parlour, and looked rather more like the dragon in charge of the treasure than the careless, openhanded financier of Jack’s previous experience, whose sole business in life seemed to be to provide cheque-books ad infinitum with graceful indifference. As he ran his eye down column after column of figures, his brow became corrugated, his jaw became set, and his face gradually assumed an expression of hardness and obstinacy.
Throwing down the last of the papers, and clearing his brow with sudden completeness, he shook hands affectionately with Jack, and gently anathematized the papers for their tediousness and stupidity.
“Awfully wearing work, Mr. Redgrave, this looking over the accounts of a large estate. I feel as fatigued as if I had been at it all night. How are you, and when do you leave?”
“I think the day after to-morrow,” said Jack. “I’m really tired of town, and wish to get home again.”
“Tired of the town, and of all its various pleasures,” asked Mr. Shrood, “at your age? Well, of course you are anxious to be at work again—very creditable feeling. By the way, by the way, now I think of it—you haven’t encumbered your place by mortgage or in any other way during the last year, have you?”
“Sir,” replied Jack, with dignity, “I regard my property as pledged in honour to your bank, by which I have been treated hitherto with liberality and confidence. I trust that our relations may continue unaltered.”
“Certainly, my dear sir, certainly,” replied Mr. Mildmay Shrood, with an air of touching generosity. “Precisely my own view. I trust you will have no cause to regret your connection with our establishment. But I have not concealed from you my opinion that, financially, there exists a certain anxiety—premature in my view of events—but still distinct, as to the relations between stock and capital. I have been requested by my directors, to whose advice I am constrained to defer, to raise the point of security in those instances where advances, I may say considerable advances, have been made by us. You see my position, I feel sure.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Jack; “of course,” not seeing exactly what he was driving at.
“You will not, therefore, feel that it amounts to any want of confidence on the part of the bank,” continued Mr. Shrood, with reassuring explanation in every tone, “if I name to you the formal execution of a mortgage over your station, as a mere matter in the ordinary routine of business, for the support of our advances to you past and future?”
“Oh, no,” replied Jack, with a slight gulp, misliking the sound of the strictly legal and closely comprehensive instrument, which he had always associated with ruined men and falling fortunes hitherto. “I suppose it’s a necessary precaution when the mercantile barometer is low. I shall be able to draw for necessary expenses as usual, and all that?”
Mr. Shrood smiled, as if anything to the contrary was altogether too chimerical and beyond human imagination to be considered seriously for one moment.
“My dear sir,” he proceeded, “I hope you have never had reason to doubt our readiness to follow your suggestions hitherto. We have unbounded confidence in your management and discretion. As we have reached this point, however, would you mind executing the deed which has been prepared in anticipation of your consent, and concluding this, I confess, slightly unpleasing section of our arrangements while we are agreed on the subject, to which I hope not to be compelled again to recur.”
“Not at all,” replied Jack, “not at all,” feeling like the man at the dentist’s, as if the tooth might as well be pulled out now as hereafter.
“Thank you; these things are best carried through at one sitting. Pray excuse me for one moment. Mr. Smith!” Here a junior appeared. “Will you bring in that—a—legal document, for Mr. Redgrave’s signature, and a—attend to witness his signature? Your present liability to the bank, Mr. Redgrave,” he explained, as the young gentleman disappeared, “amounts to, I think, fifteen thousand pounds in round numbers—that is, fourteen thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven pounds fourteen and ninepence. I think you mentioned forty thousand sheep as the stock, was it not, at present depasturing on the station?”
“Forty-two—some odd hundreds,” answered Jack, “but that is near enough.”
Here Mr. Smith reappeared, with an imposing-looking piece of parchment, commencing “Know all men by these presents,” which was handed to Jack for his entertainment and perusal. Jack glanced at it. Nobody, save a North Briton or a very misanthropical person, ever does read a deed through, that I know of. But Jack knew enough of such matters to pick out heedfully the principal clauses which concerned him. It was like most other compilations of a like nature, and contained, apart from unmeaning repetitions and exasperating surplusage, certain lucid sentences, which Jack understood to mean that he was to pay up the said few thousands at his convenience, or in default to yield up Gondaree, with stock thereto attached, to the paternal but irresponsible “money-mill,” under the wildly improbable circumstance of his being unable to clear off such advances in years to come—with principal and interest.
“Forty-two thousand sheep, and station, at a pound,” said Jack to himself, “leave a considerable margin; so I needn’t bother myself. Here goes. It will never be acted upon—that is one comfort.”
So the name of John Redgrave was duly appended, and Mr. Smith wrote his name as witness without the least embarrassment. He regarded squatters who required accommodation as patients subject to mild attacks of epidemic disease, which usually gave way to proper medical, that is to say financial, treatment. Occasionally the patient succumbed. That however was not his affair. Let them all find it out for themselves.
He had many a time and oft envied the bronzed squatter lounging in on a bright morning, throwing down a cheque and stuffing the five-pound notes carelessly into his waistcoat-pocket. But, young as he was, he had more than once seen a careworn, grizzled man waiting outside the bank parlour, with ill-concealed anxiety for the interview which was to tell him whether or not he went forth a ruined and hopelessly broken man. Nothing could have been more soothing than the manner in which the whole operation of the mortgage had been performed. Still it was an operation, and Jack felt a sensation difficult to describe, but tending towards the conviction that he was not quite the same man as he had been previously. He was not in his usual spirits at dinner that evening, though of his two sharers of that well-cooked, yet not extravagant repast, Hautley had ordered it, and Jerningham was by odds the neatest talker then in town. The wine somehow wasn’t like last week’s. Must have opened a new batch. He had no luck at billiards. He sat moodily in an arm-chair in the smoking-room, and heard not some of the best (and least charitable) things going. He mooned off to bed, out of harmony with existing society.
“What the dickens is up with Redgrave?” asked little Prowler of old Snubham, of the Indian Irregular Force. “He looks as black as thunder, and hasn’t a word to say for himself.”
“A very fine trait in a man’s character,” growled Snubham; “half the people one meets jabber everlastingly, Heaven knows. What would be the matter with him? Proposed to some girl, and is afraid she’ll accept him. A touch of liver, perhaps. Nothing else can happen to a man at the present day, sir.”
“Must be a woman, I think; he was awful spoony on Dolly Drosera. He’s too rich to want money,” said Prowler, with a reverential awe of the squatter proper.
“Humph! don’t know—wool’s down, I believe. He pays up at loo. Beyond that I have no curiosity. Very ungentlemanlike thing, curiosity. Mornin’, Prowler.”