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“A perfect woman, nobly planned, |
JACK’S doubts and misgivings were written upon his open brow for twenty-four hours, but after that period they disappeared like morning mists. He awoke to a healthier tone of feeling, and determined to combat difficulty with renewed vigour and unshaken firmness.
“After all, I have not borrowed more than one good clip, and a little cutting down of the stock will set all right,” said he to himself. “Where would Brass, Marsailly, and all these other great guns have been if they had boggled at a few thousands at the beginning? Next year’s clip will be something like; and I never heard of any one but old Exmore that had two wool-sheds burned running. He put up a stone and iron edifice then, and told them to see what they could make of that. There was no grass-seed in his country though. Well, there is nothing like a start from town for clearing out the blues. I wonder how fellows ever manage to live there all the year round.”
These encouraging reflections occurred to the ingenuous mind of Mr. Redgrave as he was speeding over the first hundred miles of rail which expedite the traveller pleasantly on the road to the Great Desert. Facilis descensus Averni—which means that it is very easy to “settle one’s self” in life—the “downtrain” being furnished with “palace-cars” of Pullman’s patent, and gradients on the most seductive system of sliding scale.
Again the long gray plains. Again the night—one disjointed nightmare, where excessive jolts dislocated the most evil witch-wanderings, multiplying them, like the lower forms of life, by the severance. Then the long, scorching day, the intolerable flies, and lo! Steamboat Point. Gondaree, in all its arid, unrelieved glare and grandeur once more—Mr. M‘Nab weighing sheepskins to a carrier, with as much earnestness as if he expected half-a-crown a pound for them. Everything much as usual. Ah Sing in the garden, watering cauliflowers. When Redgrave caught the last glimpse of him as he left for town he was watering cabbages. Everything very dry. No relief, no shade. The cottage looked very small: the surroundings stiff and bare. “My eyes are out of focus just now,” said Jack to himself. “I must keep quiet till the vision accommodates itself to the landscape; otherwise I shall hurt M‘Nab’s feelings.”
“Well, how are you?” said Jack, heartily, as that person, having despatched his carrier, walked towards him. “You look very thriving, only dry; rather dry, don’t you think?”
“Well, we have hardly had a drop of rain since you started. Might be just a shower. But everything is doing capitally. We are rather short-handed; I sent away every soul but the cook, the Chinaman, and four boundary-riders directly you left, and we are now, thanks to the fencing, quite independent of labour till shearing-time.”
“How in the world do you get on?” inquired Jack, quite charmed, yet half afraid of M‘Nab’s sudden eviction.
“Nothing can be simpler. The dogs were well poisoned before the fences were finished. There’s no road through the back of the run, thank goodness. We haven’t any bother about wells because of Bimbalong. I count every paddock once a month, and that’s about all there is to do.”
“And who looks after the store?” inquired Jack.
“I do, of course,” said M‘Nab; “there is very little to give out, you’ll mind. Two of the boundary-riders live at home here, and the other two at a hut at Bimbalong. Now you’ve come there will be hardly enough work to keep us going.”
“Four men to forty thousand sheep,” moralized Jack. “What would some of the old hands think of that? Oh! the weaners,” cried he; “I had forgotten them. How did you manage them, M‘Nab?”
“Well, we had a great day’s drafting, and put them back in the river paddock. They are all as contented as possible, and as steady as old ewes—thirteen thousand of them.”
“There’s a trifle of bother saved by that arrangement. What a burden life used to be for the first three months after the weaning flocks were portioned out!”
Jack’s spirits were many degrees lighter after this conversation. Certainly there was a heavyish debt—and this millstone of a mortgage hung round “his neck alway” like the albatross in the Ancient Mariner; but the compensating economy of the fencing was beginning to work a cure. If one could only tide over the shearing with the present reduced Civil List, what a hole would the clip and the fat sheep make in the confounded “balance debtor!” There is the wool-shed over again, to be sure. What a murder that one should have all those hundredweights of nails, and tons of battens, and acres of flooring, and forests of posts and wall-plates to get all over again! It was very bitter work in Jack’s newly-born tendency to economy to have all this outlay added on to the inevitable expenditure of the season.
“As I said before,” concluded Jack, rounding off his soliloquy, “I never knew any fellow but Exmoor undergo the ordeal by fire two seasons running, so it’s a kind of insurance against the chapter of accidents this year.”
Jack insensibly returned to his ordinary provincial repose of mind and body. He rode about in the early mornings and cooler evenings, and took his turn to convoy travelling sheep, to officiate at the store, and to relieve the ever-toiling M‘Nab in any way that presented itself. He kept up this kind of thing for a couple of months, and then—the unbroken monotony of the whole round of existence striking him rather suddenly one day—he made up his mind to a slight change. There was a station about fifty miles away, down the river, with the owner of which he had a casual acquaintance; so, faute d’autre, he thought he would go and see him.
“You can get on quite as well without me, M‘Nab,” he said. “I think a small cruise would do me good. I’ll go and see Mr. Stangrove. One often gets an idea by going away from home.”
“That’s true enough,” assented M‘Nab, “but I doubt yon’s the wrong shop for new ones. Mr. Stangrove is a good sort of man, I hear every one say; but he hails from the old red-sandstone period (M‘Nab knew Hugh Miller by heart), and has no more idea of a swing-gate than a shearing-machine.”
“Well, one will get a notion of how the Australian Pilgrim Fathers managed to get a livelihood, and subdue the salt-bush for their descendants. There must be a flavour of antiquity about it. I will start to-morrow.”
After a daylight breakfast, Mr. Redgrave departed, riding old Hassan, and, like a wise man, leading another hackney, with a second saddle, upon which was strapped his valise. “If you want to go anywhere,” he was wont to assert, “you want a few spare articles of raiment.” Sitting in boots and breeches all the evening is unpleasant to the visitor and disrespectful to his entertainers, whether he be what the old-fashioned writers called “travel-stained” in wet weather, or uncomfortably warm in the dry season. If you carry the articles alluded to you need a valise. A valise is much pleasanter on a spare horse than in front of your own person; and all horses go more cheerily in company, particularly as you can divide the day’s journey by alternate patronage of either steed. I think life in a general way passes as pleasantly during a journey à cheval as over any other “road of life.” Then why make toil of a pleasure? Always take a brace of hacks, O reader, and then—
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“Over the downs mayst thou scour, nor mind |
The sun was no great distance above the far unbroken sky-line; the air was pleasantly cool as Jack rode quietly along the level track which led to his outer gate, and down the river. The horses played with their bits, stepping along lightly with elastic footfall. “What a different life,” thought he, “from my old one at Marshmead! How full of interest and occupation was every day as it rose! Neighbours at easy distances; poor old Tunstall to go and poke up whenever John Redgrave failed to suffice for his own entertainment and instruction. Jolly little Hampden, with its picnics and parties, and bench-work, and boat-sailing, and racing, and public meetings, and ‘all sorts o’ games,’ as Mr. Weller said. The bracing climate, the wholesome moral and physical atmosphere, the utter absence of any imp or demon distantly related to the traitor Ennui; and here, such is the melancholy monotony of my daily life that I find myself setting forth with a distinctly pleasurable feeling to visit a man whom I do not know, and very probably shall not like when our acquaintance expands. Auri sacri fames,—shall I quote that hackneyed tag? I may as well—the day is long—there is plenty of time and to spare on the Warroo, as Hawkesbury said. Fancy a fellow living this life for a dozen years and making no money after all. The picture is too painful. I shall weep over it myself directly—like that arch-humbug Sterne.”
About half way to his destination was an inn—hostelry of the period; an ugly slab building covered, as to its roof and verandah, with corrugated iron. There was no trace or hint of garden. It stood as if dropped on the edge of the bare, desolate, sandy plain. It faced the dusty track which did duty as high road; at the back of the slovenly yard was the river—chiefly used as a convenient receptacle for rubbish and broken bottles. A half-score of gaunt, savage-looking pigs lay in the verandah, or stirred the dust and bones in the immediate vicinity of the front entrance. A stout man, in Crimean shirt and tweed trousers, stood in the verandah, smoking, and, far from betraying any “provincial eagerness” at the sight of a stranger, went on smoking coolly until Jack spoke.
“How far is Mr. Stangrove’s place?” inquired he.
“What, Juandah?” said the host, in a tone conveying the idea that in ordinary social circles it was on a par, for notoriety, with London or Liverpool. “Well, say thirty mile.”
“Do you take the back road, or the one nearest to the river?” further inquired Jack.
“Oh, stick to the river bank,” answered the man; “at this time of year it is nearest.”
“What in the name of wonder,” inquired Jack of himself, as he rode away, “can a man do who lives at such a fragment of Hades but drink? He must be a Christian hero, or a philosopher, if he refrain under the utterly maddening conditions of life. Were he one or the other, he probably would not keep the grog-shop which he dignifies with the title of the Mailman’s Arms.” Of course he drinks—it is written in his dull eye and sodden face—his wife drinks, the barman drinks—the loafer who plays at being groom in the hayless, strawless, cornless stable drinks. The shepherd hands his cheque across the bar—and till every shilling, purchased by a year’s work, abstinence, and solitude, disappears, drinks—madly drinks. The miserable, debased aboriginal—camping there for weeks with his squalid wives—drinks, and, perchance, when his wild blood is stirred by vile liquor, murders ere his fit be over. From that den, as from a foul octopus, stretch forth tentacula which fasten only upon human beings. Question them, and hear vain remorse, bitter wrath, agonized despair, sullen apathy—the name of one resistless, unsparing curse—drink, drink, drink!
The midday sun was hot. The stage was a fair one; but Jack pushed on, after receiving his information, for half-a-dozen miles further. Then, discovering a green bend, he unsaddled, and, taking the precaution to hobble his nags, lighted his pipe. They rolled and cropped the fresh herbage, while he enjoyed a more satisfactory noontide lounge than the horsehair sofa of Mr. Hoker’s best parlour would have afforded, after a doubtful, or perhaps deleterious, repast.
The day was gone when Jack was made aware, by certain signs and hieroglyphics, known to all bushmen, that he was approaching a station. The pasture was closely cropped and bare. Converging tracks of horses, sheep, and cattle obviously trended in one direction. At some distance upon the open plain he could see a shepherd with his flock, slowly moving towards a point of timber more than a mile in advance of his present position. “I shall come upon the paddock fence just inside that timber,” he remarked to himself, “and the house will probably be within sight of the slip-rails. It will not be a very large paddock, I will undertake to say.”
This turned out to be a correct calculation. He saw the sheep-yard, towards which the flock was heading, as he reached the timber. He descried the paddock fence and the slip-rail in the road; and within sight—as he put up the rails and mustered a couple of temporary pegs, for fear of accidents—was a roomy wooden building surrounded by a garden.
Riding up to the garden gate, he was announced as “Mr. Stranger” by about twenty dogs, who gave the fullest exercise to their lungs, and would doubtless have gone even further had Jack been on foot. A tall, sun-burned man, in an old shooting-coat, appeared upon the verandah, and, making straight through the excited pack, greeted Redgrave warmly.
“Won’t you get off and come in? I’ll take your horses. [Hold your row, you barking fools!] Oh! it is you, Mr. Redgrave; from Gondaree, I think—met you at Barrabri—very glad to see you; of course you have come to stay? Allow me to take the led horse.”
“I think I promised to look you up some day,” said Jack. “I took advantage of a lull in station-work and—here I am.”
“Very glad indeed you have made your visit out, though I don’t know that I have much to show you. But, as we are neighbours, we ought to become acquainted.”
The horses were led over to a small but tolerably snug stable, where they were regaled with hay previous to being turned out in the paddock, and then Jack was ushered into the house. Mr. Stangrove was a married man; so much was evident from the first; many traces of the “pug-wuggies, or little people,” were apparent; and a girl crossing the yard with a baby in her arms supplied any evidence that might be missing.
“Will you have a glass of grog after your ride?” inquired the host, “or would you like to go to your room?”
Jack preferred the latter, being one of those persons who decline to eat or drink until they are in a comfortable and becoming state of mind and body; holding it to be neither epicurean nor economical to “muddle away appetite” under circumstances which preclude all proper and befitting appreciation.
So Redgrave performed his ablutions, and, having arrayed himself in luxuriously-easy garments and evening shoes, made his way to the sitting-room. He had just concluded “a long, cool drink” when two ladies entered.
“My dear, allow me to introduce Mr. Redgrave—Mrs. Stangrove, Miss Stangrove.”
A lady advanced upon the first mention of names and shook hands with the visitor, in a kindly, unaffected manner. She was young, but a certain worn look told of the early trials of matronhood. Her face bore silent witness to the toils of housekeeping, with indifferent servants or none at all; to want of average female society; to a little loneliness, and a great deal of monotony. Such, with few exceptions, is the life of an Australian lady, whose husband lives in the far interior, in the real bush. Her companion, who contented herself with a searching look and a formal bow, was “in virgin prime and May of womanhood”—and a most fair prime and sweet May it was. Her features were regular, her mouth delicate and refined, with a certain firmness about the chin, and the mutine expression about the upper lip, which savoured of declaration of war upon just pretext. She had that air and expression which at once suggest the idea of interest in unravelling the character. Jack shook hands with himself when he thought of how he had persevered after the traitorous idea had entered his head that after all it was no use going, Mr. Stangrove wouldn’t be glad to see him, or care a rush about the matter.
The evening meal was now announced, which circumstance afforded Jack considerable satisfaction. He had ridden rather more than fifty miles, and, whereas his horses had not done so badly in the long grass of the “bend,” our traveller’s lunch had been limited to a pipe of “Pacific Mixture.” All the same, while the preparations for tea were proceeding he took a careful and accurate survey of his younger feminine neighbour.
Maud Stangrove was somewhat out of the ordinary run of girls in appearance, as she certainly was in character. Her features were regular, with a complexion clear and delicate to a degree unusual in a southern land. Her mouth, perhaps, denoted a shade more firmness than the ideal princess is supposed to require. But it was redeemed by the frank, though not invariable, smile which, disclosing a set of extremely white and regular teeth, gave an expression of softness and humour which was singularly winning. The eyes were darkest hazel, faintly toned with gray. They were remarkable as a feature; and those on whom they had shone—in love or war—rarely forgot their gaze; they were clear and shining; but this is to say little; such are the every-day charms of that beauty which is in woman but another name for youth. Maud’s eyes had the peculiar quality of developing fresh aspects and hidden mysteries of expression as they fell on you—calm, clear, starlike, but fathomless, glowing ever, and with hidden, smouldering fire. She was dressed plainly, but in such taste as betokened reference to a milliner remote from the locality. Rather, but very slightly, above middle height in her figure, there was an absence of angularity which gave promise of eventual roundness of contour—perhaps even too pronounced. But now, in the flower-time of early womanhood, she moved with the unstudied ease of those forest creatures in whom one notices a world of latent force.
Such was the apparition which burst upon the senses of Mr. Redgrave.
“Average neighbours!” said he to himself. “Who ever expected this—a vision of no end of fear and interest? This is a girl fit for any one to make love to or to quarrel with, as the case might be. I think the latter recreation would be the easier. And yet I don’t know.”
“I don’t think you have ever been so far ‘down the river,’ as the people call it, before?” said Mrs. Stangrove.
“I’m afraid I have not been a very good neighbour,” said Jack, beginning to feel contrite at the de haut en bas treatment of the general population of the Warroo, in accordance with which he had devoted himself to unrelieved work at Gondaree, and looked upon social intercourse as completely out of the question. “But the fact is, that I have been very hard at work up to this time. Now the fences are up I hope to have a little leisure.”
Here Jack paused, as if he had borne up, like another Atlas, the weight of the Gondaree world upon those shapely shoulders of his.
Miss Stangrove looked at him with an expression which did not imply total conviction.
“We have heard of all your wonders and miracles, haven’t we, Jane? I don’t know what we should have done in the wilderness here without the Gondaree news.”
“I was not aware that I was so happy as to furnish interesting incidents for the country generally,” answered Jack; “but it would have given me fresh life if I had only thought that Mrs. and Miss Stangrove were sympathetical with my progress.”
“You would have been rather flattered, then,” said Stangrove, who was a downright sort of personage, “if you had heard the lamentations of these ladies over your woolshed—indeed, Maud said that——”
“Come, Mark,” said Miss Stangrove, eagerly, and with the very becoming improvement of a sudden blush, “we don’t need your clumsy version of all our talk for the last year. Nobody ever does anything upon this antediluvian stream from one century to another, and of course Jane and I felt grieved that a spirited reformer like Mr. Redgrave should meet with so heavy a loss—didn’t we, Jane?”
“Of course we did, my dear,” said that matron, placidly; “and Mark, too, he said the wicked men who did it ought to be hanged, and that Judge Lynch was a very useful institution. He was quite ferocious.”
“Thanks very many; I am sure I feel deeply grateful. I had no idea I had so many well-wishers,” quoth Jack, casting his eyes in the direction of Miss Maud. “It comforts one under affliction and—all that, you know.”
“How you must look down upon us, with our shepherds and old-world ways,” said Maud. “You come from Victoria, do you not, Mr. Redgrave? We Sydney people believe that you are all Yankees down there, and wear bowie-knives and guns, and calculate, and so on.”
“Really, Miss Stangrove,” pleaded Jack, “you are indicting me upon several charges at once; which am I to answer? I don’t look very supercilious, do I? though I admit hailing from Victoria, which is chiefly peopled by persons of British birth, whatever may be the prevailing impression.”
“Well, you will have an opportunity of discussing the matter—the shepherds, I mean—with my brother, who is a strong conservative. I give you leave to convert him, if you can. We have hitherto found it impossible, haven’t we, Mark?”
“Mark has generally good reasons for his opinions,” said the loyal wife, looking approvingly at her lord and master—who, indeed, was very like a man who could hold his own in any species of encounter. “But suppose we have a little music—you might play La Bouquetière.”
“The piano is not so wofully out of tune as might be expected,” asserted Maud, as she sat down comfortably to her work, all things being arranged by Jack, who was passionately fond of music—a good deal of which, as of other abstractions, he had in his soul.
“Far from it,” said he, as the shower of delicate notes which make up this loveliest of airy musical trifles fell on his ear like a melody of le temps perdu.
Jack had all his life been extremely susceptible to the charm of music. He had a good ear, and his taste, naturally correct, had been rather unusually well cultivated. With him the effect of harmony was to bring to the surface, and develop as by a spell, all the best, the noblest, the most exalted portions of his character. Any woman who played or sang with power exercised a species of fascination over him, assuming her personal endowments to be up to his standard. When Miss Stangrove, after passing lightly over capriccias of Chopin and Liszt, after a fashion which showed very unusual execution, commenced in deference to his repeated requests to sing When Sparrows Build, and one or two other special favourites, in such a mezzo-soprano! he was surprised, charmed, subjugated—with astonishing celerity.
However, the evenings of summer, commencing necessarily late, come to an end rather prematurely if we are very pleasantly engaged. So Jack thought when Mr. Stangrove looked at his watch, and opined that Jack after his ride would be glad to retire.
Jack was by no means glad, but of course assented blandly, and the two ladies sailed off.
“Shall we have a pipe in the verandah before we turn in?” asked his host. “You smoke, I suppose? We can open this window and leave the glasses on the table here within easy reach.”
Taking up his position upon a Cingalese cane-chair on the broad verandah, and lighting his pipe simultaneously with his host, Jack leaned back and enjoyed the wondrous beauty of the night.
The cottage, unlike the Mailman’s Arms, fronted the river, towards which a neatly-kept garden sloped, ending in a grassy bank.
“My sister belongs to the advanced party of reform, Mr. Redgrave, as you will have observed,” said his entertainer. “She and I have numerous fights on the subject.”
“I am proud to have such an ally,” said Jack; “but, seriously, I wonder you have not been converted. Surely the profits and advantages of fencing are sufficiently patent.”
“You must bear with me, my dear sir, as a very staunch conservative,” answered his host, smoking serenely, and speaking with his usual calm deliberation. “There is something, I think much, to be said on the other side.”
“I feel really anxious to hear your arguments,” said Jack. “I fancied that beyond what the shepherds always say—that sheep can’t do well or enjoy life without a bad-tempered old man and a barking dog at their tails—the brief against fencing was exhausted.”
“I do not take upon myself to assert,” said Stangrove, “that my reasons ought to govern persons whose circumstances differ from my own. But I find them sufficient for me for the present. I reserve the privilege of altering them upon cause shown. And the reasons are—First of all, that I could not enter into the speculation, for such it would be, of fencing my run without going into debt—a thing I abhor under any circumstances. Secondly, because the seasons in Australia are exceedingly changeable, as I have had good cause to know. And, thirdly, because the prices of stock are as fluctuating and irregular, occasionally, as the seasons.”
“Granted all these, how can there be two opinions about an outlay which is repaid within two years, which is more productive in bad seasons than in good ones, and which dispenses with three-fourths of the labour required for an ordinary sheep-station?”
“I have no reason to doubt what you say,” persisted Stangrove, “but suppose we defer the rest of the argument until we have had a look at the run and stock together. I can explain my meaning more fully on my own beat. I dare say you will sleep tolerably after your ride.”