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“Absence of occupation is not rest.”—Cowper. |
JACK went to bed with a kind of general idea of getting up in the morning early and looking round the establishment. But, like the knight who was to be at the postern gate at dawn, he failed to keep the self-made engagement; and for the same reason he slept so soundly that the sun was tolerably high when he awoke, and he had barely time for a swim in the river, and a complete toilet, before the breakfast-bell rang.
In spite of the baseless superstition that “there is nothing like one’s own bed,” and so on, it is notorious that all men not confirmed valetudinarians sleep far more satisfactorily away from home. For, consider, one is comparatively freed from the dire demon, Responsibility, you doze off tranquilly into the charmed realm of dreamland—with “nothing on your mind.” Perfectly indifferent is it to you, in the house of a congenial friend or affable stranger, whether domestic disorganization of the most frightful nature is smouldering insidiously or hurrying to a climax. The cook may be going next week, the housemaid may have contracted a clandestine marriage. Your host may be sternly revolving plans of retrenchment, and may have determined to abandon light wines, and to limit his consumption to table-beer and alcohol. But nothing of this is revealed to you; nor would it greatly concern you if it was. For the limited term of your visit, the hospitality is free, smooth, and spontaneous. Atra Cura, if she does accidentally drop in by mistake, is a courteous grande dame, rather plainly attired in genteel mourning, but perfect in manner. Not a violent, unreserved shrew as she can be when quite “at home.” A visit is in most instances, therefore, a respite and a truce. The parade, the review, the skirmish are for a time impossible; so the “tired soldier” enjoys the calm, unbroken repose in his own tent so rarely tasted.
The weather was hot, and there did not appear to be any likelihood of a change. Nevertheless, Jack could not but acknowledge that no detail had been omitted to insure the highest amount of comfort attainable in such a climate. The butter was cooled, the coffee perfect, the eggs, the honey, the inevitable chop, excellent of their kind. Everything bore traces of that thorough supervision which is never found in a household under male direction. Jack thought Miss Stangrove, charmingly neat and fresh in her morning attire, would have added piquancy to a much more homely meal.
“Just in time, Mr. Redgrave,” said that young lady; “we were uncertain whether you were not accustomed to be aroused by a gong. Bells are very old-fashioned, we know.”
“I doubt whether anything would have awakened me an hour since. I am a reasonably early riser generally; but the ride and the extreme comfort of my bedroom led to a little laziness. But where’s Stangrove?”
“I blush to say he went off early to count a flock of sheep,” said Miss Stangrove, with assumed regret. “You must accustom yourself to our aboriginal ways for a time. But is it not dreadful to think of? I hope you extracted a total recantation from him last night.”
“We only made a commencement of the game last night,” said Jack. “Your brother advanced a pawn or two, but we agreed to defer the grand attack until after a ride round the run, which I believe takes place to-day.”
“I am afraid you will have a hot ride; but I don’t pity you for that. Anything is better than staying indoors day after day, week after week, as we wretched women have to do. You might tell Mark if he sees my horse to have her brought in. I feel as if I should like a scamper. Oh! here he comes to answer for himself. Well, Mark, how many killed, wounded, and missing?”
“Good morning, Mr. Redgrave,” said Stangrove, smiling rather lugubriously at his sister’s pleasantry. “I am afraid you are just in time to remark on one of the weak points of my management. A shepherd came before daylight to say that his flock had been lost since the day before. I have been hunting for them these five hours.”
“And have you brought any home?” inquired Mrs. Stangrove.
“None at all,” he answered.
“Did you see any?” persisted the lady, who seemed rather of an anxious disposition.
“Yes—ten.”
“And why didn’t you bring them?” pursued the chatelaine, whose earnestness was in strong contrast with her sister’s nonchalance.
“Because they were dead,” replied Stangrove, laconically; “and now, my dear, please to give me some tea. ‘Sufficient for the day’—and so on.”
“Accidents will happen,” interposed Jack, politely. “It is like more important calamities and crimes, a matter of average.”
“Just so,” said Stangrove, gratefully; “and though I can’t help worrying myself at a small loss, such as this, I know that the annual expense from this cause varies very little.”
“There were wolves in Arcadia, were not there?” demanded the young lady. “They ate a shepherd now and then, I suppose. If the dingoes would look upon it in that light, what a joy it would be, eh?”
“I could cheerfully see them battening upon the carcase of that lazy ruffian Strawler,” he very vengefully made answer.
“My love!” said Mrs. Stangrove, mildly, “the children will be in directly—would you mind reading prayers directly you finish?”
“Well—ahem,” said the bereaved proprietor, rather doubtfully; “perhaps you might as well read this morning, Mr. Redgrave and I have a long way to go—what are you laughing at, Maud, you naughty girl?”
“Don’t forget to have old Mameluke got in for me, Mark, and to-morrow I will go sheep-hunting with you myself, if little Bopeep continues unsuccessful, and in an unchristian state of mind, unable to say his prayers. I didn’t think the fencing question involved so high a moral gain before.”
Breakfast over, two fresh hacks were brought up (Stangrove was a great horse-breeder, and Jack’s eye had been offended as he rode up with troops of mares and foals), and forth they fared for a day on the run, and a contingent search for the lost flock.
Stangrove’s run was about the same size as Gondaree, but, save the cottages and buildings of the homestead, there were no “improvements” of any kind other than the shepherds’ huts. For stock, he had seventeen or eighteen thousand sheep, a herd of cattle, and two or three hundred horses. These last were within their boundaries in a general way, but were occasionally outside of these merely moral frontiers. So also the neighbouring stock wandered at will inside of the said imaginary subdivisions.
“You see,” commenced Stangrove, in explanation, when they were fairly out on the plain, “that I came into possession here some ten years past, just after I had left school. My poor old governor, who was rather a scientific literary character, lived at one of those small comfortable estates near town, where a man can spend lots of money, but can’t by any possibility make a shilling. Decent people, in those days, would as soon have gone out to spend a few years with Livingstone as have come to live permanently on the Warroo. We had a surly old overseer, of the old sort, who managed a little and robbed a great deal. When I came here, after the poor old governor died, you never saw such a place as it was.”
“I can partly imagine,” Jack said.
“Well, I worked hard, and lived like a black fellow for a few years, got the property out of debt, improved the stock, and here we are. I get a reasonable price for my wool, I sell a draft of cattle now and then, and some horses, and am increasing the stock slowly, and putting by something every year.”
“No doubt you are,” said Jack; “but here you have to live and keep your wife and family in this out-of-the-way place; and at the present rate of progress it may be years before you can make money or sell out profitably. Why not concentrate all the work and self-denial into three or four years—sell out, and enjoy life?”
“A tempting picture—but consider the risk. Debt always means danger; and why should I incur that danger? At present I don’t owe a shilling, and call no man master. As for happiness, I am not so miserable now (if I could only find those sheep). I have a day’s work to do every day, or to decline, if I see fit; and I would just as soon be here—a place endeared to me by old association—as anywhere else.”
“But your family?” asked Jack, rather insincerely, as he was thinking of Maud chiefly, and the stupendous sacrifice of her life. “But,” he said, “your children are growing up.”
“Yes, but only growing up. By the time they need masters and better schooling I shall be a little better off. Some change will probably take place—stock will rise—or it will rain for two or three years without stopping, as is periodically probable in New South Wales; and then I shall sell, go back to the paternal acres in the county of Cumberland, and grow prize shorthorns and gigantic cucumbers, and practise all the devices by which an idle man cheats himself into the belief that he is happy.”
“By which time you will have lost most of the zest for the choicer pleasures of life.”
“Even so—but I am a great believer in the ‘in that state of life’ portion of the catechism. I was placed and appointed here, and hold myself responsible for the safety and gradual increase of my ‘one talent.’ Maud, too, has a share. I am compelled to be a stern guardian in her interest.”
“Well,” returned Jack (after his companion had opened his mind, as men often do in the bush to a chance acquaintance—so rare ofttimes is the luxury of congeniality), “I am not sure that you are altogether wrong. It squares with your temperament. Mine is altogether opposed to such views. I think twenty years on the Warroo, with the certainty of a plum and a baronetcy at the end, would kill me as surely as sunstroke. Isn’t that sheep?”
As Jack propounded this grammatically doubtful query, he directed Stangrove’s attention to a long light-coloured line at a distance. It was soon evident that it was sheep coming towards them. To Stangrove’s great relief, they proved to be the missing flock, in charge of one of the volunteers sent out in all directions, if only they might perchance manage to drop across them. Upon being counted they were only fifteen short. Ten being accounted for by the domestic declaration of Mr. Stangrove, the other five were left to take their chance, and the flock sent back to a new shepherd, vice Strawler superseded.
Stangrove brightened up considerably after this recovery of his doubtfully-situated property. Byron asserts “a sullen son, a dog ill, a favourite horse fallen lame just as he’s mounted,” to be “trifles in themselves,” but adds, “and yet I’ve rarely seen the man they didn’t vex.” So with lost sheep. You must lose a dozen or twenty—you hardly lose more than fifty, say from ten to five-and-twenty pounds—not a sum to turn the scale of ruin by any means. Yet, from the time that the announcement is made of “sheep away” until they are safely counted and yarded, rarely does the face of the proprietor relax its expression of weighty resolve and grave foreboding.
Jack found by his companion’s avowal that at least one person besides Bertie Tunstall held the same unprogressive but eminently safe opinions. “Here’s a man,” said Jack, “with a worse climate, far less recreation and variety than I had, and see how he sticks to his fight! However, I am differently constituted—there’s no denying it. If Stangrove’s father had not been somewhat of the same kidney, he and I would have had little chance of discussing our theories on the banks of the Warroo.”
“And so you won’t be tempted into fencing?” demanded Jack, returning to the charge.
“Not just at present,” rejoined Stangrove. “I do not say but that if I find myself surrounded by fencing neighbours, willing to share the expense and so on, in a few more years I may give in. But I am a firm believer in the Safe. I am now in a position of absolute security, and I intend to continue in it.”
“But suppose bad seasons come?”
“Let them! I have no bills to meet. I can weather them again as I have done before, when on this very station we had to boil down our meat to a kind of soup; it was too poor to eat otherwise. We outlived that. Please God, we shall do so again.”
“I suppose you had terrible losses?”
“You may say that; if another season came like it, the country would be ‘a valley of dry bones,’ literally. But even if I lost all my increase for a year, and a proportion of my old stock, it would only shake me, not break me. A man who is in debt it cooks altogether—that is the difference.”
“Well, let us hope that such times won’t come again,” said Jack, beginning to be unpleasantly affected by the idea of an interview with Mr. Shrood, in which he should be compelled to inform him that the season had been fatal to his whole crop of lambs, and the greater part of his aged ewes. “Every one says the seasons have changed, and that the climate is more moist than it used to be.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said his host, who was not prone to take much heed of “what everybody said.” “I see no very precise data upon which to found such an assertion. What has been may be again. We shall have another dry season within the next five years, as sure as my name is Mark Stangrove. What do you think of those horses? That is rather a fancy mob. I see Maud’s horse Mameluke among them. We must run them in.”
“How do you reconcile it to your conscience to keep such unprofitable wretches as horses?” inquired Jack, “eating the grass of sheep and cattle, and being totally unsaleable themselves, unfit to eat, and hardly worth boiling down.”
“I am grieved to appear so old-fashioned and ignorant,” said Mark, “but I have a sentiment about these horses, and really they don’t pay so badly. They are the direct descendants, now numbered by hundreds, of an old family stud. They cost nothing in the way of labour; they need no shepherd or stockman: they are simply branded up every year. You couldn’t drive them off the run if you tried. And every now and then there springs up a demand, and I clear a lot of them off. It is all found money, and it tells up.”
“Meanwhile, the grass they eat would feed ten thousand sheep.”
“That is perfectly true; but of course I make no scruple of putting the sheep on their favourite haunts when hard up. Horses, you see, can pick up a living anywhere. Besides, I have always remarked that each of the great divisions of stock has its turn once or twice in a decade, if not oftener. You have only, therefore, to wait, and you get your ‘pull.’ My next ‘pull’ with the stud will be when the Indian horse market has to be supplied by us, as it must some day.”
“You seem a good hand at waiting,” said Jack. “I don’t know but that your philosophy is sound. I can’t put faith in it however.”
“Everything comes to him who waits, as the French adage goes,” said Stangrove. “I have always found it tolerably correct. However here we are at home. So we’ll put this lot into the yard, and I’ll lead up the old horse with a spare rein. We must have a ride out to Murdering Lake tomorrow; it’s our show bit of scenery.”
“Another eventful day over, Mr. Redgrave,” said Maud, as they met at the tea-table. “Yesterday the sheep were lost; to-day the sheep are found. So passes our life on the Warroo.”
“You’re an ungrateful, naughty girl, Maud,” said Mrs. Stangrove. “Think how relieved poor Mark must be after all his hard work and anxiety. Suppose he had lost a hundred.”
“I feel tempted to wish sometimes that every one of the ineffably stupid woolly creatures were lost for good and all, if it would only lead to our going ‘off the run’ and having to live somewhere else. Only I suppose they are our living, besides working up into delaines and merinos—so I ought not to despise them. But it’s the life I despise—shepherd, shearer, stockman—day after day, year after year. These, with rare exceptions (here she made a mock respectful bow to Jack), are the only people we see, or shall ever see, till we are gray.”
“You are rather intolerant of a country life, Miss Stangrove,” said Jack. “I always thought that ladies had domestic duties and—and so on—which filled up the vacuum, with a daily routine of small but necessary employments.”
“Which means that we can sew all day, or mend stockings, weigh out plums, currants, and sugar for the puddings—and that this, with a little nursing sick children, pastry-making, gardening, and very judicious reading, ought to fill up our time, and make us peacefully happy.”
“And why should it not?” inquired Mark, looking earnestly at his sister, as if the subject was an old one of debate between them. “How can a woman be better employed than in the duties you sneer at?”
“Do you really suppose,” said Maud, leaning forward and looking straight into his face with her lustrous eyes, in which the opaline gleam began to glow and sparkle, “that women do not wish, like men, to see the world, of which they have only dreamed—to mix a little change and adventure with the skim-milk of their lives—before they calm down into the stagnation of middle age or matrimony?”
“I won’t say what I suppose about women, Maud,” rejoined her brother. “Some things I know about them, and some things I don’t know. But, believe me, those women do best in the long run who neither thirst nor long for pleasures not afforded to them by the circumstances of their lives. If what they desire should come, well and good. If not, they act a more womanly and Christian part in waiting with humility till the alteration arrives.”
“What do you say, Mr. Redgrave?” asked the unconvinced damsel. “Is it wrong for the caged bird to droop and pine, or ought it to turn a tiny wheel and pull up a tiny pail of nothing contentedly all its days, unmindful of the gay greenwood and the shady brook; or, if it beat its breast against the wires, and lie dead when the captor comes with seed and water, is it to be mourned over or cast forth in scorn?”
“’Pon my word,” answered Jack, helplessly, rather overawed by the strong feeling and earnest manner of the girl, and much “demoralized” by those wonderful eyes of hers, “I hardly feel able to decide. I’m a great lover of adventure and change and all that kind of thing myself; can’t live without it. But for ladies, somehow, I really—a—feel inclined to agree with your brother. Sphere of home—and—all that, you know.”
“Sphere of humbug!” answered she, with all the sincerity of contempt in her voice. “You men stick together in advocating all kinds of intolerable dreariness and nonsensical treadmill work because you think it good for women! You would be ashamed to apply such reasoning to anything bearing on your own occupations. But I will not say another word on the subject; it always raises my temper, and that is not permitted to our sex, I know. Did you see my dear old Mameluke to-day, Mark?”
“Yes, and he’s now in the stable.”
“Oh, thanks; we must have a gallop to-morrow and show Mr. Redgrave our solitary landscape. That will be one ripple on the Dead Sea.”
Life seemed capable of gayer aspects, even upon the Warroo, as next morning three residents of that far region rode lightly along the prairie trail. The day was cool and breezy; a great wind had come roaring up from the south the evening before, crashing through the far woods and audible in mighty tones for many a mile before it stirred the streamers of the couba trees, as they all sat under the verandah in the sultry night. Then the glorious coolness of the sea-breeze, almost the savour of the salt sea-foam and of the dancing wavelets, smote upon their revived senses. Hence, this day was cool, bracing, with a clear sky and a sighing breeze. Jack was young, and extremely susceptible. Maud Stangrove was a peerless horsewoman, and as she caused Mameluke, a noble old fleabitten gray, descendant of Satellite, to plunge and caracole, every movement of her supple figure, as she swayed easily to each playful bound, completed the sum of his admiration and submission.
“Oh, what a day it is!” said she. “Why don’t we have such weather more often? I feel like that boy in Nick of the Woods, when he jumps on his horse to ride after the travellers whom the Indians are tracking, and who shouts out a war-whoop from pure glee and high spirits. ‘Wagh! wagh! wagh! wagh!’ Don’t you remember it, Mr. Redgrave?”
“Oh yes, quite well.” Jack had read nearly all the novels in the world, and, if any good could have been done by a competitive examination in light reading, would have come out senior wrangler. “Nick of the Woods was very powerfully written—that is, it was a good book; so was the Hawks of Hawk Hollow. Dick Bruce was the boy’s name.”
“Of course. I see you know all about him, and Big Tom Bruce is the one that was shot, and didn’t tell them that he had a handful of slugs in his breast till after the Indian town is taken, and then he falls down, dying. Grand fellow, is not he? Nothing of that sort in our wretched country, is there?”
“We had a little fighting at that Murdering Lake we are going to,” said Mark. “Nothing very wonderful. But my horse was speared under me, and he remembered it for the rest of his life. Red Bob was killed; however, as he said before he died, it wasn’t ‘twenty to one, or anything near it.’ He had shot scores of blacks, if his own and others’ tales were true.”
“And why were you engaged in your small war, Master Mark?” demanded Maud. “It’s all very well to talk about Indians, and so on, but what had these miserable natives done to you?”
“They were not so miserable in those days,” said her brother; “this tribe was strong and numerous. I would have shirked it if possible; but they speared a lot of the cattle and one of the men. We had to fight or give them up the run.”
“The old story of Christianity and civilization? However I know you would not have hurt a hair of their red-ochred locks if you could have avoided it. Indeed, I wonder you kept your own scalp safe in those days. The most simple savage might have circumvented you, I’m sure, you good, easy-going, unsuspicious, conscientious old goose that you are.”
Here another expression, which Jack preferred much to those more animated glances which opposition had called forth, came over her features; as she gazed at her brother a soft light seemed gradually to arise and overspread her whole countenance, till her eyes rested with an expression of deep unconscious tenderness upon the bronzed, calm face of Mark Stangrove. “I wonder if anything in the whole world could lead to her looking at me like that?” thought Jack.
“This is the place. ‘Stand still, my steed,’” quoted Maud, as she reined up Mameluke upon a pine-crested sand-hill, after a couple of hours’ riding. “There you can just see the water of the lake. Isn’t it a pretty place? The pretty place, I should say, as it is the only bit with the slightest pretension upon the whole dusky green and glaring red patch of desert which we call our run.”
It was, in its way, assuredly a pretty place. The waters were clear, and had the hue of the undimmed azure, as they gently lapped against the grassy banks. Around was a fringe of dwarf eucalypti, more spreading and umbrageous than their congeners are apt to be. On the further side was a low sand-hill with a thicker covering of shrubs. A drove of cattle were feeding near; a troop of half-wild horses had dashed off at their approach, and were rapidly receding in a long, swaying line in the distance. A blue crane, the Australian heron, flew with a harsh cry from the shallows, and sailed onward with stately flight.
“Oh for a falcon to throw off!” cried Maud, whose spirits seemed quite irrepressible. “Why cannot I be a young lady of the feudal times, and have a hawk, with silken jesses, and a page, and a castle, and all that? Surely this is the stupidest, most prosaic country in the world. One would have thought that in a savage land like this they would have devoted themselves to every kind of sport, whereas I firmly believe one would have more chance of hunting, shooting, or fishing in Cheapside. Why did I ever come here?” she pursued in a voice of mock lamentation.
“Because you were born here, you naughty girl,” said Mark; “are you not ashamed to be always running down your native country? Don’t I see a fire on the far point?”
They rode round the border of the lake, scaring the plover and the wild fowl which swam or flew in large flocks in the shallows. When they reached the spot where the small cape formed by the sand advanced boldly into the waters of the lake at the eastern side, they observed that the fire appertained to a small camp of blacks. Riding close up, the unmoved countenance of “old man Jack” appeared with his two aged wives, while at a little distance, superintending the boiling of certain fish, was the girl Wildduck. She turned to them with an expression of unaffected pleasure, and, rushing up to Miss Stangrove, greeted her with the most demonstrative marks of affection. Suddenly beholding Redgrave, she looked rather surprised; then, bestowing a searching look of inquiry upon him, she made her usual half-shy, half-arch, salutation.
“So Wildduck is a protégée of yours, Miss Stangrove,” said Jack; “I had no idea she had such distinguished patronage.”
“Maud is a bit of a missionary in her way,” said Mark; “though perhaps you might not think it. Many a good hour she has wasted over the runaway scamp of a gin, and a little rascal of a black boy we had.”
“Poor things!” said Maud, with quite a different tone from her ordinary badinage. “They have souls, and why should one not try to do them a little good! I am very fond of this Wildduck, as she is called, though Kalingeree is her real name. I remember her quite a little girl. Isn’t she a pretty creature?—not like gins generally are.”
“She is wonderfully good-looking,” said Jack; “I thought so the first time I saw her—when she was galloping after a lot of horses.”
“I am afraid her stock-keeping propensities have led her into bad company,” said Maud; “and yet it is but a natural passion for the chase in the nearest approach the bush affords. I can’t help feeling a deep interest in her. You wouldn’t believe how clever she is.”
“She looks to me very much thinner than she used to be,” said Mark. “How large her eyes seem, and so bright. I’m afraid she will die young, like her mother.”
“She has been ill, I can see,” said Maud, as the girl coughed, and then placed her hand upon her chest, with a gesture of pain. “What has been the matter with you, Wildduck?”
“Got drunk, Miss Maudie; lie out in the rain,” said the girl, who was as realistic as one of—let us say—Rhoda Broughton’s heroines.
“Oh, Wildduck!” said her instructress; “how could you get tipsy again, after all I said to you?”
“Tipsy!” said the child of nature, with a twinkle of wicked mirth in her large bright eye— “tipsy! me likum tipsy!”
Mark and his guest were totally unable to retain their gravity at this unexpected answer to Miss Stangrove’s appeal, though Jack composed his countenance with great rapidity as he noticed a deeply-pained look in Maud’s face, and something like a tear, as she hastily turned away.
“Are the old miamis there still, Wildduck?” asked Mark, by way of turning the subject.
“Where you shoot black fellow, long ago?” asked she. “By gum, you peppered ’em that one day. You kill ’em one—two—Misser Stangrove.”
“No, I think not, Wildduck. I fired my gun all about. Don’t think I killed anybody. Black fellow spear Red Bob that day.”
“Aha!” said the girl, her face suddenly changing to an expression of passion. “Serve him right, the murdering dog. He kill poor black fellows for nothing; shoot gins, too, and picaninnies; ask old man Jack.”
Here she said a few words rapidly in her own language to the old man. The effect was instantaneous. He sprang up—he seized his spear—his eyes suddenly assumed a fixed and stony stare—with raised head he strode forward with all the lightness and activity of youth. He muttered one name repeatedly. Then his expression changed to one of horrible exultation.
“I believe old man Jack was there,” said Mark. “Perhaps he threw the spear that hit me.”
“Dono,” said Wildduck; “might ha’ been. He’d have done it quick if he had, I know that.”
A spring cart with luncheon had been sent on at an early hour, and commanded to camp close by the deserted miamis, which had never been inhabited since the battle. Leaving their sable friends, with an invitation to come up and receive the fragments, they rode over to the spot indicated.
“Give me the hobbles,” said Mark to the lad who drove the spring cart. “You can lay the cloth and set the lunch.”